Brand New Emotion

 

So I, along with six other Projectline marketing consultants, attended the Puget Sound American Marketing Association’s annual conference, MarketSmart, Thursday. Great speakers, great atmosphere, great day all around.

What I found interesting, and what I hope some of you will be willing to discuss with me, is how I left the conference with mixed feelings about the content of the presentations—most of which focused on brand, brand protection,  brand as something beyond the product, brand as a lifestyle, brand as an “emotional connection” with people.  Nothing really new, but even more “emotion” speak than usual. For me, the idea of making an “emotional connection” with someone solely for sake of selling a product  seems (and maybe is) a little smarmy. Isn’t it?

This is a discussion as old as marketing itself, but one that I think should be top of mind for all marketers and consumers. As a proud professional marketer, I, of course, don’t think of myself as working in the smarmy camp. Yet, I do consider emotions and connections every day. I want empathy and genuine connections between me and my customers (and between everyone at Projectline and all of our customers). I talk about how if our customers trust us, they’ll hire us. And I want to help our global customers think of their own customers as individuals with emotions and needs beyond the features of a particular product. I want their brands and messages to be bigger than just the item being sold, and to be loved for how it makes them feel. Positive emotions.  Paul Isakson, marketing genius, says that modern marketing = making people lives better. These days this means providing addictive content and utility. For what? So they’ll buy (more) products? Am I a smarmy marketer, just providing information to make an emotional connection? Where is the line between emotional connection and emotional manipulation? I think I know where it is for me. But I am not sure where it is for the big brands, that is for sure. I hope someone is still thinking about it.

As an aside, if you haven’t checked out the Brand Tag experiment, you otta (thanks for the link Patrick).