NEW JERSEY, June 24, 2002: Is your brand building a relationship with your physicians and patients? Does every interaction with your brand foster feelings of value, loyalty, and trust? Is there a place for emotional branding -- in pharmaceutical marketing?

Clearly, the concept of emotional branding, a concept coined by advertising and design guru Marc Gobe, has been used to foster the success of consumer brands for years.

The list of examples is long: Jetblue Airlines, Godiva Chocolates, Apple Computers, Nordstroms Stores. Each one has loyal customers, huge followings, incredible buzz, and significant market share.

All have carefully build brand identities based on establishing positive sensory experiences for customers: the design of the planes, the level of the service, the intelligence of written materials, the ergonomics of the stores -- all these attributes and more speak to customers in intimate, "emotional" ways.

They enable the brand to become more than a needed product but a desired brand, an integral part of the customer's lifestyle. Can the same be said for American Airlines, Nestles Chocolates, Hewlett Packard Computers, and Macy's Department stores?

We think that pharmaceutical brand managers can learn a great deal through the study of emotional branding. Emotional branding can move people along a continuum of experiences that begin with trial, lead to acceptance, develop into trust and loyalty until eventually the customer has an emotional bond with the brand. Sounds like a terrific way to build a pharmaceutical brand, especially given that the brand has a lifecycle, and can use all the help it can get.

Examples of the more famous emotional brands -- Viagra, Prilosec (Nexium), Celebrex, Clarinex these are great examples because they all are supported by significant DTC spends. But that doesn't mean that emotional branding is limited to DTC brands. Check your website -- your package design, your journal ad, your sales visual. Your very strategy. Are they aimed at developing relationships with your customers? Are they forming bonds of loyalty with physicians and patients?

If your agency is not suggesting strategies, tactics, and concepts that support emotional branding, we encourage you to ask them about it. If they don't we can point you in the direction of agencies that can.

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