What is Branding Psychology?
Key points for understanding branding psychology:
The brand needs to be understood from two perspectives: that of the corporation, and that of the consumer. The role of branding psychology is to bridge these two worlds
The goal of the brand is to identify its offerings, distinguish it from its competitors, and add unique value above and beyond the “utility” of the product itself. Branding psychology is especially crucial with this final objective.
From the perspective of the consumer, the brand is a constellation of emotional and semantic associations. Social psychology and personality psychology are especially useful in helping to craft these connections, and ultimately, to sculpt the brand image.
Within marketing, psychology is often used on a tactical level. Whether it’s pricing, promotion, or product design, psychology is most often used to help brands execute on an existing strategy.
These are worthwhile pursuits. However, the role of psychology in marketing goes much deeper: it’s not merely a tool for tactics, but has a huge role to play which is upstream from this execution. Specifically, psychology has a crucial role to play in the brand itself.
So what is branding psychology? Branding psychology is the application of psychological science to brand strategy, and to the development and maintenance of the brand image. It harnesses insights from both neuroscience and psychological science to make the brand as effective and as resonant as possible.
But first, what is a brand?
Brands are complex, and they can’t be fully understood from one perspective alone. To fully grasp it, and to fully appreciate the crucial role of psychology in branding, we need to understand it from both perspectives: that of the corporation that owns it, and from the perspective of the consumer. Ultimately, branding psychology helps connect these two worlds.
Branding Psychology from The Perspective of The Company
First, the corporate perspective of the brand: The brand is not the company, itself. Instead, the brand is a tool of the company that enables it to compete in the market. It’s an externally facing entity that enables the organization to construct a desirable image with its consumers. To this end, the brand has three objectives:
#1: Identify the company’s offerings (e.g. logos, mottos, unique product design)
If you walk into a shoe store, you can instantly tell the brands apart. You don’t have to go up to each shoe, look under the label, and see “manufactured by Nike”. You can recognize the classic swoosh logo, the “Just do it” motto, and the unique, instantly recognizable designs. Each of these elements that help identify the brand is intellectual property (IP) which is owned and defended by the company.
#2: Differentiate it from competitors
Even narrowed down to just the sportswear industry, there are hundreds of different shoe companies. Sure the shoes themselves have different designs, levels of quality, price points, are more. But what sets them apart in the eyes of most consumers is the brand - each of which conveys a different style, personality, and reputation for quality. The brand differentiates these offerings in the mind of the market.
#3: Add unique value above and beyond the “utility” of the product itself
Above and beyond the shoe itself, it feels different wearing a pair of Nikes than it does the shoes of a generic brand. Research also finds that if consumers think they’re using a Nike product, they’ll perform much better than if they used the same product but without the brand name. These kinds of brand “placebo effects” are the unique value a brand can bring, taking it above and beyond the physical constituents of the product itself.
And so from a corporate perspective, the brand is a tool of the company which sets out to accomplish these three objectives. But how does it accomplish these goals? This brings us to the other side of the definition: defining the brand from the perspective of the consumer. And this is where the crucial role of branding psychology lies.
Branding Psychology from The Consumer’s Perspective
Ultimately, from the perspective of the consumer, the brand exists nowhere else but in their mind. The brand is a set of automatic associations, and these come in two flavors: semantic, and emotional.
Semantic associations are what the brand means. What does the brand make you think about? Think Nike, and you’ll automatically think of LeBron, the swoosh, “just do it”, sports, etc. Think Disney, and Mickey Mouse, theme parks, family memories, etc. will effortlessly come to mind. These semantic associations are the constellation of unique attributes, ideas, and connections that we readily associate with the brand.
Along with these specific semantic associations, you’ll also have a general emotional feel towards the brand. These are the brand’s emotional associations. What does the brand make us feel? Nike may make us feel ambitious, brave, and powerful. Disney may make us feel nostalgic, hopeful, or enchanted.
