How Brand Names Attract Buyers

Think of a brand logo. What image pops into your head? Are you imagining golden arches, or maybe a red target? Do you see the slanted lettering on the side of a coke can, or maybe even a swoosh symbol? Companies are famous for this– for making consumers remember the face of their company. But how exactly do they do this?

Companies exploit consumers' emotions such as the desire to gain status, increase self-esteem and be be more desirable by carefully selecting colors, images and fonts and then repeatedly displaying them. 

image source: corporate.target.com

They use fancy fonts and images. The use of certain lettering and imagery tends to trigger the right side of the brain– the side of the brain responsible for interpreting emotions. Generally, words are processed with the left side of the brain, but when they are altered in a way to make them stand out to the reader, they can trigger certain emotions.

Jane Collingwood, therapist and member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP), explains this idea in her article. Collingwood writes “Right-brain involvement in brand name processing was recognized as far back as 1977, when Herbert E. Krugman, manager of corporate public opinion research at General Electric, wrote his essay ‘Memory Without Recall, Exposure Without Perception.’ He theorized that the mere repetition of product brand names sticks in our subconscious due to the right brain locking in on an advertising image. The more rational left brain, which makes conscious comparisons, judgments and rejections, need not be involved for advertising to ‘do its job,’ Krugman argues” (Collingwood). People feel connected to certain brands because of this, and it’s partly the reason why people become so loyal to certain companies.

There are, of course, several factors that lead people gravitate towards brand names. For one, as I had mentioned before, there are positional goods– goods with value based on desirability. People enjoy certain brand names because they think that they’re very valuable, when in reality, there may not be a significant difference in quality compared to lesser priced, similar goods (the only difference being the product’s popularity). There’s also an individual’s self-esteem– cases where an individual feels attached to a certain brand because it’s popular and because it gives them confidence to have that good (a similar concept to positional goods). However, I think the most interesting reason people gravitate toward brand names relies simply on psychology.

You could look at a t-shirt, and think “I guess that shirt seems okay,” or maybe not even be interested in the shirt at all. But when you see a designer brand slapped onto the shirt, it suddenly becomes more attractive to the consumer. It’s crazy to think how much our brain plays a role in the way we perceive a brand name item.

Future research question: what makes a good brand name?