What’s Your Business’ Emotional IQ?

Nearly 4 weeks ago I tuned in while author and Branding Guru
Daryl Travis delivered a sold-out talk that proved the most
thought-provoking speech I’ve heard on marketing all year.

Today, I’d like to share with you three of his most compelling talking points.

• Succeeding long-term in the business market is “all about feelings,
  not figures, and it’s all about things that happen in the right brain,”
  Travis said.

Hmmm…now there’s a right nice piece of fuzzy logic for you! But before we
discard it, let’s review it.

Travis claims long-term and large-scale success isn’t about your price to earnings
ratio as much as it is your promises to emotions ratio. In other words, what do you say you’re going to deliver and how do your customers feel about what you actually deliver?

When people think about your company or service, what associations do they link to it? What triggered responses do they experience?

(WARNING: I’m about to stereotype for purposes of a short e-mail.)

For example, how many ladies out there have a “friend” who just adores, let’s say, Gucci shoes, sunglasses, handbags and all manner of other paraphernalia? Just between you and me let’s dispense with the notion right now that she buys those things because they are the most functional versions on the market. Pshaw! She doesn’t buy for logical reasons at all! Instead she buys confidence, sophistication, sex appeal and any number of other emotions those 5 little letters trigger.

Men are no different. Maybe it isn’t Gucci that makes your heart go pitter-pat, maybe it’s…oh I don’t know…tools???

How many of you go into the hardware store after running errands with your wife all day and WHAM! Instead of an aching back and sore feet, you’ve got the energy of a Hokie fan on game day?

You know what I’m talking about—the strut of a man in his element with wide eyes, a goofy smile and a home improvement list 2 pages long for which you need at least 3 new power tools.

Again, it isn’t functionality you’re buying, despite your most persuasive left-brain arguments. I mean do you really need four power drills? No, it’s the FEELING you get of capability, excitement and “being a man” or “being like dad.”

So why do so many people link these emotions to Gucci, Craftsman and hundreds of thousands of other products? Because their marketers learned and used the art of emotional triggers—branding.

“Marketing is not a department. Everyone in your company is responsible for marketing your company,” says Harry Beckwith, author of Selling the Invisible.

Your brand is not part of your business; it is your business. And every piece of marketing you create has to reflect that.

Speak your prospects’ language. Thirty-plus years ago, Phil Knight of Nike was selling waffle-soled shoes out of his trunk while moonlighting as an accounting teacher. What’s his take on why he succeeded? According to a New York Times Magazine article Travis quoted it was because, “He spoke to [consumers] in a language understood only by people who could run a mile in less than 5 minutes.”

That’s pretty powerful stuff when you can enlist so much emotion in your marketing that you fundamentally alter the way an entire country and much of the world thinks about sports apparel.

So here’s the question. What’s your company doing to set itself apart from the competition? How are you using your collective right brains to turn dry, factual marketing into emotional, action-inducing marketing?

To your massive and unlimited success!

Lina Penalosa