The Psychology Behind Branding

What is good brand messaging? Its not just voice, tone and style. It about knowing how your message can be stronger. What is it that we do? Your message is communication with an agenda, your message is communication with goals, your message is the desire for power through communication. The use of the message goes beyond delivery methods and route, including societal, influence, projection, empathy and disruption – each strengthening the message to achieve specific goals.

In understanding the psychology, desires and reasoning of the audience targeted by the digital campaign, each message can be tailored to deliver the best results. The below table of personality types as discovered by Merrill and Reid identify the difference between task and the emotion. Through any social media platform we have to be true to brand guidelines when broadcasting, but when we move into a one-on-one, or brand to small groups, we should use personality types to gently tailor the message to those individuals or small filtered groups to make it stick.

Cognitive dissonance can be used to make a call to action from an audiences. Making an audience feel slight discomfort may seem an odd approach, but from a message approach, if you are also providing a call to action which will remove discomfort, it can stimulate people to action. Ensure the following is taken into account:

• The creative in the message induces a reaction / builds on a memory to induce reaction
• The reaction forms an emotion (either desired, or combined with the cognitive dissonance approach to make the audience more receptive)
• The message continues to align the brand against the desired emotion
• The audience, the emotion and the brand start to become aligned

Brand message needs to reflect into the aligned audience, to build upon their image of self so that they experience worth from their alignment. Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

If you are looking for complete marketing solutions ideas, Australian freelancer or IT contracting Melbourne, contact us for a FREE no obligation quote.