Creating something people will remember
I always liked the definition that brand building is about creating things people will remember. Or even better, brand building is about creating memories.
This relationship between brands and memories was already exploited a few times, but watching the documentary "Explained - The Mind" I thought about an interesting angle of this concept. More specifically when I was watching this part:
That is, if brand building is about creating memories, we can say that brand building is about stories, emotions and places.
If you don't have a lot of time, i think this piece of thinking is already a contribution to your repertoire of arguments. Maybe it also planted a seed and you will think even more about how stories, emotions and places can help in brand building.
Now if you have a few minutes, i already spent time doing this research and something down here can inspire you and your next projects to create more meaningful memories (i'm not saying that you have something to do with it, but we never saw so many similar campaigns like nowadays, it seems like an important discussion for our current moment).
Before going deeper in the three pillars - story, emotion and place - i started doing some researches about memory, since i had minimal depth in the subject.
Some random and interesting facts to everyone that work with brands:
- Memories are divided in explicits (conscious) and implicits (unconscious).
- Explicit memories are created with experiences and knowledge/concepts.
- A good amount of explicit memories start to decrease in the first 24 hours.
- If people remember a message after 24 hours, this memory might last longer (at least 5 days, as Nielsen's research identified).
- Our most recent memories are the ones we keep for longer periods of time.
- A great amount of our memories change every year.
Brands need to appear often and with a good frequency create meaningful memories. Showing up often, doesn't really matter the way, creates brand salience. Appear in a way that creates meaningful memories produce meaning in people's head and consequently strength for the brand.
Thinking in the best ways to create things that make brands stronger, we go back to the tripod creator of meaningful memories: story, emotion and place.
STORY
There are some premises about story that should never be forgotten. Like the classic narrative structure - exposition, rising action, climax and denouement - that develop mental maps and make it easier for new informations to get assimilated. Other one is the notion that memory works in portraits/frames and during the story it's important to make sure that people will perceive your brand and not just a message. Also the power of consistency, using the brand idea in repetitive and long lasting ways help the brand to keep creating new memories. KFC, Coke and Apple are good examples of that.
Going beyond premises, there are studies that reinforce the strength of stories and bring more insights about the best ways to explore them. The research made by Marketing Week and YouGov in 2018 studied people's recall of some of the main ads in UK's history, asking if they remembered the ad, which is the brand and which one is the best. The ones with better recall and pointed as the best ones of the 1990 and 2000 decades were the ones below:
The two films that had the spotlight in these decades - Cadbury's "Gorilla" and Guinness "Surfer" - are iconic commercials that should be seen and revised. They were also objects of study about neuroscience and communication and bring us important learnings.
The art of the unexplained: both have a clear intrigue, we see unexpected images that are not immediately explained and help keeping people's attention. In the two cases the brain is highly engaged in knowing more, but it's not satisfied until the end, with the appearance of the brand and concept. This means that the brain stays involved during the hole commercial, getting interested in the conclusion and in the brand.
No need to shout: elements of the brand are present in both commercials, but in subtle ways. This is very effective from the brain's point of view because it often rejects highly persuasive messages. On the other hand, colours, sounds, forms, for example, get under the radar and connects easier with the brain.
The revelation: in each film, the stronger message appears in the end, participating in the revelation of the history, not explained until the final moment. In both cases that brand also is the revelation, the brand helps an engaging story to have an outcome.
But don't think that the only possible way to do all that is with lots of investment and 60" films. It is able to do it in many other ways, as this Sprite campaign teach us how to tell good stories in short periods of time and limited budget.
To end this subject with an effectiveness complement, don't forget that the less messages you use in your history, bigger are the chances of it being remembered.
EMOTION
Creating emotions in people should be a constant search for everyone that work with communication. But don't understand emotion as something exclusively sentimental that makes people cry. Joy, surprise, curiosity, all that can have a strong connection with people, but only if the emotion stimulated by brand's message connects with the story being told (since emotion for the sake of emotion can be easily ignored by the brain).
Emotions are proven to be effective, as Amy Milton, psychologist and teacher of Cambridge University, said in a interview for Campaign: "people remember more of emotional memories and with more confidence and details". These memories also have a direct sales result, since "emotions take to decisions, even though the decisions can seem to be rational".
Emotions are so relevant in advertising that a research institute for marketing effectiveness, System 1, created a methodology named Feelmore50 that tests around 20.000 commercials annually and rank them according to their "emotional power".
Some examples of campaigns in the USA and UK that were tested and lead the rank because of their emotional power are Amazon's " Everybody needs somebody" and Tetley "Now we are talking".
Every time you are developing a creative work you can use some of these arguments and give it a check with a great question: which emotion this idea/piece of work has the potential to stimulate in people?
If it makes sense with the brand, the history being told and the message, awesome.
And thinking about emotion, you also don't necessarily need a high cost production or a long story to do it, as we can see in these campaigns too, for Lacta and Elo.
Remembering that emotions are so meaningful that according the a P&G and Warc study, even negative emotions seem to have more impact than no emotion at all.
PLACE
Thinking about place in this context of memory and brand building, the clearest path seems to be related to experiential activations and this quote of David Bucci, psychology and neuroscience teacher, brings a great point of view:
"When you walk inside a person's office, your brain record the position of furniture, screens, windows. After you leave your brain probably won't remember the organisation of the office if nothing relevant happen inside - actually, you will probably forget - but if something memorable happen, you will remember every detail and all the organisation of the room in memory".
This piece of thought makes sense when we think about experiential activations. If people live a big moment, the details of the place where this moment happened will stay in people's head and give more strength for their memory with the brand, as showed by these examples of Heineken's activation in music festivals and Corona's beach clean-ups.
STORY - EMOTION - PLACE
All that to say that if brand building is about stories, emotions and places, you should think better about which stories, emotions and places you are connecting your brand with.
Above you can get some good starting points.
Main sources:
Nielsen “Understanding Memory in Advertising”
Verywellmind “Explicit and implicit long term memory”
Campaign "Neuroscience behind the popularity of Cadbury "Gorilla" and Guinness "Surfer"
Millward Brown "Key to Effective Advertising"
Campaign “Want people to remember your brand? Try these 7 things”