NextGen IUS Business Club: Why Customers Remember Emotion-Driven Brands
Every day, the average consumer sees around six thousand marketing messages. Those include posts, ads, commericals, logos and other references that brands spend a lot of effort and money on. The vast majority of those messages are completely forgotten by the consumer they were meant to target, and all of that money and effort put into them is completely wasted. And if you’re running a business, chances are, most people won’t remember you five seconds after they see you.
This reality seems especially harsh for small businesses, who have neither the manpower nor the marketing budget to compete against the giants who buy up all the media space. The secret doesn’t lie in how much you spend on ads or marketing, but rather in the strategy behind it. The tricky part isn’t getting your brand in front of the target audience, that part is simple if you have enough money to throw at the problem, but it is getting them to remember your brand out of thousands of others that bombard them with messaging every day.
So how does a brand get remembered?
Being remembered isn’t achieved by being the loudest name in the customers’ feed, but rather by being the first name that comes to mind when they actually need what you offer. A memorable brand isn’t the one that shouts the loudest or posts the most, but the one that surfaces at the exact moment someone realizes they need what you offer.
Many brands pump out content at industrial speed, convinced that more posts must mean more views and more views must mean more sales, but that simply isn’t the case.
If your content doesn’t make people feel anything, they won’t remember it, no matter how much you spend promoting it. All that effort just becomes noise, and you might even risk alienating your customers even further.
Marketing is as much psychology as it is business. As a marketer, everything you do shapes customer perception, from copy all the way to the smallest of details, such as font size and style and color palettes. The goal is to shape their perception in such a way that your marketing anchors itself in their brain and turns into an instinctive association; a quiet, automatic “I like them,” or “I trust that product.”
In short, most brands fail not because they lack reach, but because they fail to create any emotional impact.
A few examples will make this clearer.
The following example is anecdotal but I believe it illustrates the point very clearly:
After the COVID-19 pandemic, when food delivery was just blowing up in Eastern Europe, Glovo tried to brute force its way into the Bosnian market by bombarding every single person in the country with constant ads on every platform: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook - everywhere. The amount of money they spent on these ads must have been untold, but for many customers like my friends and I, we simply found the ads so incredibly annoying.
We not only refused to download the app, but when we did want to try food delivery, we went straight to their biggest competitor, Korpa, because we didn’t feel “invaded” by them like we did by Glovo.
I should then preface my original sentence by clarifying that your content and strategy must not only make people feel something, but in order to be effective it must steer the customers’ emotional state closer towards conversion; not away from it - or in other words, you must think about the emotions you want to stir up in your customers.
I ended up working for Glovo as a driver during high school, and while I don’t have the official numbers for the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were operating on a loss. Korpa drivers outnumbered us heavily, and even though it’s been a few years since I worked for them, I still see the same pattern on the streets today.
In a way, good marketing works the same way good propaganda does. Both understand and utilize emotion first, and logic second. The psychology is identical. Both build recall by repetition, simplicity, and emotional charge.
Perhaps the best possible example of this is Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola wants their customers to associate their product with many complex emotions and themes like shared moments with friends and family, togetherness, belonging, celebrations and fun.
This association with human connection is the only thing Coca-Cola’s marketing focuses on. Their ads rarely contain nutritional information or promotional offers; often they only show people sharing experiences, creating memories together or enjoying holidays with their communities.
That feeling is what psychologists call an emotional anchor; a fixed point in the customer’s perception. Whenever that emotional sequence is triggered again in real life, the customer thinks of that brand and product again, even without a logo in sight. That’s why when planning barbeques, or a movie night with your family, you instinctively reach for that bottle of Coca Cola.
All of this shows that emotion is the real driver of brand memory, not volume or budget.
How do you then create emotional recall?
Firstly, it’s important to match the right emotion to the right product. For example, a financial service marketing itself through humor might seem untrustworthy to their potential customers. Every product has an emotional logic behind it, and every successful brand does it slightly differently.
Here are four practical ways brands can implant emotion in their customers:
Your language should carry emotion.
Short, confident sentences create energy, like tech startups and sportswear brands talk when they want to sound fast, modern and innovative.
Warm and descriptive language builds comfort. This kind of language slows the pace, adds softness and gives the customer space for imagination.
Direct statements build authority and create trust.
Successful marketers play with language and tone the way a musician plays with different notes, and their goal isn’t to simply sound “creative” or “catchy,” but to appeal to customers’ emotions.
Focus on experience, not facts.
Instead of listing features of your product, describe what your product allows your customer to experience.
If you’re a fitness coach, try not to talk about calories burned, but instead show the feeling of confidence a person can earn after a good workout, or how much self-satisfaction they can earn by getting in shape.
An ad showcasing a teary-eyed testimonial from a client talking about how much their life changed after getting in shape will always do better than one listing bodyfat percentages or pounds lost. The former focuses on emotion; the latter on logic.
Reinforce emotions with your design.
Before you speak a word or your customer reads a letter, they’ve already decided how your brand makes them feel.
The visual identity of your brand places subconscious emotions into your customers’ heads within milliseconds of seeing it.
The design you create should match everything else: the target customers, the industry and the feeling you are trying to create. We’ve all seen it done wrong countless times, like when a restaurant’s prices or quality don’t match their tone or aesthetic.
Bright and saturated colours create urgency.
Clean and minimal layouts show confidence and luxury. Hand-drawn and homey elements create warmth and approachability.
Soft gradients and blurred edges show calm and modernity.
Earth tones and natural textures suggest honesty and craftsmanship.
Smooth motion feels human and graceful; bouncing or snapping feels assertive and energetic.
Repeat the same emotion until it becomes instinct.
Most businesses underestimate how long it takes for a message to stick. They get bored of their own tone before the audience has a chance to, and switch it up to “keep it exciting.”
While sometimes that is the solution, it can be damaging if you are changing the tone of your brand along with it and not letting it breathe long enough to create lasting association in your customers’ minds. Think about the most memorable brands you know. Chances are, whatever you thought of hasn’t changed their core approach in a very long time.
When combined, these elements make your brand feel familiar well before a customer even realizes they need your product.
To summarize the above advice: marketing isn’t just about being seen, it’s also about being remembered. If you can tap into people’s emotion, you’ll have a much easier time marketing to them, and they will remember your brand in a sea of competitors.
Tarik Lika
