EMOTION: THE FINAL FRONTIER FOR HEALTH & BEAUTY CPG

I wrote this blog post over 6 years ago, raving about Bite Beauty’s emotional promise and its deep connection with fans and consumers. I believed that emotional resonance was at the heart of the brand’s success.

Was I right?

Well, Bite Beauty no longer exists, and a major reason was its rebrand as a “clean and natural” brand, which stripped away the edge, literally, that made it special.

Here’s the full blog again: a breakdown of how your beauty brand can build emotional resonance, transform meaningfully, and win with consumers.

Create an emotional core brand promise for your beauty & wellness brand to help you charge a premium, get you loyal and raving tribe of fans, grow and scale up your brand and become a household name without investing any resources in expensive advertising.

EMOTIONAL CORE BRAND PROMISE IS THE FINAL FRONTIER for HEALTH & BEAUTY CPG.

Mastering this frontier will not only help you achieve the above objectives but also make you one of the most profitable brands with a cult following for the long-term.

So, how do you master this final frontier AND transform your brand story?

Follow a 2-step process to create a Coherent Brand Story around an “Emotional Core Brand Promise”.

Step 1: Define “Emotional Core Brand Promise” in “One Word” with Consumer Benefits Pyramid

Every great Brand Story is coherently defined and executed around one core emotional promise. Below are 7 sub-steps of a pyramid process to arrive at your Emotional Core Brand Promise as topmost layer:

1. Unmet Need and Emotional Pain Point: Start with the consumer unmet need and dig deep to uncover the emotional pain point associated with that need.

2. Consumer Persona: Describe your target consumer in as much detail as possible. Persona includes demographic, behavioural attributes and psychographic drivers etc.

3. Emotional Pain Point: What is the emotional price that your consumer has to pay for the unmet need.

4. Product Attributes: What does your product have which takes care of the unmet need.

5. Functional Benefit: What benefit does a consumer get with those product attributes.

6. Emotional Benefits: How does a consumer “feel” when she gets the solution. Align your core functional benefit, consumer’s emotional pain point with a pertinent broad/specific emotional category from 8 categories defined by Robert Plutchik or Hotspex’s emotion zones. Choose 2-3 closely related emotions from an emotional zone.

7. Core Emotional Brand Promise: Pick one emotion out of the few selected by you as the core. Choose the most pertinent and one that aligns with your vision, culture and intent.

Example of Pyramid Process to define “Emotional Core Brand Promise”

Bite Beauty: (Emotionally transformed Brand Story)

Consumer Benefits Pyramid for Bite Beauty Brand Story

Unmet Need: A Lip balm that has zero chemical concern.

Emotional Pain Point: Insecurity, fear, frustration, lack of confidence, constrained, imprisoned.

Consumer Persona: A health conscious woman, who likes attention and is ahead of the pack, is very fashion conscious and won’t settle for plain healthy option. Needs to make a statement beyond just using healthier products. Expects more from any relationship and gives even more. Eveready to adopt new trends.

Product Attributes: A natural lip balm with ingredients that can be ingested.

Functional Benefit: No health concerns because of lip balm.

Emotional Benefits: Ultra-Safe, ahead of the pack: ECSTASY & AWE ZONE!( Refer Robert Plutchik’s emotional wheel), meaningfully safe fashion, freedom.

Emotional Core Brand Promise: Edgy and Free

Step 2: Bring the Emotional Core Brand Promise to life with Brand Personality

Humanize the brand for the consumer at every owned touch point the brand has with the consumer: Packaging, Labelling, Ingredients, Website, Sales people, Product Taste/Performance, Innovation, Service etc. are examples of consumer touch points.

Let’s look at and further develop the examples cited before:

Examples

Bite Beauty:

Emotional Core Brand Promise: Edgy and Free.

Brand Personality: Edgy and full of life, unconstrained. Appeals to fashion conscious consumer who wants to be ahead of the pack, and when she discovers the product is natural and organic is delighted because it makes her feel free and totally safe while being at her edgy best! The combination of Core Promise and Brand Personality is extremely unique.

Packaging: Edgy, gets attention: the shape mimics the shape of a used lipstick and is easier to apply. Bite name written vertically on the stem of lipstick comes across as a confident request to bite.

 Product: Very loud and edgy shades.

 Content: Tone is extremely straightforward.

Brand Architecture and New Product Development: Edgy and Trendy: Road Trip “Amous Bousche” collection combines “at the brink” food delicacies with edgy shades and Outburst collection is very fashionable and trendy.

Website: All revealed, imagery and design is aspirational for those who want to live an uninhibited, ahead of the curve life while trusting their tools and means.

WHERE BITE LOST THE PLOT?

After its acquisition, Bite was reverse-branded as a clean and natural beauty brand, a niche positioning that strayed from its original promise of being edgy and free. That core identity had resonated widely, even inspiring mainstream consumers, and should have been carefully evolved for broader appeal, not abandoned.

The result: Bite Beauty ceases to exist.

CONCLUSION

Whether you want more consumers to buy or current consumers to buy more and then become more loyal, who make your brand a daily ritual and on top become advocates, EMOTIONAL CORE BRAND PROMISE is the final frontier for you to master with Brand Story.

Human beings look for meaning, value coherence and are moved by emotions. An emotionally coherent brand promise is the route to immortality in the heart of a consumer.

Follow the simple 2-step process to transform your brand story with an emotional core promise:

1. Define your Brand’s Emotional Core Promise in ONE WORD with Consumer Benefits Pyramid.

2. Then figure out how to bring the Emotional Core Brand Promise to life ( humanized or palatable for human experience) with Brand Personality at every owned touch point the brand has with the consumer: Packaging, Labelling, Ingredients, Website, Sales people, Product taste/Performance, Product assortment, Launches, loyalty program, Service etc.

This transformation is more about deep diving, figuring out, a shift in perspective and re-organising than about investing huge resources.

If you truly follow the 2-step process rather than letting your biases get in the way, you could build a truly iconic brand with a higher order emotional connection yielding hardcore fans who will offer unwavering loyalty, making you highly profitable and helping you deliver a bigger difference in return creating a virtuous cycle!

For more clarity, shoot a comment here and let’s discuss!