Kevin Ervin Kelley, AIA

As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it, “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” To get into the public's mind, start with a story. Every customer is the hero of their own life, fighting tough battles, having their character called into question, and facing hard decisions. But customers often wonder if anyone sees their story, journey, hardships, and quest. Great brands see their customers and empathize with their struggles. They help advance them along their journey and put them into a world full of meaning. They provide a sense of belonging and help their customers connect to life's bigger mysteries. Brands must allow us to be characters in their story and feel like we’re key participants in the brand quest.

As an architect who works extensively in the brand experience world, I believe in manifesting the brand in visual, visceral, and tangible forms. As one of our clients said: "If I can't touch the brand, it ain't real!" While we can't always touch, feel, taste, or smell a brand, we can help consumers feel the emotions and sensory qualities of hot chocolate, puppy hugs, or the awe of a forest. Movies and commercials ignite these feelings regularly, even making us cry, laugh, or scream. Brands can do this, too, as long as they know to tap into human emotions by creating evocative scenes or imaginary mini-worlds that transport consumers to another time and place in the mind. Touchstones and touchpoints serve as vehicles and portals of meaning.

As humans, we imbue the things around us with human qualities. We name our pets, boats, and dolls with names and assign human qualities and personalities to them. Therefore, the best way to determine a brand's identity is to uncover their human essence. Or in other words, to personify them and make them relatable to others. When studying a brand, it's often helpful to ask: If the brand were a car, what kind would it be? If it were a movie, what movie would it be, or what actor would it be? And so on. You can better understand the brand's personality, values, image, and beliefs by getting your client and teammates to explain and defend why the brand would be that particular car, movie, or actor, which helps set a consistent brand identity.

When visiting a new city, you can ask people to name some of the best places to get a burger, a steak, or seafood. Or the best place to buy furniture, see live music, or picnic in their city. Most people can recall 1-3 names/places, but the human brain struggles to remember many top-of-mind names beyond that. Humans are a categorizing machine, and we automatically place things in categories and positions of 1, 2, and 3. Brands need to be clear about what category they're trying to own and then determine where they fall on the list of 1-3. Do they need to dislodge a brand to get in the top 3? Or are they trying to hold onto one of the top 3 positions? Becoming number 1, 2, or 3 requires distinctiveness, high visibility, and extreme clarity.

While we use the standard buyer personas, customer journeys, and surveys to get our arms around a particular audience's profile, the most critical thing we need to uncover is their psychological motivations for wanting or desiring a brand or, in some cases, a solution for which a brand doesn't exist or specifically solve. Want is the key word because what we want is usually based on seeing others in a peer group or society "wanting" the same thing or coveting it because they've already acquired it. Although we think what we want comes from the purity of our hearts and originality of our minds, it's almost always influenced by a succession of people and events. Tracing things back to their core source takes time but is deeply revealing.

Goals, objectives, mission statements, etc. sound intelligent but can get confusing for team members to implement, much less answer. Instead of wrestling over the differences between goals and objectives, I start by asking leaders one simple question: What does victory look like? While it sounds simple, using the word "look" helps leaders paint a picture of what success means for their organization. Visualizing success provides so much more detail and specifics. The next question I ask leaders is, what's in your way of being able to get there? And the most telling question I ask is, what does success not look like? I always learn more from leaders about what they don't want their brand to look like, than what they do, which is insightful.