Ultimately, the most important emotional association, especially when it comes to brand loyalty, is whether or not they exude warmth: Do we trust this brand and do we feel that they have good intentions? As we’ve seen elsewhere, brands that are perceived to be high on warmth benefit from the strongest and most enduring bonds with their consumers.
From the Psychology of Consumers to the Psychology of Markets
Brand associations are idiosyncratic. They exist on an individual level. Maybe for you, Nike represents ambition and athletic excellence, but for another person, the brand is more associated less with athleticism and more with cool, hip fashion. For another person, maybe it's neither, and it's something else entirely. Because branding is deeply psychological, these brand associations will be different depending on one’s experiences with the brand, and their individual psychology.
However, these associations aren’t entirely random either. It’s not equally likely that a person will associate Nike with “ambition” rather than with “family” than with “technology”. If you were to ask a group of a hundred people what they first think when they think of Nike, there are going to be some general patterns. If you were to average these individual associations for every person in the total addressable market, this is what we would call the brand image. This essentially reflects the psychology of the market.
Constructing the brand image takes time. Brand building is a long-term project. It’s constructed over countless experiences with the brand and its content. Each advertisement we see, every news story that pops up, every trip to their store, or experience with their product. Each of these touchpoints helps build these associations. How can brands leverage psychology in this process?
Branding Psychology Meets Social Psychology
Here’s where branding psychology comes in. Marketers can expedite the branding process by leveraging social psychology. To understand this, we need to take a step back and realize that we’re deeply social creatures. We not only like being around other people, but we need other people and experience withdrawal (e.g. loneliness) when we’re deprived of human contact.
But our social nature goes beyond even that: it shapes how we see the world. We see inanimate objects as having human qualities. We assume our pets are just like us, rich with complex human emotions like jealousy and nostalgia. We name our cars and give them a personality. We even say nice things to our computers and devices when we really need them to work. Put simply, we see the world through this social lens.
The same is true for how we see brands. We see brands the same way as we see people: as having human-like qualities. Tesla isn’t merely a disruptive company - they’re bold and exciting. Nike isn’t merely an athletic company - they are the personification of athletic excellence. You could imagine meeting Apple, and describing them as smart, sophisticated and minimalist. This is the brand personality: the set of psychological traits that help humanize the brand.
By making these psychological characteristics a primary component, companies can galvanize the brand-building process, and ultimately sculpt a highly distinct, engaging, and relatable brand.
Final Thoughts on Branding Psychology
Ultimately, brands matter when, and only when, they matter to people. As an asset to their company, their power is to create bonds and emotional connections with their target markets, which is ultimately an aggregation of individual people.
Given the centrality of human beings in the process of branding, marketers are best served by incorporating psychological elements into the process. Personality psychology and social psychology are a great starting place. Anchoring the brand attributes in psychological dimensions helps galvanize the brand-building process. As we’ve seen with the psychology of brand loyalty, the same dimensions that we most appreciate in human beings, we also appreciate in brands.
However, this is just the beginning. Psychology is a broad discipline, and the potential areas of overlap with marketing are immense. It's crucial to keep in mind that a brand is complex and can’t be understood from one perspective alone. The brand is both a tool of the company, as well as a construct etched into the mind of the market. Psychology is what connects these two branding perspectives, and ultimately, what enables a brand’s success.
Photo by Jernej Graj via UnSplash
About the author
Matt Johnson, PhD is a researcher, writer, and consumer neuroscientist focusing on the application of psychology to branding. He is the author of the best-selling consumer psychology book Blindsight, and Branding That Means Business (Economist Books, Fall 2022). Contact Matt for speaking engagements, opportunities to collaborate, or just to say hello
References: Understanding The Psychology of Branding
Johnson, M., & Misiaszek, T. (2022). Branding that Means Business: Economist Edge: books that give you the edge (Vol. 1). Profile Books.
