ICE - Biomotive Triggers - Jonathan Sands OBE

Overview

What we need to understand in regarding to branding and product packaging is how a product makes us feel. We need to look at not only the rational business side of things but also the emotional side of things such as the tone of voice and presentation of the brand. In regards to the business side this takes into account durability of the product/shelf-life, price, costs and more, one side important primarily to the business itself and the other important to the audience. 

Why is emotion important in this? 

Why wouldn't it be? Emotion helps us all to decide on our actions throughout our day and can be great decision guiders. For example, love is a very strong emotion and can override our rational thinking, therefore it can be useful to tap into this emotion.

Stories

How we "package" or wrap the following biomotive queues determines how effective they are and their unique appeal. Everybody likes a story, a story is vital to a company's branding, what is their story? what are they about? for? against? these questions and more need to be formed into visual graphics and linguistic signs possibly formed up with and paired with video or sound. Thinking outside of the box all of our senses can be used to engage the audience within a story. If an advertisement were to be set up as an interactive video for example, you would easily be able to incorporate sound and image within this, what about touch? you could perhaps have a table in front with a display of the products inviting customers to become acquainted with the feel of the product and its shape, the same can be done for smell. For smell and/or taste this can be provided (if a food product) through samples and if a cleaning product for example there cud be the fragrance alone included in the product, ie roses or lavender sprayed into the air as a prompt to attract consumer attention.

The secret to a good story is conflict, conflict create interest and engages the viewer. Conflict can appear in a variety of forms, such as external factors like bad/good characters, environmental disaster vs people and internal factors such as love and hate.

As mentioned in a previous post regarding one of Jonathon Sands lectures they rebranded the waste removal company "Envriotech Cleaning Services LTD" to their new branding and brand name "Serious S*it". Here the conflict arises via a mixture of serious business and comedy.




The above video shows how if you are not looking for something you don't see it, not until it is pointed out anyway. This is the same in a supermarket and there are hundreds and thousands of competitors to compete against there, this is why its important to have a branding strategy that is designed to stand out and appeal to biomotive triggers.

How does that work?

It works due to how our brains are hard wired to survive, particularly relevant when we used to live in caves and needed to judge when a risk was worth it or not. Primal triggers are our core thought processes and can be manipulated through use of colour, form and language. This is why these elements are so important to graphic design as they make up the world we live in and although seemingly simple can create dramatic effects in terms of visceral reactions to a brand. One example of this can be shown in the case of the Andrex puppy and using a subject whom has doe-eyes towards the consumer as to create a nurturing and compassionate response which appeals to a wide audience.