How much thought do you give to Emotional Intelligence when planning your brand’s activity? According to a fascinating and thought-provoking presentation at Speciality Fine Food Fair, by Alex Ririe of the Collaborators, the chances are, not enough.
Yet despite most emotionally intelligent brands growing faster than those that aren’t, it’s an area that many neglect, instead focussing more on the rationale.
Once you consider how much faster the intuitive part of the brain processes information versus the rational – which must work so much harder - it seems logical to give more weight to the former.
The current backdrop is a world where consumers are spoilt for choice, to the point where they have ‘choice overload’, which means unfortunately, their attention span is sadly dwindling.
In fact, Alex reported that Microsoft now estimates our attention span as consumer is now as low as 8 seconds, which is less than the 9 seconds goldfish reportedly have!
So, what can brands do to capitalise more on emotional intelligence? Mostly the advice is straightforward and pretty obvious when you stop to think about it – but something that many brands fail to follow!
· Take time to understand and empathise with your customers’ needs. What is driving their decision-making process? What do they want a product to do? Are you clear what their higher need is – above the basic?
· Stand for something bigger. This is key. Many brands have clear brand values but can fail to recognise that it’s the higher emotional ground where you can make connections that last – and where relevant can also justify a higher price point too
· Turn heads, but not too far. If you go too far, you risk customers failing to understand the proposition and will therefor put them off from engaging with you
· Storytelling. Done well, this can be powerful and enable brands to make lasting memories, that will be so much more memorable than straight facts
· Create a positive brand experience. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? But too often brands fail by missing the basics, like good manners! Simple techniques like reciprocity (e.g. reward customers for shopping with them with a small gift or voucher) will drive repeat sales and encourage customers to share positively online.
Even the background music instore can, it seems, impact what we buy – without us even realising it. Alex told a particularly great story of a wine buying experiment, where when German music played in the background, customers bought more German wine, and the same for French music and French wine. Yet, the customers were blissfully unaware of the music and the impact it had clearly had on their choices!
So next time you are planning a campaign, make sure you make time for emotional intelligence… it really could make all the difference.
