Toby Roberts, Head of Strategy at OMD UK, has written an interesting post on Better mousetraps and ‘branded experiences’.

It well worth reading the whole thing, but this in particular is worth considering:

If we actually stopped and listened to what consumers were saying instead of just muscling our way into the conversation, we would find that the vast majority of people promote brands to each other based on simple, rational, tangible truths about the product or service. This isn’t surprising, people find big abstract brand ideas almost impossible to articulate and, even if they could, would never admit to their peers that that were the reason they made a purchase.

Now, it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that emotion plays a huge role in individual brand decisions. But this is not the way people talk to each other about brands and if this is what we’re trying to unlock, we have to recognise this.

This is an insight that constantly feeds into the work we do with our clients – if you have a good product, then getting it into the hands of people who reach and are trusted by your target audience and getting them talking about it is often the best thing to do…