But consumers don’t really behave that way. I was reminded of this during a debate over photography with my 13 year-old son. We are both shutter bugs, but our brand affinities are divided. We both started shooting in grade school. I developed an affinity for the Nikon brand in high school, when I would skimp on other teenage luxuries to buy good Nikon glass. My son Luc’s affinity started a little earlier. His school uses Canon equipment in the photo lab, and as a result, he’s become quite a fan. In truth, there is very little difference between the brands. Both brands offer professional grade cameras. Both have legions of famous followers. But neither Luc nor I will concede this point. I will probably go to my grave believing that Nikon is the only brand for a serious craftsman. He’ll probably photograph that experience with a Canon camera.

The irrational consumer is more than a hypothesis. It’s a well-researched reality. In his excellent study, “Product Experience is Seductive”, first published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2002, Stephen Hoch demonstrated that consumers are easily, and often erroneously, persuaded by their brand experience. Hoch describes four aspects of experience that color our brand preference:

1. Experience is engaging
2. Experience is nonpartisan
3. Experience is pseudodiagnostic
4. Experience is endogenous

It is the last two aspects of his study that I find most intriguing. Hoch showed that consumers have a tendency to distort their diagnosis of brand information. If they have a preference for a certain brand, they tend to color any brand comparisons with the preference in mind. This finding flies in the face of conventional branding wisdom, which argues that consumers rationally employ Bayesian logic to purchase decisions. Hoch cites a 1998 study that found that “when equivocal information about two brands is acquired attribute-by-attribute, the evaluation of the next attribute is distorted to support the emergent leader.”

Hoch also describes a fascinating consumer tendency–the tendency to prefer what one already has. “After a decision has been made, consumers engage in a variety of tactics including avoiding negative information and attitude change.” Therein lies the heart of the debate with my son. Despite evidence that might suggest the Canon platform is a viable alternative for me as I prepare to upgrade my camera body, I was unwilling to consider any brand other than Nikon. And Luc scoffed at my lack of sophistication. Surely, he argued, times had changed and Canon was the clear choice. Fathers and sons live for such debates. Brand marketers fail to recognize their underlying message. Brand loyalty often roots in experience, not price/value or quality differentials. Sometimes, the loyalty is tied to a consumer self concept that is validated through ongoing experience–an experience that seduces the consumer and frames their point of view.

A position is a particular point of view or attitude about something. Thus, when a brand is positioned, it is constructed with a outlook. A well-positioned brand can take any subject and interpret it within the worldview of the brand. Positionings are often well-suited for products, where the brand use and scope of interaction is very limited.

On the other hand, a promise is a commitment. It’s not just a point of view. It’s a declaration of intended behavior. That’s why a brand promise is better suited to corporate brands or causes. A brand promise can be applied to many subjects. It doesn’t interpret these subjects as much as it assures you it will do something in relation to them.

The challenge reminds me of a great article penned by Sidney J. Levy and Philip Kotler back in 1971. In “Demarketing. Yes, Demarketing,” they asked somewhat hypothetically how marketing might apply to reverse market situations. We’re very familiar with the conventional use of marketing–trying to drive demand for products and services when there is ample supply. But they asked if marketing, and branding, could be used to discourage customers. Certainly, some marketers have used this in a widespread fashion with dangerous products, such as cigarettes. Levy and Kotler described the tricky process of using demarketing to reduce demand in unfavorable business segments, and they described the ethical issues in doing so. But, while much of their work focused on marketing practices and policies, they didn’t address the big symbolic question: how do you create a brand that discourages product use. It’s worth contemplating. Sometimes, thinking about questions such as these helps the marketer to better the brands that must do the opposite.

One of the most fascinating ways to study brand equity is to study the deviants–the “dark side” of branding. For anyone who thinks that a brand doesn’t have power, look no further than the Mongols, an outlawed US motorcycle gang.

The Mongols took the extraordinary step of securing a trademark for their logo. The brandmark is synonymous with trouble, so much so that the US Department of Justice successfully petitioned for, and was granted, control of the trademarked logo. As a result, the government has the right to seize possession of any item bearing the gang’s logo. The landmark case is causing a first amendment fire storm, but I think branding is the really interesting part of the story. First, you have an example of a government taking control of trademark rights and using those rights to enforce the law. Second, you have a great case of a legendary brand — a mark that is associated with a belief system that drives a narrative and a culture. It is a great example of a brand as the centerpiece of a narrative and social conflict. The brand can literally get you arrested–or at least detained.

Sometimes, the words a brand uses are out of voice but the brand experience still feels consistent. When that happens, it’s usually the visual system kicking in. Because our minds are wired to read more from pictures than words, we skip over the inconsistencies in the verbal expression and read the visual elements that are consistently in voice. Which leads me to the topic of this short post.

As more brands use digital media to connect with their customers, the compensatory yin and yang of verbal and visual identity are often separated. An email, SMS message, or chat room cannot always convey the visual crutches that bolster poorly chosen words. The simple solution is to pay more attention to the words, but then there’s the issue of context. When we speak to one another in person, we can read each other’s body language. That helps to provide cues about our intentions and our state of mind. On the telephone, you can hear vocal inflections that convey meaning. Try reading context from an SMS message. This very limitation is the origin of the dreaded smiley.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how a brand develops digital body language — mechanisms to compensate for the limitations of the medium. I’ve been impressed by W Hotels new SMS service for its most loyal customers. Somehow, they seem to achieve the right tone and style despite the fact that there is no hip imagery or house music to parlay the brand. The question is: how does a B2B brand achieve the same result? What do you think?

The (maybe not so) latent nerd in me still gets fired up about NASA and the space program. These photos of a recent Discovery launch are a great insider’s look at how the orbiter is assembled, prepped and launched.

I’m fascinated by the NASA brand. It has such a rich narrative legacy, and yet in recent years, it seems to have lost some of its luster. The agency is still as vibrant and exciting as it was 20 years ago, but the brand system is falling apart. It’s time for some branding.