Set Your Wellness Brand Apart in 2024, with a More Mindful and Fun Approach!
In today’s market, where consumers are drowning in a sea of noisy messages, setting your brand apart is no small feat. As a CEO, marketing director, or event organizer working in the health and wellness space, you know how challenging it can be to stand out while keeping up with the noise. You must also ensure that your brand delivers high-quality experiences that enhance your customers' well-being, which often requires... Well, the opposite of noise!
How can we strategically position our brands to deeply connect with our audience, without resorting to flashy trends?
Unfortunately, nowadays we're all competing to stay on top of mind with more social media, more ads, more marketing, bigger and louder events, and bolder experiences. Fortunately, trends might not always be the “right” way!
In fact, the noisier the world becomes, the harder it is to stay relevant, as all our efforts get lost in a sea of meaningless background noise. And here opens up our chance!
The secret to setting our brand apart lies in creating something different. Something relevant. Something meaningful! Because truth is: people don't look for more noise, they look for meaningful experiences!
So we need a more sophisticated approach that taps into the essence of human perception, leveraging the full spectrum of our sensory experiences and our most meaningful values.
Thanks to neuroscience, synesthesia and archetypal psychology, we can offer a more nuanced and powerful methodology that transforms brand experiences from ordinary to extraordinary—without all the noise (neurodiverse brains appreciate it!).
Here’s how:
The Neuroscience of Branding
A brand is a series of impressions an entity has on a group of individuals. Through each contact, experience, and encounter, they form an idea of the brand's concept, personality, character, and values. At each touchpoint, an emotional bond is formed and nurtured. This builds trust and makes the relationship more meaningful over time. This mindful engagement fosters long-term loyalty.
Understanding how to leverage these “impressions” to shape perception and make them as desired, is the secret behind growing successful brands that deeply resonate with customers. For this reason, understanding how the brain processes information and how these processes influence perception, behavior, and decision-making is fundamental to optimize our brand and positioning strategy.
Our brains perceive reality and information through the senses, which are transformed into feelings, producing a chemical response (emotions) by the subconscious to maintain inner balance. This means we are wired to respond to sensory-rich experiences, which can activate the brain’s reward centers and create lasting positive associations with a brand.
For example, when meeting a new person, our first impression is shaped by data we aren’t aware of: their skin tone, changes in colors as their emotions shift, lighting, environment, tone of voice, body language, gestures, micro-facial expressions, clothes, colors, style, and even perfume. Even the difference in clothing material can change our impression of a person, although we don’t consciously think about it.
Studies have shown that incorporating sensory elements into marketing can enhance brand recognition by up to 70% and brand recall by up to 40% because multi-sensory experiences engage the subconscious mind, where decisions are made. This is due to how the subconscious brain works: all our senses (20+) act as a bridge between the external world and our internal world, necessary for our recognition and orientation.
For example, the famous Coca-Cola Christmas campaigns, with their bright red branding and festive jingles, and the stories and emotions conveyed through all the senses, are prime examples of how sensory branding can evoke emotions of joy and nostalgia, fostering deep connections with consumers. Associating their brand with a powerful ideal (the feelings and emotions of Christmas) using specific sensory stimuli makes these campaigns unforgettable and keeps the brand top of mind.
This is why creating multisensory experiences is crucial for health and wellness brands, where emotional connection and trust are paramount.
But how can we leverage neuroscience insights in a more practical way? Here's where all the fun starts!
Collective Unconscious for Meaningful Branding
For more than 25,000 years, we’ve been sharing stories to teach adults and children all over the world. These stories have traveled through generations, societies, cultures, human evolution, and beliefs practically unaltered. Surprisingly, we can find these same patterns in the stories and characters in completely unrelated cultures, countries, and languages.
Filled with symbolic meaning, these stories express our psyche's most basic human needs, fears, desires, values, and motivations. They are represented through fairy tales, rituals, religions, dreams, artistic expression, and more. Based on Jungian psychology, these so-called abstract forms, ideals, patterns, or archetypes, are the expression of our “collective unconscious." These aren’t only thought patterns (connected with every other thought pattern) but also emotional experiences: only if it has an emotional and feeling value for an individual is this ideal alive and meaningful.
By aligning your brand with specific universal symbols, you can tap into these strong emotional responses and create a more relatable and impactful narrative that speaks to the subconscious mind of your audience. This approach helps in building a strong, cohesive brand and experiences that align with the values and aspirations of your target audience.
In my approach, I help brands identify and align with the archetypes that resonate most with their target audience. This alignment creates a strong emotional bond, making the brand’s message and experience more relatable and meaningful, driving engagement and loyalty.
What do Archetypes, Metaphors, Dreams, and Fairy Tales have to do with Branding??
Whereas most marketers and brand strategists systematically resort to twelve brand archetypes, understanding the concept of the collective unconscious and the psychic drivers beyond these ideals is so crucial in leveraging archetypal psychology correctly.
