How do prospects come to trust a person, product, or firm?

Prospects make what appear to be snap judgments that are not based, necessarily, on the best rational choice for them. It’s more akin to the alchemy of love than to the step-by-step process of solving an algebraic problem. Crassly, it can be likened to how men in a crowded bar crank their heads when a beautiful woman sashays in. There’s a nanosecond of appraisal and then judgment: smokin’ hot!

The emotion is primitive, visceral, and, of course, in this instance, quite shallow—but the impression is often permanent.

Trust is not lust, of course. So the bar analogy may be more provocative than it is instructive. But whatever the science behind the emotion, trust is not purely rational, at least not initially. That is, chemistry precedes performance. Prospects must trust that you deliver results before they’ve experienced it. “The door to trust is opened emotionally and instinctually,” says Bruce Philp, coauthor of The Orange Code. “Only after that is it about performance.” No doubt you have to deliver on what you promise (back to reality), but not initially.

That’s why to prospects, the language of chest-thump-ese is gibberish.

There’s the joyous message that you plan to communicate.

And then there’s the message that your audience (or prospects) receive and internalize.

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary recently, and we five kids put together an open house that included a short program.

Of the kids, I’ve orbited the farthest from my home state of North Dakota, where we held the reception for my parents. I had not seen many of my parents’ friends for twenty years. I was devastated at how frail many appeared. I still remembered them when they were in midlife. Many arrived alone, their spouses long since buried.

“I almost didn’t come this afternoon,” one woman said. “It was 10 years ago yesterday that my husband died – we had been married 42 years.”

Another elderly woman, whose rigid face looked like she’d had a stroke, lost two teenage children years ago to two different tragedies within six months, one of whom was a classmate of mine. The woman’s husband was not able to make the 50th anniversary celebration because he was wheelchair bound, in the late stages of Parkinson’s. She also said, “I wanted to see you, but I almost didn’t come.” We talked a while about her beautiful daughter Suzanne, who died in an avoidable car accident in 1980.

When planning the celebration, we five kids never considered the emotion that my parents’ 50th would evoke in their friends.

That day, there was a sense of joy for my parents’ successful partnership (and that fact that the marriage survived the rebellious teenage angst of their oldest son).

But for some, the gathering marked a milestone they would never reach, because of divorce or death.

It’s true that there is no such thing as a brute fact (or brute event, for that matter). Every message that is sent by your organization is deconstructed in transit and then socially reconstructed through the filters of your prospects. It makes communicating your message the greatest (and most wonderful) challenge facing your organization.

Bread Poets is a bakery in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Its growth is a fattening symbol of the post-Atkins-diet economy.

In 10 years, the bakery has baked and sold more than 100 different kinds of breads, though today only 42 kinds of bread are actively made at various times of year. For example, the bakery occasionally makes “challah” bread, which is part of the Jewish tradition.

Bread Poets bread is comfort bread, food for hearty folks, the kind of carbs that make you feel warm about life, especially during the long, bitter winters of North Dakota. You need lots of sweaters. Not just for the cold but for the layers of lard that you’ll need to cover up once summer comes – around July.

The bakery, by the way, also makes cookies and scones.

I’m originally from Bismarck. In early March, I yanked my youngest son out of second grade for a week-long visit to my parents. It was 15 degrees below zero the night Cory and I drove into my parents driveway. Without the wind chill. It was March 11.

The next morning, my dad cut me a slice of cinnamon bread from the Bread Poets bakery. I had another two slices. I’d not heard of the bakery before, even though I travel to the Dakotas once or twice a year. I thought the bread was a new phenomenon.

I recently talked with Jon Lee, the owner, who said it took an additional four years prior to starting the business in 1998 for him to perfect his first set of recipes. Jon said, “It was about a four-year process to not only to learn how to make bread, but how to brand the business, and build the business model from scratch.”

Essentially, it took a total of 14 years to become an overnight success, at least in the Bismarck area.

Now Jon plans to sell Bread Poet franchises. He hasn’t sold one yet, but my guess is that just like it took 14 years to perfect the original bakery, it will take some time to learn the art of franchising. A bakery and a franchising company are two completely different types of businesses.

