How Emotional Design Plays a Role in Building Brand Equity

Internal brand strategies

Building a strong internal brand starts with foundational ideas of environments and experiences within an organization. These experiences, where individuals touch brand, need to deliver a consistent and aligned brand promise. They must rely on design dimensions such as tone of voice, visual look and feel, and interaction to convey desired brand attributes.

Consumers make buying decisions every day based on the way they feel about a brand. That connection is built over time, with a focus on reinforcing brand attributes at every touch-point experience. What they hear, see, read, or experience all plays into the development of that connection. The impact this philosophy has inside the enterprise shouldn’t be ignored. Nurturing the connection between an organization’s brand and their employees and partners, builds emotional ties that can strengthen relationships and directly impact business outcomes.

Emotions connect people to brands

Function is an essential focus of online experiences inside the enterprise, but it can only take you so far. It doesn’t take full advantage of the impact touch-point experiences could have on an individual and their connection to an organization’s brand.

When brand is infused in an experience, ideas like usability or visual appeal begin to influence persuasive emotions, such as affection and attachment. In a consumer context, we may relate some of these emotional outcomes directly to increased consumer advocacy or positive sales. Inside the enterprise, these emotional connections feed ideas of engagement, loyalty, and retention.

As designers, emotional connections must be prevalent in the way we think about the experiences we create. With that, how design makes an end-user feel takes on more meaning and significance.