What do you do if your brand's logical reasoning fails to build consumer loyalty and trust?

If your brand logic is failing to build customer loyalty then it means your brand is not resonating with your target audience, which either means your targeting the wrong audience or the way you have branded your business / services / products needs to change to stimulate the emotions you want to see in your audience in the longterm. This long term view is what creates loyalty through consistency.

The Indian consumer is primarily driven by emotion. Your brand story needs to be told with a personal view and connect to your target audience. You have to appeal to their emotional side rather than logical. Open communication builds trust and brand loyalty.

Great brands communicate meaning beyond functionality. They touch people's hearts and minds. Brands that have made themselves a form of self-expression for their customer (Harley Davidson, Apple, etc) are an inspiration to brands trying to build loyalty. They connect with audiences emotionally through the value and association communicated. Good news is too, once established, that emotional resonance / brand loyalty is hard to dislodge.

I prefer to use brand Character, which can be defined by combining brand personality and brand archetype together. Doing this combination means combining the Carl Jung derived archetypes, with the Meyers Briggs personality test to arrive at the Brand Character. This should define who your brand would act as a human.

Social proof is extremely powerful across all industries, especially in the service sector. Testimonials and proof of success or happy customers are the best way to gain trust. This can be compounded through word of mouth or social media brand ambassador with whom your target audience aligns with.

Customer reviews are the best indicator of brand loyalty. A satisfied customer would be better for the brand than spending ad money. Focus on consumer satisfaction and timely response to all feedback positive or negative would reap rich rewards.

I have found that in FMCG, Financial Services or Search Product Marketing appealing to emotions, showing the brand's personality or leveraging social proof still requires a factual/functional basis (logical reasoning) that the brand delivers for the consumer/user. Therefore if the existing premise of that functional basis fails, I believe it is time to find a new logical reasoning with potentially a change in target audience.. i.e. revise the brand value proposition. From my experiences, that would best set the brand to deliver improved value to its target audience and therefore open the way to create new emotional connections with a more relevant personality.

People don’t buy things for logical reasons. They buy them because they connect and identify with the brand. It’s an emotional decision. So instead of talking of the benefits and features highlight what triggers the deepest hopes, dreams and fears eg people want to BELONG to something bigger, they want WARMTH, they want to feel SUPERIOR, they want to be DiFFERENT etc It’s bold & a tough sell to create such messaging but it can pay off big time.

A brands logical reasoning fails to appeal to consumers? Sounds like a poorly conceived brand! I can picture the leadership meeting: "We have a great product, why won't these idiots buy it!" The brand should be driven by the value it creates for its audience, and its story designed to resonate with that audience. The brand can communicate at many levels--a brand hierarchy should include a rational benefit as well as an emotional benefit, and use each of these when appropriate to engage prospects of customers.