The emotion that a brand evokes in someone — or more importantly, in a specific group of people — has a big impact on a company’s success or failure. Emotions play a huge role in how consumers act and react. Emotions drive decisions, prompt actions, and change mindsets, leading to strong loyalty and a deep personal connection with a given brand that can extend beyond its rational attributes.
These emotional connections are more psychological than logical and are usually subconscious feelings. Brands that develop distinct personae in people’s minds project an image that people want to buy into. Someone may buy a product because it makes them feel smart, affluent, or sophisticated (e.g., “I’m really stylish and have good taste because I wear these shoes.“) Generally, people buy products that are consistent with their positive, or aspirational, the image of themselves.
The act of lifestyle branding makes a corporate brand part of the identity of a person or group. People already identify very strongly with their employment, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic status. Lifestyle branding creates similar cultural connections. Their goal is to become another way that people relate to one another. Lifestyle brands sell an identity, or an image, in addition to a product. Lifestyle branding calls attention to who would use this product or what ideals it represents, in addition to what the product actually does.
Lifestyle branding is presented as more of a culture than a consumer good. Lifestyle branding is the embodiment of a set of values or aspirations that we all desire. In practice, this can be as simple as presenting the product in fun situations with attractive people enjoying themselves. Most cigarette and alcohol advertisements of the last several decades are good examples of this approach. Companies utilize repetition to embed complex, subtle, and nuanced perceptions of their brand in the consumers.
When effectively executed the power of lifestyle advertising and branding can transform products into ‘must have’ social symbols. A lifestyle brand will perpetuate its profits and popularity with branding, in addition to product quality. At its core, creating a lifestyle brand is subtle psychology. Embedding the central ‘ideal’ and ‘philosophy’ of a lifestyle brand into the public psyche requires an increased rate of repetition of exposure to branding.
Lifestyle branding is presented as more of a culture than a consumer good. Lifestyle branding is the embodiment of a set of values or aspirations that we all desire. In practice, this can be as simple as presenting the product in fun situations with attractive people enjoying themselves. Most cigarette and alcohol advertisements of the last several decades are good examples of this approach. Companies utilize repetition to embed complex, subtle, and nuanced perceptions of their brand in the consumers.