While using twelve brand archetypes can be extremely helpful in defining the direction of the brand in the beginning stages, to craft the personality, voice and story, we have to remember that these universal symbols exist in infinite forms, and carry deep meaning and emotions into our subconscious, so we shouldn't reduce our chances to create something unique and truly meaningful by limiting us to these twelve.
As humans, we have been using fairy tales to teach moral lessons, educate children, and deepen our bonds while spending meaningful time together. The subconscious brain, as seen again and again in different types of therapy, including hypnosis, does not speak or understand our everyday language. In fact, it has its own language: metaphors.
Even without realizing it, we speak in metaphors all the time; that's how we can understand each other. And that's how we express these archetypal forms. Dreams, fairy tales, symbols, colors, forms, spaces, idioms, and so on are all metaphors of the subconscious mind, sometimes becoming meaningful patterns (archetypes).
We use metaphors and analogies to understand abstract or unfamiliar concepts, to teach children moral lessons, to remember facts and data, and also to heal.
Our subconscious will integrate those metaphors, filled with symbolic elements and archetypal energy into the scaffolding our knowledge, skills, judgmental abilities, memory, or even to change habits and behaviors.
For example, metaphors have proven crucial in clinical settings to help patients in their healing process, as they allow them to connect metaphorical representations of their fears or traumas through symbolic associations without having to consciously re-enact their pain, as seen in the clean language method by David Grove, hypnosis, Ericksonian techniques, mindscape, and cognitive
Therapists also emphasize sensory experiences to engage the subconscious mind, for a more successful session.
These metaphors are the expression of archetypes in more tangible forms, so we can use archetypal psychology to blend subconscious patterns found in fairy tales, dream psychology and other sources, to add more depth to the experience our brand creates, making it even more relatable and impactful.
These patterns are conveyed through multi-sensory metaphors to engage the subconscious and immerse the audience into the vibe and soul of the brand, by crafting stories that reflect the customers' values and mission.
We can leverage isomorphic metaphors to improve our customers' well-being integrating them into our brand storytelling in marketing, or when creating events, or when delivering a training/course to facilitate the learning experience, or even when making important decisions for our internal brand culture, playing with infinite possibilities of the subconscious realm.
Plus, we can play with a more dreamlike and fun narrative, if we wish to!
Colors & Synesthesia
One of the most powerful tools to convey stories is... color!
Vision accounts for 80% of our understanding of the world and forms the biggest slice of our perceptual experience. Yet, color affects more than our vision: it enters our body through our skin and impacts our endocrine system, and in several studies, they have noticed how even blind people can perceive the sense of colors too.
Colors are part of the subconscious language, carrying meaning, symbolism, and emotions transmitted through generations. Choosing colors for an experience and brand by "thinking" (rational mind) doesn’t allow our narrative to truly impact the subconscious, as our mind works through feelings, and colors are an intuitive experience.
Color shapes our understanding of the world, our orientation, and the meaning and metaphorical value of our stories. They affect our behavior, thoughts, moods, and actions. In fact, 90% of our buying choices are driven by colors.
The human brain responds to colors in profound ways, making them an essential element of any branding strategy. Different nuances in colors can convey different messages and create different atmospheres, significantly impacting how customers perceive and interact with your brand.
These nuances are often overlooked, but materials, textures, space, lights, and finishes can have a great impact on how color is perceived. Even the quantity and associations of colors can completely change a narrative at a subconscious level, risking creating an incongruent experience between the conscious brand story and what the brand conveys subconsciously.
As a color consultant, I always suggest my clients to not use colors focusing on the aesthetics or their “meaning”: they shouldn't be just visually appealing or “rationally” chosen, as colors are meant to evoke specific emotions and memories. Hue, saturation, tones, tints, etc not only affect the aesthetics, but also the other senses, hence transforming how the brand is perceived holistically, the implied associations, narratives, emotions and so on..
As well as colors, textures should enhance the tactile experience, reinforcing the brand message. Sounds and scents should complement the visual and tactile elements, creating a cohesive sensory environment that engages the audience on a deeper level. This way, we can create more congruent experiences.
This “cohesive multisensory” approach is called “synesthesia,” the blending of the senses, and it involves creating experiences where sensory inputs overlap, enhancing perception and emotional impact.
In practice, this means designing brand elements that work harmoniously across multiple senses.
Synesthesia, the phenomenon where one sensory experience involuntarily triggers another, provides a fascinating framework for creating multi-sensory brand experiences. While traditional branding often focuses on visual elements, my approach as a synesthete, integrates sound, touch, taste, smell, texture, spatial perception, and more to create a holistic sensory experience that engages and delights customers on many levels. After all, a brand is an experience, and customers get to be immersed in it at every touchpoint.
By designing brands and experiences that engage different senses, we can reinforce the archetypal narratives and forge deeper emotional connections with our audiences, enhancing brand loyalty and retention.
Leveraging subconscious communication helps in priming customers, instead of having to persuade or convince them during the sales process, which can make marketing more effective and lower costs.
