Branding and its connection to Happiness
Feb 28th, 2011 | By Gene A. Wright | Category: Brand, General, Marketing, Online MarketingFrom Fast Company
In our discussions of branding, we talk about the connection to emotions. The following article about Jennifer Aaker’s work at Stanford is quite interesting.
What do you think? Is there a strong connection between brand and happiness?
I agree with Jennifer Aaker. Especially in this down-turn economy consumers not only want to buy a product of use but they want to have some type of happy feeling associated to it. A “good” product not only meets its expectations from the consumer but will have a perceived value and will be associated with a story, i.e. a Coke machine that dispenses pizza.
I agree with Jason in that I found this to be a very good article and I think Jennifer Aaker is spot on. As we have been discussing in our Marketing Class people make decisions on emotions – that emotion being happiness adds more value. We’ve also been discussing in class that brand is your story – a happy story is always good!
I totally agree with Jennifer Asker about finging happiness. She is offering a happiness class to future masters of the universes. it also works for the corporate. Her work with AOL, Adobe, and Facebook, among other companies, helping them figure out how to use happiness to increase employees’ productivity and woo customers has demonstrated the benift of finding happiness for the consuemrs. this is a future trend for the corparate to incorperate happiness with the marketing mixs to provide the consuemrs superior customer value.
“The idea of brands enabling happiness and providing greater meaning in the world is powerful,” Aaker says. “People have an aversion to anything that feels overly manufactured.” I completely agree with this statement. My family as well as my friends stay away from overly manufactued products. Products that give a sense of feeling (positive that is) are genuinely better and I am more apt to purchase that product again. In marketing terms, I feel this enabling of happiness through branding is going to be a powerful tool that can make a product, but if used to be just part of the crowd-it will prove to be ineffective and possibly detrimental to a brand.
I agree with the article, as it does not seem that far fetched from what mareketing advertisement currently gives you. For instance, when some people look at a commercial and they see a happy family using a product, then they want to be able to have that same experience that they are seeing in the advertisement. Me, I love to shop when I am depressed, lol. I dont think this is the same point that she was making in her class but I read somewhere that serontonin is released when you shop. i think it will really be great if I can get rid of the depressing feeling through the act of shopping and then continue to have happiness due to the product once home. Either way, I think that alot of people already associate happiness with a product that they purchased and if there can be some subliminal happiness resulting from advertisements then go for it.
I think there can be a connection between branding and happiness or any other emotion. People often associate a product with a memory or a feeling they get when use it. I thought it was very interesting where she pointed out that happiness shifts with age and young people are happier when things are exciting versus older people being most happy with peacefulness. This is important for playing to the emotions of the target market.
I agree with this article as well. People will always favor products that make them feel good. I think marketers can really hook into the emotions of consumers to leverage future purchases. For example: Get a Chevy truck just like dad or grandpa used to have. Or even simple happiness like Goldfish: the snack that smiles back. Overall, consumers are looking for products to make them feel good, it is important, as discussed in the article, to understand what those conditions are for the target consumer.
I think there is undoubtedly a connection between branding and happiness. I think the article makes a lot of good points, and gives some interesting points on the ties between branding and emotion. I have seen the connection between the two in my own life. For example as a child when I got a pair of shoes, the brand absolutely played a role in rather or not I was happy. If my mom came home with some generic shoes for me I would be indifferent to slightly upset; however, if she came home with some NIKE shoes for me I was a very happy kid. I would assume this is due to the things I associated with NIKE, such as famous athletes and high quality. Another example (not offered by the article) of a company attempting to connect their brand with happiness is Golden Coral with their latest slogan of “Help yourself to happiness”.
There is definitely a connection between brand and happiness. If a brand doesn’t make you happy you will not be loyal to it. Jennifer Aaker has honed in on the essential component of branding.
I suppose what it all comes down to is that we live our lives in the pursuit of happiness. It’s obviously a very essential part of life. After all, nobody intentionally lives their lives to be miserable…at least I think. The idea of a class called “Designing Happiness” may seem silly at first glance, but that’s just because it’s such a unique class title. When you really think about it, analyzing what makes us happy to a deeper level can be a valuable tool for these students. Whether looking to market a product to consumers or increase worker productivity, insight into the human mind of happiness is helpful. I can say I am certainly more productive when I’m in a happy, good mood. And if marketers can dive into my subconscious and find things I associate with being happy, then all I gotta say is job well done.
I think marketers can also use the fact that parents are happy when they make their kids happy, so they should market to kids in a way that shows the kids that they will be happy with a product and also market to the parents by showing the reaction of the kids getting something that makes them happy.