QUICK READ: For 99% of the products we buy every day there is no emotional connection and consumers don’t care about your brand story. It’s about price, availability, and convenience.
What makes anyone think that consumers, today, care about your brand story? Time is the new currency and consumers today want convenience and a good price. Is this true for all products? No, but it’s true for 99.9% of the ones we find in grocery stores.
In case you haven’t noticed private label products are filling the shelf in everything from vitamins to pasta. Consumers have become savvy shoppers and know that the difference in price for private label and national brands is advertising which they hate.
If retailers add too many private label products, like premium private label, they risk confusing shoppers and losing sales. There is no “brand story” with private label products, just value, price, and the retailer’s reputation.
Seth Godin once said that “marketers tell stories”. The problem with that is that in an era of “fake news” not many people are going to believe your brand story.
Then there is the “emotional connection” I keep reading about. I’m supposed to have an emotional connection with the brand of English muffins I buy?
Brands need to communicate openly and honestly with consumers. Having a celebrity reprising a character in a film isn’t going to help you sell cars that consumers don’t want, especially if reviews online are garbage.
Today the brand promise is the product itself. If I buy a new bike it had better feel good and satisfy my needs. I’m not going to get emotionally attached to my bikes even though I might like how they look.
Start-ups often spend too much time telling their story instead of concentrating on the reasons why people should buy their products.
The facts and truth:
- Consumers are not in love with brands
- Consumers do not want want to have a conversation with your brand, or an “authentic relationship” with it, or co-create with it, or engage with it, or dance with it, or take a shower with it.
They just want a good product at a fair price.
