I grew up marketing for big iconic food brands. We received the best training and spent a lot of time analyzing case studies in addition to our day jobs. I remember learning all about functional and emotional benefits, with a focus on building emotional benefits as the top priority. In my time as a consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) marketer, I learned that coming up with an emotional benefit was easy.  However, it was tough to align a relevant emotional benefit to the brand successfully.  I witnessed quite a bit of “over-reaching” and a desire to place brands in an emotional place in the consumer’s lives that they did not accept. This led to declines in yearly profit (sales down and ad costs up) and, in some cases, a damaged reputation.

We (including myself) were so focused on the brand benefits we often didn’t focus our attention on anything else. We may have lied to ourselves and said we concentrated on the entire consumer experience and had a well thought out integrated “path to purchase.” Which meant, any time the consumer saw advertising (TV, Print, Online, Instore, etc.) from our brands, all materials were consistent: the logo, the images, and so on. Hardly an experience.

But the world was changing, and consumers are expecting a different relationship with brands/services. It wasn’t until I left the brand/product industry and entered the service industry that I would learn of the term “omnichannel.” Obviously, if it only is a new buzz word for “path to purchase,” it will not work.  But, what if creating better relationships and experiences with consumers who buy food brands were strategically linked to the functional benefit of the brand. Maybe consumer experience could be the emotional benefit that a brand can deliver on… “this brand knows when to talk to me and how to talk to me,” “this brand knows where it fits in my life,” etc. I challenge all food brands that struggle with emotional brand benefits to focus on consumer journeys. And where and when they can be most relevant to have a conversation about their functional benefits. Maybe that’s the real emotional benefit?