Drive your business upwards through emotional connections with customers.
As a business owner, you likely dream of becoming a big brand. One that’s worth millions. One that’s iconic. One that people adore. But you’re faced with one problem: there’s just too much competition.
Enter the concept of Emotion by Design. In a world where differentiation is essential, Emotion by Design offers you a valuable approach to making evocative designs that resonate deeply with consumers. When you put emotion at the forefront, you propel your brand toward long-term success.
In this book, you’ll uncover the creative lessons that author Greg Hoffman applied at Nike and helped him build lasting connections with customers.
-
Be empathic and curious
As described by Mike Krzyzewski, coach of Duke University’s basketball team, the vision advantage is how brand marketers win against the competition. It’s the ability to perceive and grasp things that others may overlook, subsequently employing that knowledge to craft powerful stories that evoke emotions in the audience.
But how exactly can you develop your vision advantage? There are two essential traits you need to cultivate: empathy and curiosity.
Empathy is pivotal in seeing the world from other people’s perspectives. When you’re empathic, you become more sensitive to their feelings and better understand their dreams, concerns, and even unmet needs. Using these fresh insights, you can better craft a story that reveals the brand’s values and results in revolutionary shifts.
Cultivating empathy calls for diversifying your team. The more different your team members are, the broader your view of the world becomes. That said, strive to recruit individuals from the underrepresented groups in your team. They can bring their colorful and unique life experiences to your brand and enrich your creative process.
Nike exemplified the power of empathy through its Equality campaign, launched in time for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in early 2017. It was months after the separate shootings of Black Americans Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the brand wanted to make a meaningful statement that addresses the decades-long injustice to Black Americans.
The campaign featured a short film highlighting the importance of exercising equality within the bounds of a court but also in all aspects of life. Broadcast worldwide, Nike’s short film set off a larger global campaign for equality.
The second essential element to cultivate your vision advantage is curiosity. Curiosity unlocks your creative potential by pushing you to seek unconventional sources of inspiration. Just as you would regularly train your muscles to keep them in shape, you need to practice curiosity to develop a seeker’s mentality.
There are three easy ways to do so.
First, start a visual journal. This is where you store images of things that you find inspiring. Every time you come across something that triggers your imaginative brain, take a photo of it. Then, feel free to browse through your visual journal whenever you need a dose of inspiration.
Second, make it a habit to plan out your trips around three questions: whom to meet, what to see, and where to go. It doesn’t matter if it’s a business or personal trip. What matters is that you go out to gather inspiration from wherever you are.
Finally, share your inspiring moments with your team. Whatever you found out or experienced while traveling can inspire other members in ways you might not have imagined. This also keeps your entire team updated, especially those who don’t go out of the office that much.
At Nike, they practice curiosity through different unique excursions. They sometimes visit restaurants to watch the chefs prepare meals. The team members find inspiration in observing other creative experts in their natural habitats.
Indeed, utilizing the vision advantage can do wonders for your team. With empathy and curiosity, it’s easier to come up with stories that resonate deeply with your audience and set your brand apart from the competition.
-
Take risks
You can’t catch a wave without taking the risk of getting wet. Similarly, you can’t expect success without riding on the back of calculated risks.
If you’re a newly established business, you know all too well the importance of taking chances and embracing experimentation. It is by being risky that you can make a breakthrough in your industry. So for the first several years of your business, you put on a brave face and dare to risk it all.
Unfortunately, too many brands stop taking risks the moment they reach their goals. They become too timid and start playing safe to protect their current success. That’s the opposite of what you want to do. As you grow, you should continue nurturing a culture of risk-taking. This is how you discover new and even better ways of communicating and engaging with your consumers.
In 2014, Nike was already a prominent name in the sports industry, but it had yet to establish itself as the market leader in football. When the World Cup 2014 rolled around, the company saw the event as a potential avenue to achieve that coveted leadership status. However, attaining such a big goal meant they needed to go big, too. They needed a bigger way to engage with customers, and their typical campaign just wouldn’t cut it. That was when they became risky and came up with the five-minute animated feature titled The Last Game.
The film revolved around renowned football players, including Ronaldo Nazário, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Zlatan Ibrahimović. They were out to reclaim their beloved game from the perfectly skilled, non-risking-taking clones made by an evil scientist.
Creating The Last Game involved many risks for Nike. First, the production spanned over a year, the longest the brand ever did. Second, they had to max out the standard commercial runtime of five minutes to accommodate the storytelling, utilizing valuable airtime for a piece that did not directly promote a specific product. But in the end, all those risks proved fruitful for Nike as they emerged as the 2014 World Cup’s most-viewed brand, with The Last Game becoming the most shared video on Facebook.
It just goes to show that to climb the highest peaks, you have to take risks.
-
Build your brand identity thoughtfully
When you show your true self to a stranger, it’s easier for them to form a connection with you. The same holds in the business world. For your customers to become emotionally attached to your brand, you need to show them your true self, including your values and purpose. This is where building a brand identity comes into play.
Your brand identity is synonymous with an individual’s signature – it’s what you put out to the world that distinguishes you from the rest. At its core, a brand identity is made up of visual elements like your logo, color palette, and typography. These elements help create a recognizable and consistent visual representation that consumers can associate with your brand.
While every visual element is important, you’d want to pay special attention to your logo. Keep in mind that it needs to have a simple and distinct look that conveys a compelling narrative. It can represent the technology or innovation behind your brand, or it can feature your brand’s initial. However, beyond the artistic technicalities of your logo, it needs to stand for your values and purpose, too. Otherwise, it will only be a picture and nothing else.
