The psychology of brand building

THE PROBLEM

Neilsen’s global innovation database shows that 70% of new consumer products disappear within their first year. According to the IXP Marketing Group, roughly 21,000 new brands are introduced worldwide per year, yet all but a few of them have vanished a year later. And about fifty percent of all new business ventures don’t make it to the five-year mark. But hey, I bet they all had great logos! So what went wrong? In a word, branding. It’s the most difficult marketing discipline to master, an alchemical blend of art and science. Those who do achieve mastery are the real wizards of marketing.

After a quick internet search, it seems most definitions are somewhat nebulous and focus on the design aspect, or the setting of values, identity and strategy. None of these definitions help us understand the far-flung neural, psychological and emotional brain processes you must profoundly influence while seated at your laptop. It’s an essentially human skill that is tricky to pin down. So how does one master a trade that escapes definition? It takes a lot of effort, but the rewards can be great.

A DEFINITION

My favorite definition is this: Branding is the sum of all the feelings, memories and interactions your consumer has ever had with your product or service. Your brand ONLY exists in the mind of the consumer - at least the part of the brand that is most valuable and beneficial to the future success of your business. You can own the copyright on the logo you designed - but that holds no real value until a consumer has that logo stored in their brain, ready to recognize it and make purchase decisions on encountering it in the wild.

Even though branding is completely intangible, a brand may be valued in the millions, sometimes billions, and these valuations are included on company balance sheets. For example, in its 2024 accounts, L’Oréal declared its brand to be worth 523 million Euros. Just let that sink in: Something that only exists in the mind of the consumer is worth half a billion Euros. If you think that’s dizzying, the world’s most valuable brand, Apple, is thought to be worth half a trillion dollars. My pea brain struggles to comprehend a number of that scale.

I find this aspect of branding endlessly fascinating. Every week we hear about rebranding efforts, from Cracker Barrel to Jaguar Land Rover, as though changing a brand is as simple as generating a new positioning statement, doing some eye-catching design work and rolling out a brand advertising campaign. It can take literally years for a brand to build up enough positive feelings, memories, connections in the brain of the consumer before a purchase decision is made. Often a rebrand is just beginning to actually make headway and grow mindshare when a new C-suite new-brooms their way into another “brand evolution.”

A successful branding effort will make or break a company, so the stakes are high – it is critical to master the branding process. Once you look past the identity, the design, the logo – it starts to feel like a magical process, akin to wizardry – but can it be learned? Can you become good at branding? Why is it so difficult to grow mindshare for a brand, to gain a toehold in the consumer’s brain?

The answer lies with friends and lovers.

Multiple studies have shown that brand relationships are like social relationships. A team of Japanese researchers (2021, Kikuchi/Noriuchi) recently found that the neural mechanisms of attachments to branded products are very similar to the mechanisms involved in relationships between humans. It seems that we use the exact same brain hardware to manage our brand relationships as we do our real-world friendships, romantic partnerships and family relationships. And as we all know – building trustworthy, long-term solid relationships can be challenging.

Will you be my friend?

When was the last time you successfully decided you were going to be someone’s friend? How did you get them to connect with you? It wasn’t as simple as choosing a new clothing style, or doing “your colors.” You had to communicate your values as a person, find common ground, interact over and over again and build trust and affection across countless “touchpoints.” In some countries and communities, it might take years before the other person trusts you enough to call you a friend. Given how complex this process is, it’s no surprise that most brands can barely get their foot in the door before the consumer slams it shut in their face!

Once you understand that building a brand is like building friendships, it makes it easier to develop your strategy and to understand what marketing activities are likely to move the needle.   

Practice authenticity

Think back to your teenage years, that frenzied crucible of friend-making. The most cutting way to dismiss someone from your friend circle was to describe them as “fake.” That’s why your consumer puts you on ignore if they sense even the slightest disconnect between your stated values and what you actually seem to be doing. When an electric car company preaches its environmental credentials at the same time as the CEO is cozying up to climate deniers – you get a disconnect which destroys the perception of the brand in the consumer’s mind. Be real.

Actually have values

You build trust by actually being trustworthy. It’s so rare to find a commercial brand that is truly trustworthy that the field is wide open here. Smaller brands have more scope for success because of their ability to take decisions purely for the good of the consumer, without shareholder pressure and feet-dragging politics of large bureaucratic organizations. Make sure your brand values, manifesto, vision – whatever you call it – truly resonate with the consumer.

Be consistent

It takes time to build a relationship. You have to make sure your values are well defined, and that you apply them consistently in every interaction with the consumer - in every touchpoint. You build up a friendship with countless small interactions - going for coffee, helping with groceries, visiting the movies - it’s the same with brands. You must make sure that in each one of your customer interactions they are hanging out with the same person and not a shape-shifting crypto-corporate shark that just wants to get into their wallet.

Show up

No one likes the flaky friend who makes promises but never delivers. If you want someone to appreciate your brand values – you MUST show up, again and again in a way that lets the consumer know you are there for them.

Why would anyone want to be friends with a brand?

One nagging question might be why would a consumer want to be friends with a brand? From one perspective you could consider it a predatory relationship – a large company wants to make money from some poor defenseless consumer. I found my truth in this in a conversation with my favorite uncle. He was a mensch – a gregarious, funny, loving, inspirational kind of a guy. And he was in software sales, yuk. At that time I thought sales was a process whereby sleazy guys in trench coats tried to get you to overpay for a used car that would collapse in a pile of rusty dust the moment you drove it off the lot. I told him this, he sighed. “Chris. No – you are so wrong. A successful sale is when both parties feel they won, when both parties feel like they got a deal!” To me this seemed profound and really changed my outlook on life.

There is give and take in every friendship. It’s basic human social dynamics – we help other people, and they help us. We help our friends, and they help us. We support brands, and they support us.

So go out and build brands that consumers just can’t wait to be friends with. Maybe one day you will be selling your brand for half a trillion dollars.

PS - All the em dashes are my own work.