The three facets of brand value
To further comprehend Emotional Friction, we must first grasp its inverse – Emotional Value. The “jobs-to-be-done” hypothesis is one of the strongest frameworks we’ve discovered for understanding emotional worth. Product developer Bob Moesta conceived and defined the jobs-to-be-done thesis, which was later expanded and popularized in the book Competing Against Luck by the late Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and innovation thought-leader.
The foundational principle is that people “hire” products and services to deliver three basic needs: functional value (e.g., it will save you time), social value (e.g., it will impress your friends), and emotional value (e.g., it will bring you joy).
According to Bob Moesta, “These three dimensions of value are present in each and every decision we make about whether or not to buy or try something new.”
When you buy a new winter jacket, for example, these three values are likely to influence your selection in the following ways:
The utility value. How comfortable and dry you feel when wearing the jacket.
Social value. What others may infer about you based on the design and brand of your jacket (fashion conscious, wealthy, earthy, hipster, etc.).
Emotional value. What you think of yourself when you wear it (and even when you see it hanging in your closet).
his paradigm is not just applicable to products and services. It is applicable to any concept or invention. Consider the educational influence of Covid-19. As the country went into lockdown in the spring of 2020, schools at all levels scrambled to adapt their instruction online. Teachers were forced to move their material and teaching to an online setting almost overnight.
Fortunately, videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams were able to grow up to accommodate the surge of additional demand. However, the functional utility of this new technology was only one element of the jigsaw. The second component, which was significantly more sophisticated and difficult, was getting students and staff comfortable with the notion of engaging online. In this scenario, questions like these establish the dimensions of value for teachers:
The utility value. Do online students learn as well as conventional in-person pupils? Is the technology equipped to accommodate the diverse learning demands of the children in the classroom? Is it simple to use?
Social value. How successfully does it facilitate the interpersonal relationships desired by students and teachers? How does its utilization affect how teachers look to students and peers? Is it possible that completely adopting this technology will make a teacher look tech savvy? Could their reticence make them appear out of step with the times?
Emotional value. How secure or vulnerable do instructors feel when utilizing this new technology? Is this trend making you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of technology? Are teachers being set up for success or failure in their careers?
Jobs-to-be-done The most significant development in philosophy was the recognition that value is complex. But, just as emotion may drive a person’s decision to welcome a new concept, it can equally drive us to reject change.
Three facts that marketers consistently overlook
Three things are consistently forgotten by marketers. Okay, not always and not with all advertisers. But there are enough marketers, enough of the time, to matter. sufficient to muddy the waters.
First of all, marketers frequently overlook the fact that consumers don't care about or even like marketing.
There is marketing all around us. Advertising is everywhere. Without sponsorship, nothing is performed. Logos are trendy. It's simple to assume that others care as much as we do. The effects of ads and nudges are small, if not nonexistent, many people deliberately mute or click through ads, habits or friends—not ads or influencers—have the biggest influence on what people buy, according to our own data, which also shows that most ads are forgotten, those that are not forgotten are typically misremembered.
So, marketing resistance is our main operational difficulty.
Second, marketers frequently overlook the fact that entertaining, non-intrusive marketing is the most effective.
Demands are made on individuals via marketing. We really desire people's time and focus. That is an expenditure. It should come as no surprise that individuals expect to see a profit on their investment. However, we also want to see a return on our marketing investments, so we have a propensity to increase frequency and touchpoints rather than quality and originality. However, a poor or tedious advertisement doesn't become better with time. Sure, we can make our points so forcefully that no one will be able to ignore us, but that only brings up the first item we forgot. Our communication dilemma is therefore an overpowering underexposure.
Third, marketers always forget that there is no such thing as a consumer.
Marketing is a lens on the world. A commercial lens. It is a way of seeing the world but it is not the world. Everything related to marketing—viewing, searching, browsing, shopping, buying, etc.—is but a small slice of people’s lives. People often see themselves as consuming, but never as consumers. That’s an artificial marketing construct. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, “Oh, what a great day to be a laundry detergent consumer in a high-value consumer segment about to go on a consumer shopping journey with visions of ads dancing in my consumer head.” So, that’s our strategic challenge—people are people.
Marketing, in my opinion, is a calling. Every day, we assist people in finding answers to challenges large and small in their lives. What could possibly be more satisfying than that? But I also feel that if we didn’t continuously forgetting these few fundamental principles, we would be able to effectively carry out our mission.