Your brand identity, particularly what your brand stands for, should also be seen in how you present your products. Every output your brand makes should embody its identity to elicit emotions from your audience. Just take Michael Jordan’s famous Wings poster. With Jordan’s outstretched arms and William Blake’s quote, the poster inspires the consumers to fly high and dream big:
“No bird soars too highif he soars with his own wings.”
At first look, you may think that Nike’s brand identity is simply the name and logo at the bottom of the poster. But it’s more than that. The entire image and the message it conveys point back to what Nike stands for: anyone can achieve greatness, not just athletes.
Your brand identity is a powerful tool that shapes perceptions, fosters connections, and influences consumer behavior.
-
Create memorable stories to represent your brand
You remember a great story because it evokes an emotion that connects you to it. Applying this principle, it becomes essential that the stories your brand tells also elicit an emotional response from your audience. This way, they would remember it, too.
Every of your brand’s stories should be anchored to one purpose: revealing your brand values. However, there’s a myriad of approaches to telling that story. For one, you can opt to produce a film, just like what Nike did with its Find Your Greatness campaign. Launched during the 2012 London Olympics, one of the films in the campaign features different athletes from other London-named cities across the world. The ad’s message centered around the idea that greatness isn’t limited to a select few but is available to everyone around the globe.
Another powerful and emotion-stirring way to convey your brand story is through music, especially classic songs adapted to a contemporary context. For the 2002 World Cup, Nike released a film featuring several football players engaged in a secret tournament. Playing in the background was the song “A Little Less Conversation” by Elvis Presley, which JXL, a Dutch DJ, skillfully remixed.
Emerging content platforms also offer an excellent medium for sharing your brand story. Instead of relying solely on traditional TV commercials, explore other forms of content distribution to reach a broader audience and invite them to your world.
An example of this approach is the Kobe System campaign that Nike did for the launch of the Nike Kobe IX in early 2012. The campaign aimed to portray the legendary Kobe Bryant not as the resolute player he was on the court but as a different, humorous personality. To achieve this, Nike decided to deviate from typical TV commercials and created multiple short-form content instead, utilizing platforms like Twitter and YouTube to showcase the content.
Film, music, and emerging content platforms are only a few of the ways you can craft a brand story. By leveraging these resources, your narratives can better evoke emotions, engage audiences, and ultimately be remembered.
-
Stop following trends and be unapologetically authentic
Pause for a minute, and think about your dreams for your product.
You probably want to see millions of people using it and even raving about it for years on end. You want it to become just as iconic as the Ford Mustang and the iPhone, and you’ll do everything to reach such status. But before you go crazy about making your product a cultural icon, you first need to understand that there’s only one way of doing so: being authentic.
That means sticking with your identity and purpose and not simply chasing a trend to be “in” with the crowd. When you just make what every other trendy brand is making, your product loses its emotional influence. That’s one of the worst ways to hook consumers.
Instead, what you need to do is focus on your own brand’s mission – it’s what sets you apart and what will draw the people to you. Set your sights on making a product that’s true to its purpose. This way, you can build an authentic and deep connection with your consumers, who will then use their collective power to put your product on a pedestal.
When Nike released the Air Force 1 in 1982, they weren’t aiming to make it a cultural icon. In fact, they didn’t even do huge marketing stunts for it or the players who wore it. All they wanted was to develop a shoe specifically designed for basketball players and see them wear it. Despite the lack of commercials, Air Force 1 became a hit after Moses Malone of the Philadelphia 76ers won a championship game wearing them.
Seeing players win in those shoes was enough to launch a frenzy, and before Nike knew it, AF1s were seen not only on the court but on the streets, too. It was clear that the shoes were slowly becoming an icon. Several decades and 1,700 shoe versions later, the Air Force 1 continues to be everyone’s go-to shoe, proving just how powerful authenticity can be.
-
Highlight your product’s purpose, not its features
So you made a fabulous product with all the latest bells and whistles. Naturally, your first instinct is to boast about these features to anyone who would listen. However, this is not how you build a customer base that’s crazy about your brand. Consumers aren’t interested in what your product does but how it can make a positive impact on their lives. That’s what you’ll use as the guiding star of your marketing efforts.
When you tell people your product’s purpose and how it can help them, they are more inclined to believe in it. And once they become a believer, they’ll convince others to believe in your product, too. Little by little, you’ll find yourself amassing a large following.
To better showcase your product’s purpose, it helps to put an ambassador in place. This ambassador needs to be inspiring for others to follow them. And they must be relatable.
A prime example of this purpose-focused strategy is Nike’s launch of the Apple Watch Nike+ in 2017. Instead of bragging about its cool features, Nike concentrated on the fact that the watch is designed to motivate non-professional athletes to start running. They thought the best way to reach those kinds of people was by partnering with an influential ambassador who also isn’t a professional athlete but is still passionate about running. Comedian Kevin Hart fits the role perfectly.
Kevin, having personally struggled with running in the past, found his own motivation and developed a deep passion for the sport. In June 2015, he even initiated a running movement, inviting Bostonians to join him for a run before his performance in the city. The event drew the participation of 300 locals, demonstrating just how influential Kevin can be.
In Kevin’s ad for Apple Watch Nike+, the focus was not on technical features but on the simple statement, “Running just became a lot easier.” The next clips were of Kevin running continuously through the desert, motivated by his watch to keep going.
When you make it a point to showcase the purpose of your product with the help of relatable ambassadors, you can build a customer base that truly believes in your brand and fosters a passionate movement around it.
-
Your brand can rise above the rest. But you need to understand and tap into the emotions of consumers. It is with emotional bonds that you can cultivate loyalty, advocacy, and enduring consumer relationships that go beyond mere transactional exchanges. Regardless of your business's nature, scale, or financial status, the creative insights shared in this book can help you achieve this goal.
At the end of the day, what truly matters is your willingness to be authentic and transparent, allowing your audience to see the human side of your business.