According to Clay Christensen products are hired by consumers to do a ‘job’. Products that do the best job win. The theory is often referred to as ‘milkshake marketing’. In his example Christensen determined, through data analysis, followed by customer interviews, that most milkshakes are purchased in the morning in order to keep drivers company during a long boring commute. Specifically the action of drinking the milkshake through a straw helped kill time, and kept the driver engaged in the activity of consuming the milkshake slowly. This insight led to the restaurant further ‘thickening’ their milkshakes.
Understanding the ‘job’ that your product is truly doing is critical to success. However nailing the job isn’t the only factor, and brands that stop here put themselves at great risk. There is no competitive advantage to a thicker milkshake. Once the secret is out it’s easy to copy. First to market advantages are relatively short-lived so brands need to transcend functional benefits in order to survive. We call it the ‘empathy edge’.
A new study conducted by Stony Brook University in the UK discovered ‘roughly 20% of the population has an innate trait associated with greater sensitivity, or responsiveness, to environmental and social stimuli’. For this group empathy is highly developed, comes naturally and the advantages of being empathetic are obvious. For the other 80% of the population empathy comes less easily.
What does this mean for marketers? If only 20% of us are innately empathetic we are going to have a tough time connecting with our consumers through our brands. Brands are built by people to emulate human traits and therefore lack of empathy is ultimately detrimental. Though we may not all be empathizers, we certainly expect to be empathized with.
Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is what differentiates a product from a brand, and a ‘job’ from a ‘career’. Career brands understand the job they are doing, and the emotional relationship the brand has with the consumer. This emotional connection is what makes a brand ‘meaningful’. ‘A meaningful brand is defined by its impact on our personal and collective wellbeing, plus its functional benefits’, says HAVAS.
It’s clear that meaning is critical to long-term success. According to a global survey of 300,000 people in 33 countries, people wouldn’t care if 74% of brands disappeared. (HAVAS, Meaningful Brands 2017).
Luckily our ability to understand emotion through data and artificial intelligence is improving. Marketers have the opportunity to compensate for lack of natural empathy through innovative analytical tools designed to measure emotion. Heartbeat AI, a women-led Canadian start-up has created an elegant, simple and efficient tool to better understand emotions, and the role they play in decision making. Ultimately it’s the combination of functional benefits (the product’s job) coupled with the emotional benefits (the product’s meaning) that will elevate a brand’s meaning, longevity and success.
Brand for Benefit helps companies discover, certify and share their greater purpose as a path to growth.
CEO Carolyn Ansley is an award-winning marketer, entrepreneur and mother who believes using business for good is good business.
