Is Brand Identity a Brain Science?
The Globe and Mail reported that according to a new research published during the week of June 21, there is compelling evidence that some people are predisposed to take on characteristics embodied by brands, while others are harder nuts to crack. In “Got to Get You Into My Life: Do Brand Personalities Rub Off on Consumers?”, two University of Minnesota researchers said that there’s a tradition in consumer research that identifies the fact that people use brands as signals of who they are. “In looking at the body of literature, one thing that fascinated us was no one had actually done strong experimental work to figure out whether or not, after people use some consumer brands such as Harley Davidson, are they really successful in feeling better about themselves,” said Deborah Roedder John, the chair of the marketing department at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and a co-author of the paper.
It is the opinion of another academic, the University of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, that people think of themselves in one of two contrasting ways. One school of thought believes personal qualities are fixed and cannot be changed through direct effort to improve, learn or grow. As a result, they look for opportunities to signal their positive qualities to both themselves and others. “They sort of believe that they can’t do it on their own. They have to have something, such as brand names, to help them signal that they are a better person,” said Professor John. The second school of thought believes people can enhance themselves only through learning and hard work. Signalling their positive qualities to others or themselves by touting a brand has little or no effect on their sense of self.
According to Professor John, there’s already a belief among marketers and advertisers that brands have this type of feel-good power, and that consumers respond positively to that. “But there are other people – although they like these brands and they pick them and they use them – it doesn’t quite have that power over them.”
Professor John’s research also suggests that brands might actually play a therapeutic role in people’s lives. In one of the studies described in the Journal of Consumer Research paper to be published in early 2011, undergraduate students were given a math quiz. Regardless of their actual answers, each was told they had performed poorly. But students who were given an MIT-branded pen to use for 10 minutes fully recovered from the psychological slight, while others did not. “What we found interesting from that study was, brands really allowed people to feel more positive about themselves. It was sort of an empowering thing that they got from using that particular brand,” said Professor John.
For a change, maybe marketers should not always be portrayed as ‘evil’, figuring out ways to subconsciously make people do things that may be bad for them, or make people buy things they should not be buying?