But he’ll succeed. If you look at the logo of Bread Poets, it’s in the same design family as that of Panera Bread, a popular franchise where I live in the Chicago area. However, Jon is after a much different kind of franchise owner than is the person who might ante up for a Panera Bread.

In establishing the franchise, Jon has done the hard work of capturing the essence of the brand. Bread Poets is not so much about the bread, but about what baking bread means to an owner-operator of a franchise.

The promise of a Bread Poet franchise is the promise of a deeply satisfying lifestyle. It’s about creating a tangible product in an intangible world, something you can see and touch and smell and taste. It’s about the satisfaction that comes from making people smile (and much more thick, I might add). It’s about an integrated life that is one part craft and one part home. It’s as much “being” a franchise owner as it is owning a franchse. It’s really about becoming the Bread Poet in your community. Trust me, North Dakotans are not a deeply reflective lot, but there’s something profoundly contemplative in the Bread Poets brand.

See for yourself at www.breadpoets.com.

Branding is no longer limited to groceries or cosmetics.

According to James Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida, nonprofits—even cultural or educational institutions—need to brand in the same way profits do. He discusses three specific nonprofits in his book Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld.

B&S: What is Branded Nation‘s contribution to the concept of branding as storytelling?

James Twitchell: I’m an English teacher, so storytelling is different to me than it is in the commercial world. Essentially, storytelling generates feeling. Commercial storytelling applies this emotionality to a thing as opposed to a human character. It may be a story about Coke as opposed to Pepsi or McDonald’s as opposed to Burger King. But we’re connecting to sensations, not objects.

Do you agree with the notion that branding is first and foremost about the spirit of a product or service?

Yes, especially in relation to luxury products. They’re ordinary things that have been spiritualized. They’re just shoes, handbags, purses, scarves, ties—things you could buy at Kmart. “Luxury” is the only thing separating them (the quality might be superior, but not always).

Marketers have tapped into the human response to religion; owning these designer products feeds our need to feel special or redeemed.

Explain the Diderot Effect and how it relates to brand coherence.

According to the story, Dennis Diderot, a seventeenth century French philosopher, bought a new dressing gown. Since his old furnishings and clothes didn’t match his fancy new gown, he decided to buy new ones—and replaced everything from wallpaper to paintings to slippers.

This phenomenon is part and parcel with modern consumption. You buy the Armani shirt, and then you have to have the Louis Vuitton purse and the Prada shoes. In other words, things fit together in constellations and ensembles.

How do you recommend older nonprofit organizations rediscover the essence of their brand?

In the realm of branding, there’s no difference between colleges, museums, philanthropies, and Proctor & Gamble. As long as you have a large number of suppliers in the market, the process of branding inevitably follows. The story you tell is the experience you provide. You separate yourself not by the product, but by the spirituality, which is the branding.

It may be a “good” idea—but will it stick?

According to Chip and Dan Heath, only “sticky” ideas will have lasting impact. In Made to Stick, the Heaths provide six qualities that make an idea stick—and transform the way people think and act.

B&S: Your formula for a successful idea is a “Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story”—but “Simple” and “Emotional” seem contradictory. How do they relate?

Chip and Dan Heath: When we say “simple,” we mean focused. It means you’ve whittled your message down to its core.

There’s only tension if “simple” means “short.” It’s possible to express a core idea through a long story. Consider Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It’s a long story that expresses the message, “You shouldn’t deceive people or it might come back to haunt you.” If it was delivered in its short, abstract form, it wouldn’t stick. Because the story offers concrete images and emotional overtones, it has stuck for centuries.

Often, the best idea in a meeting goes unrecognized because the boss is threatened by it. How can the principles of stickiness help?

The boss might say, “Our new mission statement is that we’ll be the highest-quality provider in the industry.” You should respond, “That’s not concrete enough. People will not share a common mental image of what we’re trying to achieve.” It won’t be a judgment call or an opinion—you’ll be right.

You talk about the “archvillain” of sticky ideas: the Curse of Knowledge. How do you root it out?

The Curse of Knowledge says that once we know something, it becomes hard to remember what it was like not to know it. As a result, we communicate like speakers of a foreign language—and forget to translate.

Think of the IT guy in the office who speaks in jargon and abstractions you can’t follow. We’re the “IT guy” in our areas of expertise—our knowledge complicates our communication. We can avoid the Curse of Knowledge by using the principles of stickiness. A sticky idea crosses boundaries of knowledge, experience, and even culture.

