Think you know what customers want? Think again.

Daryl Travis' new book,

Daryl Travis' new book, "How Does It Make You Feel?: Why Emotion Wins the Battle of Brands" illuminates scientific findings of how our minds work. These understandings can give companies insights for connecting with customers on deep, emotional levels in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. (Photo: Business Wire)

"Today's marketplace is so crowded, very few people have the time or the inclination to search through product information. By now, they've seen it all. Parity rules and acceptable performance is the price of entry. This has profound implications for how companies sell products, services and ideas," said Daryl Travis, CEO of market research firm Brandtrust.

According to Daryl, buying decisions are made on promises that transcend products, and promises are rooted in human emotions.

"It's all about things that happen in the emotional brain. It's finding an authentic, meaningful difference that will demonstrate why your brand matters to your customer. It's about facing reality--people are drawn to brands because of feelings not facts," he said.

This means a tough uphill battle for marketshare and influence for many companies trying to grow their value--and beat competitors--in 2014.

How to marshal the forces needed to create and sustain a great brand in today's ultra competitive world is the subject of a new book by Daryl. How Does It Make You Feel?: Why Emotion Wins the Battle of Brands illuminates scientific findings of how our minds work. These understandings can give companies specific and tried-and-true insights for connecting with customers on deep, emotional levels in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

The book is available in print format today on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Does-Make-Emotion-Battle-Brands/dp/0989710300.

Drawing on nearly 30 years of advising many of the largest brands in the world using social science research, Daryl offers five specific ways companies can gain marketshare, influence and win over competitors' customers in 2014:

1. Discover what actually motivates customers. Odds are, it's not the functional benefits of your product or the obvious rational needs customers say they need.

2. Isolate the moments that matter most to customers as they engage with your brand or your competitors' brand. Some touch points matter more than anything in your customer's experience. Optimize those moments, and you'll optimize your brand.

3. Spend quality time with customers. Look beyond the obvious. Strive to understand not only what they're doing, but why they're doing it. Understanding why may reveal deep insights about their needs and wants that can give you a competitive advantage.

4. Obsess on customers' experience with your brand. When all is said and done, brand loyalty is achieved through brand experience. What your brand does is more important than what your brand says.

5. Expand innovation boundaries. Use a deep understanding of your customers' experience to think beyond product development. Innovations that enhance experience or service levels succeed more, cost less and have greater impact than new products.

"Deep understanding of customers' emotions--even in the B2B world--can transform a business and drive brand growth. Social science research techniques give us insights that go far in developing powerful and lasting emotional connections with customers," said Daryl.

How Does It Make You Feel is Daryl Travis' second book. He published Emotional Branding: How Successful Brands Gain the Irrational Edge in 2000. Daryl's work leverages recent breakthroughs in the social sciences to uncover the underlying emotions for how people really feel. The book's topics include:

  • How to uncover people's hidden motivations
  • The Six Brand Imperatives
  • Why branding really is brain surgery
  • The purpose-driven brand: Why it's important to stand for something important
  • Big Data: Drowning in data, but starving for insights
  • The worst thing a brand can do: Ask customers what they think
  • Why the employee is the brand
  • Social media and the one-to-one revolution
  • The way to effective communication
  • How principles form a brand's destiny

About Brandtrust
Brandtrust is a unique research and strategic planning firm that promises to change how you think about your customers and how you can improve your business.

Brandtrust developed Emotional Inquiry®, a social science research methodology designed to help organizations understand deeply held customer motivations and expectations. Recent scientific data have revealed that subconscious neural processing largely drives behavioral motivations. Thus, it can be difficult for people to access their motivations. When asked, point blank, why we do the things we do, we are unable to answer and default to rational explanations that only seem to explain our behaviors. Emotional Inquiry provides a channel through which the subconscious, emotional processes can be accessed and study participants are able to describe deeply held emotions and motivations that drive their behavior.

For more information, visit www.brandtrust.com, the Brandtrust blog or Brandtrust on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Van Nostran Communications
Jill Van Nostran, 330-347-2386
jill@jillvancommunications.com