The Secret to Emotional Branding Success 😲

I think that connecting on an emotional level is more important than ever because everyone understands a product's function. It's, you know, its benefits, what the problem it is it's going to solve for you. But the question is how that at once that problem is solved is what's it going to make you feel? And tapping into that is where brands live or die. That's where, that's where the Goliaths of brands are made is when you move up that, you know that brand pyramid, that Maslow's hierarchy of needs from the basic product attributes and the, and the product benefits and you move up from the emotional and you get into the brand personality, the brand essence, those deeper emotional resonant aspects of a brand where you know, you say Coca Cola or you say Ford or you say Apple and people feel that in their heart. And so moving up in terms of the sort of, the sort of journey that you're taking people on. So it's as intentional to get people to an emotional place with your brand than just a product benefit place within your brand. And so being able to communicate what is the problem that people have but what does that problem make them feel like? Because once that problem is solved that that emotion is going to change and if you can communicate to them what that emotion is and what it's going to feel like, that's what's going to sell your product, not the description of the benefit. Yep.

And anat, how do you think

the

increasing focus on privacy and data protection will ultimately impact funnel strategies for, for the future?

I mean it's already happening these days, right. Don't you think? Right. I mean we do, we are like for example, we employ like today website, you know, anonymization, like de anonymization software. And that is something that you can do in the US but you cannot do it in the Europe. Right. Because the rules are stricter there. Right. So which is why I feel that privacy, of course you will have to keep an eye on that. But then at the same time, so a lot of when you're starting using AI, a lot of it comes under the ambit of whether you know, you are trying to breach the privacy concerns. Like you know, when you are trying to reach out to people with different mediums with different on different channels. Right. So I would say people should not be scared about using AI. But then again, yes, try to maintain a human voice and try to not be too intrusive. Keep in mind that people might not always be looking for your solution. So that is a very Small, brief understanding of what I have with respect to privacy. I don't have a lot of comments on privacy because that is something that, you know, I have not worked on a lot. But then this is what I feel is people, is what people should keep in mind.

Yeah, that makes total sense. That makes total sense. All right folks, now it's time for our Bad Bold or Brilliant segment. We've got some juicy trends on AI and marketing to chew on, so let's dive right in. All right, so I'm going to give you guys three examinations and I want to get your opinion about the examination if it's bad, bold or brilliant. So first up, we've got AI powered personalization in E commerce. Okay, now who hasn't fallen down the Amazon rabbit hole? We all, I'm sure have. You go for a toothbrush, come out with a flamingo pool float that you never knew you needed and that's AI working its magic, right? And that's just not on Amazon. But also on Sephora and Stitch Fix, they're jumping in on this bandwagon as well with virtual try ons and personalized style recommendations and so on. So what do we think? Is this level of personalization a brilliant innovation or is it a bit too Big Brother?

I think it's brilliant. I mean, absolutely. And I, and because when it happens to me, for the most part, I love it. The only thing I don't love is when I look at something and then it shows up in my banner ads on every single website that I go to. The whole cookie tracking thing, that's the one thing that creeps me out and kind of pisses me off. But when I go onto Netflix and it's suggesting things for me, or when I go onto Amazon, it's suggesting things for me, I find that actually brilliant because it makes it easier for me and it also is more entertaining as a shopping experience for me. How about you, Anand? Right?

Even I agree, you know that this is brilliant. But then, yes, there is of course some caveat to that. Because these things, these technologies are not foolproof. They're not 100% each of the time, right? So let's say if basis my consumption patterns, you're not able to figure out what I would need on a monthly basis. Talking about Amazon here, right? And you are thinking that I am, let's say 60 year old male and I would need something different than let's say what a 30 year old male would need, right? Then that's not the right use of your own personalization technology. So I think companies need to still work a lot there. They are probably 70% there. Okay. But then I feel there's still a lot of work where people can actually go out and say that, yes, I love this technology and I would pay extra to keep this for myself.

Yeah, I'm going to stick one more thing on there. And that is that the one thing that personalization does that's in the, in the bad category, I think, is that it really cuts down on discovery or accidental discovery. And, you know, when we were living in a physical retail world, you would go into a store and you would think, oh, I'm going to get a pair of jeans. Right? And then you come out with like a hat and a scarf and, you know, a cool new backpack because you walked by it, you thought it was awesome, and you, and you picked it up. And so there's this level of discovery which makes shopping fun too. And I think that if things get too personalized or too targeted, it takes away that. It takes away that random aspect, which is what makes, you know, what makes shopping an interesting thing to do or what?

No, a more human thing to do. Right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, I agree totally. I would say it's brilliant until it's not. Right. And the reason why I say that is because you can go shopping, let's say, for example, for, for your, your wife. And you are looking for some high heeled shoes, right? And now you're a brave man if

you're going shopping for your wife or high heel shoes. Because I would never do that.

I'm just using this as an example.

Good luck with that.

But then the problem here is, is now you're going to get served with a bunch of ads for women, clothing, apparel and so on. And so that's where I believe it's brilliant until it's not. But I think I have to give kudos to Instagram. I believe they recently implemented the ability for users to reset their algorithm. Oh, and so they can go in the back end and reset their algorithm in case they've experienced something similar. Right. Where they have content or advertisements on things that don't directly apply to them.