In today’s world, the consumer decides the identity of a product or service means, not you. Should you adapt the message once you get feedback from your market, or is it then too late?

Audiences typically make ideas simpler—for example, scientific studies are inevitably boiled down to statements like, “Eating fiber cures cancer!” Audiences also tend to make things more unexpected, as with Leo Durocher’s quote, “Nice guys finish last.”

But sticky ideas are already simple and surprising. They require a lot less adaptation in the idea marketplace. This is because the forces you apply to make your idea sticky—i.e., simplicity, concreteness, and unexpectedness—are the same forces the idea marketplace would apply if you hadn’t.

How does the increased competition and clutter in the market affect the need for sticky ideas? For example, how would a consulting firm formulate a sticky idea?

Use your differentiation point—the reason someone should hire you instead of the other guys. Communicate it clearly and concretely. Don’t try too hard to make the language sound “professional”—e.g., “Our world-class team of expert consultants have a combined 114 years of experience across diverse industries.”

Here’s a test of clarity: A lot of customers should see your marketing message and think, “That is definitely not for me.” This is evidence the customers you do want will recognize themselves in your messaging.

A friend and his wife recently purchased a Honda Odyssey van.

They waited about a year from the time they decided to purchase a new van to the time they actually did so.

I would not call them impulsive.

In that year, they did not test-drive any other vans, domestic or foreign. Not one. In fact, they didn’t even test-drive an Odyssey. Not even once. They frequented a Honda dealership only twice, once on a vacation to Minnesota and then again to buy the van. They had never owned a Honda before; the van they drove was a 1998 Dodge Grand Caravan.

There were only two vans in the running: the Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. And my friend’s wife felt the Toyota was not as roomy. So even Toyota really never had a shot. Never was a domestic van considered. Even the color was never really in doubt. She wanted the Ocean Mist.

The only “marketing” that I can see shaping the decision: their experience driving a domestic van for many years and the influence of a brother-in-law, who drove an Odyssey. That’s it!

And I can’t remember one Super Bowl ad for a Honda anything, can you?

So, which auto company would you rather be the Chief Marketing Officer for?

Marketing is so much easier (and less expensive, I would guess) when you have perception on your side.

Marc Gobé is the Chairman & CEO of Desgrippes Gobé Group and author of Emotional Branding—The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People and Citizen Brand. CZ Marketing president Dave Goetz recently interviewed Gobé on how to create brands people truly love—through the power of emotions.

B&S: Emotional Branding has become a business classic. How do you approach the topic?

Marc Gobé: I read a work by Antonio Damasio, the world famous neurologist, who scientifically proved we make decisions based on our intuitions and emotions more than logic. More often our emotions override any other decision-making processes. He also scientifically expressed that people buy products based not on what those products are but what they mean. Based on the experience I had creating products and branding programs for the fashion and fragrance industry, in which there’s nothing to sell except an emotion, I found his argument was right.

There’s a tendency in the branding world to find some kind of dogma that does not account for the world of emotion. In reality, the world of emotion is constantly evolving, because people emotionally are reacting to their environment or living their life based on outside circumstances. For instance, living in a state of fear, as we are right now, impacts how we see products, how we see others, and even how we manage our lives.

How does the constant evolution of emotion affect marketing?

Marc Gobé: Only 50 percent of what we know about people can be probed by traditional research. The other 50 percent we don’t know and we’ll never discover through any research or formula. The marketing industry needs to enter the door of the 50 percent we don’t know about—the door of our imagination. The only way you can really enter and understand that world is not through logic or a process but through the imaginative process.

What happens if you neglect the emotional identity of the individual?

Marc Gobé: If you don’t understand the emotional relationship that people have with what’s meaningful for them in life—what it is that they are really searching for in order to fill some kind of void in their lives or bring some kind of meaning to it—then you can’t communicate with those people.

When it comes to emotional branding, is there a difference between service branding and product branding?

Marc Gobé: I think that is what’s believed, but it’s all about people and their interaction. You can’t be in the service business if people don’t trust you. Take Arthur Anderson, for example. In a world of complete logic, we would have said, “Anderson only had one bad office. Surely there are thousands across the world that had nothing to do with Enron.”