Featuring:

Dipanjan Chatterjee, Vice President, Principal Analyst

Show notes:

Brand is a critical part of business. The origin of trying to make consumers aware and interested is time eternal. But the AIDA brand framework — awareness, interest, decision, action — used today is over a century old. It doesn’t consider today’s reality: The market is driven by consumers who have high expectations, low tolerance, and factious attention spans.

Not only are today’s customers powerful, but they have dismissed the notion that companies control their own brand or brand message. In this market, customers are placing greater value on experiences that express the brand. If customers are disappointed in the experience or sense an incongruity between the brand promise and the reality on the ground, they will shape and reshape the brand in a sometimes-turbulent democratization of the brand. This is the backdrop that any new brand thinking needs to consider.

In this episode, Dipanjan Chatterjee describes the brand energy framework — a model tuned to today’s reality. The three major components of the framework include:

  1. Emotion that moves marketers from thinking about emotion to a rigorous discipline necessary to create the brand essence and to deliver emotionally charged experiences that help affirm and showcase the brand.
  2. Salience that combines the power of addressing need and evoking emotion to ensure that the brand is top of mind.
  3. Fit that allows the brand to create relevance in the customer’s lifestyle and context and, in some cases, to comply with their political, social, or economic tribe.

The market has changed. Marketers and brand management need to adapt, letting go of the comfort and control of old models to win in a world that is so much more human, fluid, and noisy.