Being an "emotional" brand

If your brand ain't got any emotion embedded in it, then you’re potentially set for huge brand disaster. 

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By Tom McCrorie, Founder at Atom and PicAstroApp.com

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Nowadays, imbuing emotion into your brand through well-executed branding is key. People simply expect things to work these days — that’s a given — so your differentiator is how emotional you can make your brand. Let me be honest here, and this could be slightly controversial, but good brands don’t live in strategy decks, guidelines, or investor pitch decks. Sure - those are important and play a role in honing the brand, but to create a strong, emotional brand, things need to be emotionally clever.

Brands live in people's heads. More importantly, emotional branding lives in customers' feelings. As Marty Neumeier said, a brand is a collective gut feeling about a business, not a logo. I’ll add to this by saying that your brand should form an emotional connection with your customer. Logic rarely builds loyalty. Logic might get you some customers when your brand shows up in the right places, but if the brand (we all know a brand isn’t just a logo) isn’t authentic emotionally, customers will sniff that out right away.

Specs, features, and rational benefits fade into the background the moment another brand comes along with something faster, cheaper, and shinier. What sticks in my head is how a brand makes me feel. As a branding exponent as well as a customer, it’s the reason people queue overnight for a product launch or pay extra for coffee with a brand name written on the cup.

If you strip away emotion, you strip away memory. And, if people can’t remember you, it makes it impossible for your brand to stand out! We like to think of ourselves as rational decision-makers, but in reality, we’re not. Behavioural science has shown time and again that emotions drive decisions first, and logic comes in later to justify these decisions. When you walk into a shop, you’re immediately drawn to the new brand you see on the shelf. Walking into a car showroom, you’re drawn to a particular colour of car. Why? Did it have a feeling of nostalgia? Was it your favourite colour growing up? People don’t buy from an insurance brand because of a perfect policy breakdown: they buy because they feel secure. People don’t stick with a sportswear brand because of fabric specs: they stay because they feel part of something bigger. Nike, GymShark, you name it.

Colour psychology also gets over-simplified: red equals passion, blue represents trust. In reality, it’s far more nuanced than that. It’s about place, combinations, tone, and context. A deep navy can feel stable in a finance brand but oppressive and too mature in a kids' toy brand. A searing yellow can make a music festival identity feel vibrant and energetic, but cheapen a luxury watch brand.

Typography works the same way. A geometric sans feels clean and efficient, or cold and faceless, if you’re not careful. A humanist serif can suggest warmth and tradition, or just as easily, dusty and irrelevant. The point isn’t to follow a chart of associations, but to understand the emotional charge each choice carries in context. Brands that ignore emotion end up competing only on prices and features, and we all know that competing on price alone is a slippery slope to the bottom of the branding hill.

Ironically, branding is often dismissed as surface emotion by those who don’t "get it", but if executed cleverly and expertly, it goes far deeper. It’s one of the fastest emotional triggers we have. The wrong choice of colour or typeface, or leaving something out entirely, can kill a brand before a single word is read. Crowds of customers will respond with pitch forks if the emotion isn’t right: just look at what happened with Cracker Barrel.

Emotional semiotics should be considered at every stage of the journey in creating a brand. Safe, middle-of-the-road design decisions might not offend everyone, but they sure as Hell won’t move anyone’s emotions enough to trigger making a decision. Plus, emotionally moving people is the whole point of branding, isn’t it? Branding for emotional experiences doesn’t stop at a logo or colour palette: it runs through every touchpoint where your customer encounters your brand. Tone of voice is one of the most overlooked. A bank that writes in jargon may be technically accurate, but it makes customers feel small and excluded. Shift the tone to plain-spoken reassurance, and you’re building trust with every word.

The customer journey also matters as part of that emotional drive. A smooth, frictionless checkout doesn’t just save time: it signals reliability and competence. A surprise moment, unexpected packaging detail, or a handwritten note can spark delight. These are emotional "hits" that stick. Apple's packaging is a wonderful example of emotional semiotics, as the vacuum friction of the box opening takes just long enough to give that feeling of quality. The time it takes to open the box has been methodically designed to make it feel first-class.

Environments, whether digital or physical, carry emotional weight. The lighting in a shop, the sound design in an app, the micro interactions in a game, and the way staff greet you all feed into how a brand feels. Good brands design these cues intentionally. Forgettable brands leave them to chance. Emotionally clever brands know how to get it right every time, and each of these moments adds up to an emotional sum total.

Let’s talk about the big C: consistency. Emotional branding works best when it’s consistent. A warm, welcoming brand tone means nothing if the customer service team is robotic. A luxurious visual identity collapses if the packaging feels flimsy. Is it beginning to become clear? The emotions need to be consistent and truly connect.

People sense dissonance faster than they can articulate it. If your website visuals feels playful but your copy reads like a court summons, customers don’t consciously “spot” the inconsistency: they just feel uneasy. That unease doesn’t build loyalty. When visual, verbal, and experiential design all line up, the emotional signal strengthens. That’s when a brand moves from simply being noticed to being remembered. Emotion should be built into every brand strategy, no matter what type of emotion that may be. The biggest risk, however, isn’t making people feel the wrong emotion: it’s making them feel nothing at all.

Too many brands play it fast and safe, aiming for neutrality in the hope of appealing to everybody. But, neutrality is banal and forgettable. A brand that tries to be everything to everyone typically ends up invisible. Strong brands take a stand on how they want people to feel. Sometimes, that may mean polarising audiences. That’s fine. Indifference is far more dangerous than dislike.

You can’t fake it with a colour wheel or a mood board. It has to be built deliberately, lived consistently, and felt at every touchpoint, and it needs to be authentic. At the end of the day, people don’t remember what you said or did in neat bullet points. They remember how you made them feel, and that’s the true measure of brand experience.

Emotion is your invisible architect of any brand experience. It’s what gives design a meaning beyond aesthetics, and what turns ordinary interactions into lasting memories. Be authentically emotional with your brand. In a sea of AI and monotonousness, it’s more important now than ever.