A premium brand asks a person to pay more for a product or a service they could most likely find cheaper elsewhere, in a different quality. To convince someone to make that choice, the brand must build a connection with them.
A longer path to a purchase
Ordering a book for €15 is a quick decision. A piece of jewelry, a stay, a piece of furniture or a long-term service is not. Between the first time a person sees the product and the moment they buy it, there are weeks or months of looking, comparing and imagining. Becoming a loyal client takes even longer. Along that path, the brand must stay in the person's memory and give them a reason to come back.
Think of buying pearls. One option is a quick purchase at a small stand in a shopping mall. The other is a place where you are welcomed with a drink, where each room leads you through a different collection, and where someone takes the time to understand what the piece is for before walking you through the options and prices. The pearls may even be similar, but the experience and the memory of it are very different.
Stories are what people remember
In an exercise at Stanford described by Chip and Dan Heath, students gave one-minute talks with an average of 2.5 statistics each, and only one in ten told a story. When they were asked what they remembered, 63% recalled the stories and 5% recalled any single statistic.
Stories also add value. In the Significant Objects project, 100 inexpensive second-hand items bought for $128.74 were each given a short fictional story and sold on eBay for a total of $3,612.51.
The senses shape what people believe they experience
At the University of Oxford's Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Charles Spence and his colleagues showed that when the sound of a crunch was amplified, people rated the same crisps as fresher and crispier. In a study published in Nature, French wine sold better in a supermarket while French music was playing, and German wine sold better with German music, while most shoppers did not believe the music had affected their choice.
A client does not evaluate a premium brand from the outside. They experience it and then decide.
The ending stays the longest
Daniel Kahneman's research on the peak-end rule shows that people judge an experience mostly by its strongest moment and by how it ends. In one study, 69% of participants chose to repeat a longer unpleasant experience because its ending was milder.
For a brand, this means the closing moment of a visit, the way a package is opened or the last message after a purchase carries more weight than most of what happens in between.
Engaging all the senses
For a premium brand, this is where marketing extends beyond the screen:
- a story that comes before the list of features;
- a sensory layer - light, materials, sound and scent - consistent at every point of contact;
- a strong moment and a considered ending;
- attention to the person, so they feel their experience was noticed.
When a brand engages all the senses, the client is already inside the experience they are deciding to buy.
Sources
- Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick, 2007
- Rob Walker & Joshua Glenn, Significant Objects, 2009-2010
- Massimiliano Zampini & Charles Spence, Journal of Sensory Studies, 2004
- Adrian North, David Hargreaves & Jennifer McKendrick, Nature, 1997
- Daniel Kahneman, Barbara Fredrickson, Charles Schreiber & Donald Redelmeier, Psychological Science, 1993
If you want to build that kind of experience around your brand, let's talk.
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