In my work, I use color both strategically and intuitively to enhance the sensory experience and align it with the brand’s narratives, manipulating how different sensory inputs interact to create a cohesive brand message, at a subconscious level.
Enhancing Health Transformation Through Branding
The goal in the health and wellness space is to truly impact people's well-being. Using these techniques, deeply engaging the subconscious mind by infusing the brand narrative with meaning, ensures that the transformation we provide is more powerful, quicker, and longer-lasting. When the brand is consistently associated with positive subconscious associations and experiences, the impact on well-being is enhanced, so we can help people in their healing journey in a more mindful and meaningful way.
An intentional approach to multisensory stimulation allows brands to be more accessible and inclusive without creating overwhelming experiences for neurodiverse, or trauma-biased brains, who are generally more sensitive to sensorial stimuli.
For example, very often, we are immersed in experiences that are “too loud,” like when I went to see a “Summer Night Magic Show” with some friends and one of them had to walk away after a few minutes because the speaker was overwhelming her, and she couldn't enjoy the experience. Although there are great options out there to help us stay sane in these environments, like special earplugs that allowed me to stay for the entire show, we could try and take precautions when setting up the experience by avoiding the trap of thinking that “loud is better.”
For example, many brands go “bigger, louder, brighter,” hoping to catch attention. Unfortunately, this might only catch attention for a brief moment and doesn't create a deeper, meaningful journey for the participants, resulting in a weaker brand presence and associations.
Sometimes, neurodivergent-friendly brands try to reduce the sensorial stimuli to a minimum, lowering the noise level, yet the colors used are visually loud and noisy, creating an overwhelming experience for sensitive people.
So to make the brand more meaningful and emotionally engaging, increasing customer loyalty while enhancing their well-being, we can immerse customers in cohesive and delightful sensorial experiences that heal them at a deep subconscious level through colors and creative narratives that reflect their values and mission, without overwhelming them.
Practical Application & Case Studies
Implementing these concepts in your brand strategy can enhance the power of transformative experiences that resonate deeply with clients.
Here are some practical steps to achieve this:
1. Define the brand message, essence, personality, vision, values, feelings, and audience, in depth.
2. Once you have those, define a multi-sensory concept that encompasses the overall vibe of the brand, highlights all the elements and resonates with the audience (you can create a mood board, vision board, brief or anything that works for your creative process)
3. Supercharge the concept by defining an archetypal subconscious pattern: What types of character, story, and environment does your brand remind you of? What emotions and feelings are connected to these elements? (remember: an archetype is active only when there is emotional resonance in the individual)
4. Once you have these elements, you can bring the brand to life with more tangible elements, like a theme and metaphors that enhance the concept.
5. Go deeper! Identify the symbols, sensorial stimuli, and colors that express those emotions, feelings, and subconscious forms, represented in your theme and metaphors.
6. Integrate all these elements into the experience, adding details and refining the journey, keeping the archetypes in mind to maintain a cohesive set of sensations and feelings.
This is super important as it's where the magic happens in making the brand more meaningful and memorable!
• Bonus: Consider how all these elements can be expressed in your marketing to ensure the brand is cohesive at every touchpoint, possibly avoiding common marketing gimmicks that could dim the psychological impact of your brand.
For example, my client Jillian is a mother of two, a blind entrepreneur, and a holistic health practitioner with a cheerful personality. A real force of nature.
As she renovated her Healing Arts Center in Tennessee after 12 years in business, we rebranded it and brought her joyful personality to life. We infused her brand with a colorful narrative of a spring flower field, reinforced it with archetypal patterns that bring out the core values of the brand to make it more meaningful and recognizable, and complemented it with sensorial stimuli to bring the story to life more congruently.
So Jillian has now transformed her center, classes, and events into unique experiences that truly convey her magic and speak to the most powerful psychic desires of her customers, and has a clear direction to keep her brand meaningful, relevant, and consistent through time and at every touch point.
You can explore the case study more in-depth here.
The Future of Branding and Wellness Experiences
Integrating multi-sensory and archetypal metaphors into your brand strategy is not just about being different; it’s about being memorable and meaningful by tapping into clients’ emotions and subconscious perceptions, going deeper than most other brands.
By understanding and leveraging the principles of synesthesia, neuroscience, and archetypal psychology, and through the strategic use of color and sensorial stimuli, we can create holistic brand experiences that captivate, differentiate your company in a competitive market, solidify your position in the hearts and minds of customers, and promote well-being, ultimately driving long-term brand loyalty and advocacy.
Every day more, people want to live experiences that are meaningful to them, actively participating in brands' journeys and stories, they want to buy based on values they share with the brands, and not just passively sink in marketing noise.
If you’re ready to transform your brand strategy and create immersive, multi-sensory experiences that change the world, let’s connect! Together, we can unlock the full potential of your brand, creating experiences that resonate deeply with your audience and drive meaningful success.