👋, I’m Kimberly. I’ve been creating obsession-worthy brands for the past fifteen years. And now, I’m giving away my secrets every week in this newsletter.
My son Chell turns eighteen months old in a few weeks.
And the closer he gets to the much-hyped “terrible twos”—the more he gets upset when life deals him a much-confusing situation.
“Chell, Mommy needs you to not shake her legs while she slices vegetables with this big knife.”
“Chell, I’m turning off the faucet in the bathtub because it’s full of water already. “
“Chell, those Cheerios you threw on the floor are not for eating anymore.”
Any of these types of occurrences can be the tipping point for what we’ve started to refer to around the house as "Big Feelings”—those moments when Chell’s teeny tiny twenty-two pound body is SO flooded with heightened emotions that he doesn’t know what to do… so he cries.
Our term “Big Feelings” got me thinking about the heightened role of emotions in branding—and how brands that center themselves around a “Big Feeling” are the most identifiable, the most convincing, and the most memorable.
What is a “Big Feelings” Brand?
For today, I’m defining a Big Feelings Brand as any brand that makes you as a consumer feel a strong and genuine emotion whenever you interact with it.
And the emotions consumers feel can span three categories:
Emotions about themselves
Now that I’m interacting with this brand, I feel ___ about myself.Emotions about the activity they’re about to do
Now that I’m interacting with this brand, I feel ___ about what I’m about do.Emotions about the community or world they’re impacting with their actions
Now that I’m interacting with this brand, I feel ___ about my community or my world.
Why Is It Better to Be a Big Feelings Brand?
Emotions are the most powerful things in the world. This is why people often fear them—and are so bent on controlling them.
Behind the scenes, the emotions we feel convey messages to us.
Emotions make us aware of things in the present
Emotions prepare us for things happening in the future
Emotions motivate us to take an action
In his book “Coherence,” Dr. Alan Watkins explores emotion as the link between biology and behavior. He says that “e-motion” is actually “energy in motion.”
Emotions act as conductors—spurring us to make moves. This is why emotions are particularly good at driving people to make immediate decisions, or to do things in the moment that might be out of character or might not happen if we gave them further consideration.
Brands that play in the emotional space convey their messages more energetically. And being a brand that makes someone feel something is one of the elements that separates great brands from so-so ones.
It’s no wonder that according to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, the majority of purchasing decisions are subconscious—80% driven by emotions and 20% by normal reasoning.
Because emotions are so energetically powerful and influential, I like to have my branding clients pick a singular emotion (aka a Big Feeling) that they always want their brands to inspire in customers.
Why “Happy” Can’t Be Your Brand’s Emotion
Now, if you ask someone to list out “emotion” words—the ones that immediately come to mind are the same ones you’ll find in basic emojis.
Happy! Sad! Angry! Surprised!
But these top-of-mind emotions are too generic to be an effective choice for your brand’s Big Feeling.
It’s too easy for a brand to say it wants to make customers happy. Of course they do—because happy customers buy products.
Research from Daniel Goleman and the Dalai Lama shows that there are actually 34,000 different physiological feelings that can be experienced in the human body.
That’s 33,999 opportunities to get more specific about your brand’s Big Feeling and do better than just “happy.”
Spin the Wheels of Emotion
I went out in search of the most user-friendly and useful way of digging into types of emotions for your brand—and I discovered the Wheel of Emotion.
The original concept of a Wheel of Emotion was created by US psychologist Dr. Robert Plutchik to help people make sense of their 34,000 different feelings.
This wheel divides our emotions into 8 primary emotions—and provides layers of gradation for how intense the emotion is (for example, Boredom at its most intense form can turn to Loathing) and spaces where secondary emotions form from combinations of the primary emotions (for example, Serenity plus Acceptance gives rise to Love).
Other psychologists have taken the original Wheel of Emotion and built it out even further to show more nuances and layers of feeling that drive the primary emotions.
My favorite version of the wheel for thinking about your brand’s Big Feeling is this example from Dr. Gloria Willcox—which goes deep into the positive emotions:
How Does This Wheel Work in Action?
To give the wheel a literal spin, I took a tour of my house—and gave the brands I’ve bought my version of the Marie Kondo “Spark Joy” test.
For those of you living under a rock (and by rock, I mean a pile of Amazon boxes),
Marie Kondo is the insanely sweet queen of organization whose book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up sparked a worldwide cleaning movement.
Marie Kondo “loves mess.” This is literally her face when she sees a messy room she’s about to clean.
Her method of tidying involves having you pick up every object individually, and deciding whether it “sparks joy.”
For my version, I picked up objects from brands individually. But, instead of asking whether the object sparked joy, I asked myself whether it sparked ANY of the positive emotions on the wheel.
Here were the most emotionally impactful brands I found—and where they landed.
Brand #1: Dyson
I have a few Dyson products in my apartment: a full-sized vacuum, a handheld, and a hairdryer.
When I picked up each of these appliances, I could point to one immediate Big Feeling: Powerful.
Everything about these appliances—from the bold colors to the exposed insides to the physical feeling of force when I turned them on—made me feel amped, self-reliant, and ready for action… whether I was about to suction up some of Chell’s Cherrios from the floor or put a curl into my hair.
Brand #2: Kin
For those who haven’t seen it, Kin is a delightful non-alcoholic beverage made for non-drinkers like me, so we can get some adaptogenic effects and feel like we’re part of the party without imbibing.
When I picked up both the glass bottle and the can from Kin, I got a Big Feeling: Intrigued.
The quirkily elegant font, eye-catching colors, and messaging that reads “Euphorias for Humankind” all made me want to know more.
I was 100% enticed—and interested to see what happened when I drank this drink.
Brand #3: Crabtree & Evelyn’s Evelyn Rose Line
I may be a little biased about this brand, because I worked on it…
But, when I picked up my Velvet Body Melt and Femme de Force Scent from Evelyn Rose, I had a clear Big Feeling: Awakened.
It’s worth noting that all of the products in the Evelyn Rose line have a very distinct rose scent. I’m not a person who had ever gone for a rose scent before. I thought roses were too stuffy and had old-lady vibes.
This rose though, is very feminine and also very modern. The packaging is pink, but not overwhelmingly girly. And the messaging on the delicate-but-bold illustrations reads “Unleash Your Unique Nature,” “Wild Beauty,” and “Mix Your Petal with Your Metal.”
All of this combines to create the freshly Awakened emotion I feel.
Bonus Brands
After the Big Feelings tour of my apartment, I was thinking about other brands than weren’t necessarily in my space now—but had given me a Big Feeling in the past that was so memorable, I didn’t need an object in hand.
Virgin America: Expectant
… because they made flying fun again—and it was an experience I looked forward to on a consistent basisRitual Vitamins: Assured
… because they literally exposed what was inside of my vitamin and gave me every indicator of trust for a scientific brandMethod: Considerate
… because they made me feel like I was doing something good for my home and my planet by using their cleaning products
In Conclusion
As we know from Chell, emotions aren’t always so easy to process. And picking a Big Feeling for your brand might not come easily either.
But I promise that sitting down and doing the hard work of exploring all of the emotions your brand could give off is worth it.
Spin the wheel, give different emotions a test drive—then pick your one Big Feeling to drive off into the sunset with…
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About Me
I help early stage founders create the kind of brands that get customers so obsessed, they’ll do your advertising for you.
Based on my experience founding my own consumer brand, I developed The Branding Sprint—a uniquely collaborative, streamlined, and agile approach to brand creation.
Click here to learn more about The Branding Sprint, or schedule a call with me.