Emotional strategies in sensate brand integration
Brands ask, “touch me more often, be my friend, speak to me, stay in touch.”
Talking to an executive brand team, I reach-out in a simple question—“what’s the point here—what’s this workshop really about?” And the answer from them, brand leadership, comes around to our side, which speaks to: relational depth, a more internalized connection to community, a psychical reach-in to the heart of the mechanism—yes, of commerce—but more to the reason for being.
That is “why are we here?”
From my last 50 years of walking around brand and building enterprise, I think that it comes out to what offering could be held, touched, embraced, and engaged. To that, I would recommend conceptualizing holding, in the context of relationship, experience and brand.
How does your customer hold your brand proposition?
Recently, I was working as a charrette leader on brand for a beauty and wellness start-up.
We talked about—“why, who, where, what?”
The big questions.
And we talked about the telling of tales,
the proverbial story, and the deep psychic character of narrative and engagement.
People like stories because that’s how life works. “Here I am, this is where I have been, this is where I have come from, and this is what it means for you; and this is what it means for me.”
It’s a string of stories, that ripple out. One wave becomes another.
And we talked about holding. That is, the idea that a person would hold a brand—why would they care?
The question is, as a strategist: the point to the work is the presumption of embracement, that a person would be so entranced by the utility of the idea that they would “hold it.”
Tell me a story and it becomes my story, in the psychic, emotional space of listening and engagement—it’s something now for me to “hold as my own.” I can tell it. It’s now my story for me to share.
I think about branding, that process, as a matter of holding.
What do you have to tell?
What do you have to sell?
Why should I care?
Why would I hold it?
Caring is holding.
Holding, to be held, is caring.
Holding is close.
Touch, is the most compelling and
unforgettable reach—to sensing.
And if you touch me, or that I touch you—
I can gather a great deal about you.I touch you—and I might,
sense [know] how you’re feeling. And I know what you’re thinking about;
And I know what that means to you.
And, as a designer, storyteller, brand consulting person
I tend to think about every part of my life,
and every part of my practice, as symbolic and metaphorical.There is something to be seen on the surface of things, and what you see there could pulse with meaning in the underneath impressions of narratives that lie there.
What do you feel, here?
Cold water, iced stones, sun-cast on your back, the glacial breeze,
and a balance that reaches to the center of the world.
Touch—making contact,
is feeling.
Feel in.
We’ve talked a lot about that.
Feeling and touching.
I call that feelingness.
The condition of open appreciation.
And yes, I will give you my full attention.
Feeling, touch and emotionality:
the history of the word, from 2000 years back,
linked to the notion of the touch of an object, but too, the sense of its value.
And appraisal, valuation and — “setting a price to…”
Perfect, for brand.
TIM | Osean
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GIRVIN | Strategic Brands
digital | built environments by Osean | theatrical branding
waves | art | Talismanika™ | Technology Brands | Destination Brands
Projects in strategy | story | naming | messaging | print
identity | built environments | packaging
social media | websites | interactive
Feel more often