Brand Purpose and Neuromarketing
Emotions drive brand choice, yet companies often struggle to translate them into something concrete and actionable.
Published in PETS International | 2020
Emotions drive brand choice, yet companies often struggle to translate them into something concrete and actionable. Brand purpose is one example: too often, it is invented through a marketing exercise rather than discovered in the deeper human motives the brand authentically satisfies.
Published in PETS International in 2020, this article explores how neurobiology can give structure to emotion, helping uncover a brand's deeper purpose and turn it into a compass for everything the brand does—from products and packaging to communication, identity, retail and digital experiences.
Using the pet food category as a fascinating example, it examines how buying a product for a pet simultaneously satisfies the needs of the animal and activates deeper motives in its owner—and how successful global brands build distinctive emotional territories around those motivations.
The article reflects a principle at the heart of the BRAND AVIATORS® approach: understand the deeper motives behind choice, define the emotional territory a brand can authentically own, and consistently translate that meaning across every touchpoint.
The central idea: purpose becomes powerful when it is rooted in a fundamental human motive—and when every expression of the brand makes that motive tangible.