A TAKE ON PSYCHOLOGY DRIVEN BRAND STRATEGIES

“While taking a casual walk last evening, I was talking to my friend Akshay about some college submissions. Suddenly, I felt a cold wave to my spine as some snatchers (on a motorcycle) snatched my cellphone. Though I remain alert most of the time, at that moment my feet were freeze and I took some time to recollect my alertness. I quickly ran back to my home and told the incident to my parents. We did file a police report but through my inner consciousness, I was sure that I’ll not be getting my cellphone back. Later that night, I was searching for a new cellphone and to cross-check the brand under my budget. I called my friend to suggest a good one, and he suggested a brand that I was not sure to prefer earlier. But that cellphone I purchased was a good pick.”

Through above-mentioned narrative conclusions can be derived when a brand experiences a peer influence on their TG to buy their product. Hence, the psychology of the consumer gets affected by checking reviews and discussing with friends before purchasing the product.

Similarly, demographics, social standings, financial status, and culture create an external impact on consumer psychology while purchasing a product. Adding to it, internal factors such as self-exploration, taste (for the product), etc. act on purchase decisions. Strategy created according to the above-mentioned factors can be derived as psychology-driven brand strategies.

Along with it, the shift (consumer) is now more experience-driven (can we leave the pandemic aside for a while?) where consumers are demanding a prior experience rush in their veins to buy the product/service in real-time. From the artillery, brands are coming up with exciting narratives (either through text or through AVs) to hook the consumer. With constant reminders via social media platforms in order to chase and stimulate the need in the consumer – brands are making their grip stronger on all fronts. The backend teams are constantly rectifying the lurks behind. Every land has its laws and regulations, it comes to advertising ethics also, where many big players are breaking these ethics to make themselves an upper broad in the face of their competition. They are following John Lyly’s “Everything is fair in love and war” very seriously.

Adjacent Hand-Clap

While working on a consumer’s psychological journey – brands postulate and work upon certain touchpoints to nourish and navigate that experiential journey:

• Work on bad (experiences) first, so the positives (experiences) can burst more – consumers can recollect the positive ones, but for that, the brand should work on the experience that can create a negative impact.

• Pleasure and pain should be segmented and combined to create stronger recollections for the customer – fragmenting the touchpoints that spread the pleasure on the journey (customers) and the pain points too (in the same manner).

• Providing choices gives a sense of control to the consumers – they love to execute the authority that the brand hands them while selecting our products/services (both in-store and digitally).

• Surprises are not welcomed with open hands – but to elevate the satisfactory nerve (post buying of products and services) and peace of mind, brands hit the psyche directly.

• An upbeat note finishing – the final interactions leave an impact on the customer’s psyche that can be both negative and positive. A positive is what brands expect even in the worst situations but that needs a strategy to work behind.

Let’s collect it all at once for the sake of experience – it’s just a sensory pleasure/pain driven by circumstances and factors driving it. The key drivers of it are only two – The Heart and The Brain. The basics of everything lies in between.

View from Horizons

There is a whole segmented vertical of psychology-driven brand strategists in a brand strategy agency. These experienced portfolio holders are the most updated earthmen/women to devise a strategy according to changing consumer behavior. Though benchmark strategies of businesses that are more than a century old, still work, because they are designed in a way that if the consumer behavior drifts – root demand should stay intact.

Like we discussed at the starting of this listicle about the demographics of a consumer that affects PDB* strategies, it also encounters a question mark when the consumer makes a move on a generation basis. Different generations – Boomers I/II, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and so on… create an impact that sometimes doesn’t go in favor of the brand.

Geographies are also a factor imparting differences in psychologies as consumers don’t get raised in similar environments and circumstances. The culture they belong to and the religions they follow are also needed to be kept in mind by the brand’s strategists.

Thus, while creating the PDB* strategy, brands are keeping their funnel size wider where minute details and specifications are engulfed with fluctuating market reactions.

*Psychology-driven Brand