How brands are emotionally charged

When brands appeal to the emotions, they are remembered.From Marcel Hüttermann, Research Associate, Institute for Marketing Management at the ZHAW School of Management and Law.The challenge of brand management is to differentiate one's own brand from others, make it visible on the market and bring it to life in everyday life. At best, this emotional added value generates long-term customer loyalty and increases the company's profits. Professors Thorsten Möll and Franz-Rudolf Esch have been able to prove several times in their readings that:

1. Highly emotional brands are better known than low-emotional brands.
2. Highly emotional brands are more likely to be remembered, act more often as a top-of-mind brand and are more frequently recognized than low-emotional brands.
3. Highly emotional brands have a broader brand image and a greater proportion of positive emotional associations than low emotional brands.
4. The inner brand image of highly emotional brands is clearer, more distinct, more lively and more appealing than the inner image of low-emotional brands.
5. With highly emotional brands, brand attitudes are more positive, brand loyalty is stronger and brand trust is greater than with low-emotional brands.

Various instruments are used by companies to emotionalize brandsBrands in the banking and insurance sectors in particular have identified sport, culture and events in general as a suitable platform to emotionally charge their brands. A quick search is enough: the PostFinance top scorer in the top Swiss field hockey league, Credit Suisse as the main sponsor of the Swiss Football Association as well as sponsor of the Swiss Music Awards or the Zurich Film Festival. The Allianz Namingright at the Arena in Munich is another well-known example, but sponsorship is not the only example. Zweifel Chips, for example, relies on event marketing at open air events to reach the end customer. Barbecue areas are used to create spaces that also create an emotional bond with the customer. Red Bull truly gives its energy drink wings with its air shows and in the field of communication, corporate blogs can either deal with unattractive topics or offer crisp and innovative tips for SMEs.Emotions strengthen the bond with the brandWhat is the purpose of these companies' involvement? The services provided by these companies cannot be experienced by customers, which is why it is more difficult for them to establish a relationship with the products or services. The connection to these companies arises from a contractual relationship between providers and customers, but not from an emotional connection as is the case with sporting goods manufacturers (through skiing, football, clothing) or smartphones (through communication with friends, listening to music, taking photos, etc.). Your customers use the product to break records, climb mountains, score goals or capture spectacular experiences in pictures.not only companies from the banking or insurance sector but many others are faced with the problem of offering "boring" products from the customer's point of view. Construction and building suppliers, software providers, machine manufacturers, energy companies and companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors all face the problem of offering emotionless products. The Institute of Marketing Management at the ZHAW, which offers the CAS Brand Emotionalization continuing education course, shows which tools and methods a company can use to bring its brand to life and emotionally charge it. You can find out more about the four-month course, which starts in March 2017 here.