All right, so basically a new mechanism to spend more time inside their app. Brilliant.

That's, that's pretty much, you know, it's all about business there. All right, so gentlemen, next on the chopping block, we have automated email marketing for better engagement. So we're, we're talking AI that knows when you're most likely to open an email and what kind of subject Line gets you clicking. The companies like Mailchimp and HubSpot are all over this. But here's the million dollar question. Is this the secret sauce for email marketing success or are we risking turning into glorified spam bots? What are your thoughts?

I would say I think it's brilliant. This was very much needed because when there's a lot of human intervention that happens in emails, right? So emails is one thing that I believe that it can be completely automated, it can completely overtaken by AI. And AI will do a good job because it can pull in the required additional context that you need to make it sound more human. And that is something manually you will never be able to do. And today I think in such a fast paced world, right, you do not have time that you need to experiment with five different email copies for a certain use case. You do not have that much time. Let AI do that job. Let AI pull that context and let AI personalize it for your audience. And we personally have seen much, much better open response rates out of that. So I would say it's brilliant and it should stay like that and probably improve.

Yeah, I'd agree. I mean, I think we've been a B testing subject lines forever and it's just basically asking machine to a B test 100,000 of them rather than just two. And you know, I for one have been using it that way for the last couple years. I've been using AI to help suggest, you know, YouTube video headlines or titles and you know, I use TubeBuddy and you can use Vidiq and these other things that basically run AI algorithms on the popularity of certain terms or words or organization of what word comes first. And it's done nothing but benefit my, you know, content viewership. And I know that it's done nothing but benefit my open rates, that's for absolutely sure, on my emails. So I, I give it a big thumbs up.

Yeah, you know, I'm going to go with a similar answer that I had for the first examination and it's, it's brilliant until it's not. And here's why I say that I think that sometimes marketers may have a great subject line, but it's not connected to the body of the message. And when there's a disconnect there, it feels like it is spammy because now you got me to open the message and now it's, you know, you're selling some trinkets. Right. And so that's a let down there. And so I align that with even paid media as you have an ad and you ultimately want that ad to resemble what people land on for the landing page. Right. There has to be some connection there. So I do think that, you know, using AI to try to determine what subject line works best is a great idea. We'd have to make sure as marketers that that subject line is truly connected to the body of the message.

Yeah. Which is why I think automate the entire thing, maybe not just do one part of it. Otherwise that can actually result in what you are saying. So yeah, maybe give the whole thing to them.

And you have to, you cannot take the human out of it. I hate to say it, but you just can't because I mean that's where the nuance happens in tone of voice. And if you are leaving it up to, you know, push this, you know, through the, the subject line machine and then push the body of the email through a different machine, of course the two aren't going to al. People are going to feel like a bait and switch happened. And so we definitely don't want to do that. But I'm, I'm personally, because I'm a copy guy, is that I'm, I'm all for like reviewing everything that it spits out to make sure that it's brand voice appropriate and that it's got that human level connection to it.

That's right.

Always review.

Yes, always review.

That's right. That's right. All right, last but not least, let's talk about our AI friends, the chatbots. Right. These digital assistants are popping up everywhere from your favorite online shop to your bank's website, Salesforce Einstein AI is leading the charge here. But let's be real. How many of us have wanted to throw our computers out the window after a frustrating chatbot experience? Are these AI helpers streaming, streamlining customer service or are they just adding another layer of frustration between customers and real human help? What are your thoughts?

I'll go first on this one. I freaking hate them. Hate them upside down and sideways. And I that this is also a place where I think that brands can, they can, they can differentiate themselves and they can rise above the noise, which is by investing in the human connection of servicing your customers. Because as we've gone more and more digital, we have a tendency to feel like digital is the answer. And in this particular case, I think the human is the answer. Because the brands that I've interacted with, where I've gotten a human on that, you know, the tech chat, when I've been having a problem with Kajabi or ConvertKit or something like that. And I get someone quickly and they're actually human and they can solve my problem rather than let me going through a 15 minute chat with an AI bot before they connect me with a human because I actually have to talk to him to get the freaking problem solved. That is, you know that exercise in frustration is if you can avoid that for your brand, you are going to win.

Agree?

Yep, definitely. And my take on that is I would equate it to how the automated personalization that way there is today for with Amazon and Netflix and. All right, so what I feel is that of course, like I think everybody has been frustrated with AI agents trying to solve your query when clearly they don't have the context, they don't have the answers. Right. And I think that is the point where companies need to realize where the human intervention is needed. They are still not able to identify which queries deserve a human intervention as opposed to which that can be answered by an AI robot. Right. If you are asking like a how to question, for example, how to do this, a chatbot can take over. But then those questions are not always like black and white, right? So in those cases wherein you really need a resolution, you just don't need a process, but actually a resolution. Companies need to be able to understand that their AI need to be that good that it understands the context behind those questions and be able to like you decide like which. It cannot be like an either or scenario. It has to. They have to coexist and company need to be better at deciding which needs to forefront which conversation.

I think.