some brands just make you feel good!

You enjoy mapping their communication. Experiencing a string of sensorial encounters — a synaesthetic interplay of sensations blended together.

Like having a good meal, visiting a new city or a night out with friends. Certain brands make you laugh and cry one minute then feel confident and empowered the next. They leave you feeling good because there was a lovely blend to the different feelings you experience.

Whereas other brands make you feel, well almost ill or at least it didn’t feel good to map them. There’s an unease, something doesn’t feel right and it always takes longer to work out what they’re about!

Now, that may seem the most blindingly obvious statement ever!

That certain brands make you feel good while others don’t. But we’ve learnt it’s way more fundamental than it may first appear!

Making you feel good underpins a range of human reward, trust and bonding systems. I could get into loads of behavioural science about how this is fundamental to how humans communicate. How we use empathy to underpin the building blocks of our cultures through smart cells called mirror neurons etc but I won’t!

In short…in an anthropomorphic way… strong brands are like interesting people who make us feel good. We like to be with them and want to hang out with them more. We want to listen to what they say and trust it more. We can relate to them, experience our life through them and importantly learn about ourselves and others from knowing them.

Whilst we all know the language of brands and design is feelings. It’s a language that’s hard to decode. To tune into and pull apart the subtle range of feelings used in a brand’s communication.

But regardless of the challenges it’s something at RADNB, we’re trying to do.