By Snehasis Bose
While transactions are the foundation of any business, relationships are what make the brand hearts beat. And what makes brand relationships powerful are the emotional connections it makes with consumers. Regardless of the functional advantage a brand has, when the ‘how I feel about it’ justifies the ‘what I think about it’ both the brand and business accelerate disproportionately.
And the best relationships are those that are born out of cultural truths: symbols, heroes, rituals or values transmitted through social learning. We found this sweet spot with our Zepto (a quick commerce platform with a 10-minute delivery promise) campaign when we reframed Indian Standard Time as Indian Stretchable Time: A ‘ritual’ all Indians are familiar with verbalised by the ever-elastic ‘paanch minute mein aaya’ (be there in five minutes). However, when Zepto says 10 minutes, it means it.
With this the competition, which was talking about emergency essentials, deals and so on, suddenly looked transactional. Zepto had used a cultural truth and aligned the brand to it to emotionally connect with the consumer.
Resulting in an amazing connection with consumers, even in the hyper-noise of the IPL, who remembered the communication, the brand, to download the app and to order from it. Cultural marketing leading to emotional connection leading to business growth!
While Zepto leveraged a specific cultural truth, brands can make emotional connections with universal truths as well. Case in point is the 1996 born and still going strong, Patek Philippe ‘Generations’ campaign.
Plato hypothesised that our search for ultimate meaning lies in overcoming our mortal condition. And we try to gain permanence through our deeds or our descendants. Taking this ‘generational immortality’ and aligning it to the brand added depth to its cultural value. Making Patek Philippe personal, relevant, and human. And making the line “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation” iconic in advertising history! Search ‘Patek Philippe generations’ on Google images to see this amazing campaign.
Simply put, when it comes to launching, consolidating, pivoting a brand, best results come from leveraging the one factor which has the biggest emotional effect on consumer behaviour: culture.
However, as we walk down this potent path, two cautions:
1) The fragile line in between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. The latter typically happens in the absence of lived knowledge and understanding of the said culture. Thus, it is important to sensitivity-check the thinking and the expression well in advance. Keep in mind the issues that shape it and the details that form it.
2) Keep it real. Don’t just say it for buzz. Like in all relationships, follow up the states with action. So that when your sceptical consumer digs deeper, some substance emerges.
Be it a cleaning product or canned food or Apple or Disney, making culturally relevant emotional connections form a powerful tool to ensure differentiation and drive growth.
The author is chief strategy officer at L&K Saatchi & Saatchi