What does your brand feel like?

The truth behind the ‘feel’ of a brand

“Is brand a fancy, or a feeling? No.”

A borrowed line, slightly reworked from Hartley Coleridge, but its bluntness cuts through today’s noise. Your brand is not a whim. It isn’t a campaign built around a single emoji, or a slogan that only works when the algorithm favours you. It’s something steadier that customers rely on when everything else is in flux.

That ‘feel’ is worth chasing. Emotion drives up to 70% of purchase decisions, even in sectors we consider rational. Whether it’s B2B software or toothpaste, gut instinct wins out more often than spreadsheets and sound evidence do. Get the emotional layer right, and you create resonance that logic alone can’t replicate.

Emotion is direction

There’s a misconception that ‘brand feel’ is soft, abstract, maybe even superficial. But research tells a different story. One study from Edelman shows that 84% of consumers need to believe a brand shares their values before they’ll part with their money. Brand values aren’t simply a positioning tool, they’re the foundation of trust. And without trust, the sale rarely happens.

The same study found that six in ten people now choose, or actively avoid, brands based on where they stand on political and cultural issues. So it matters to audiences when brands show up with clarity and consistency. Silence can feel like indecision. A vague strapline won’t protect you when people are looking for a point of view.

There’s a commercial upside too. According to recent stats, 68% of businesses that maintain brand consistency see more than 10% revenue growth. That’s because consistency builds memory, trust and traction – the stuff growth is made of.

But here’s the wake-up call: three-quarters of today’s brands could disappear tomorrow, and most people wouldn’t notice. The brands that matter are the ones that mean something. If yours doesn’t, there’s work to do.

Fancy, feeling and the truth that anchors it all

Coleridge described love as “immortal as immaculate truth”. There’s a lesson here for businesses. A lasting brand needs that same sense of permanence: a core truth that doesn’t wobble when trends blow through.

Think of it this way:

• Fancy is the flash – a one-off campaign, a reactive post, a clever moment in the feed. It’s fun, but fleeting.
• Feeling is the emotional afterglow – the way someone thinks about you after they’ve used your product or seen your name.
• Truth is the foundation that everything else rests on. It’s the deep, enduring promise that stays intact even when the market shifts.

When you treat ‘feel’ as a visible layer of that deeper truth, your brand becomes coherent. Messaging lands harder. Campaigns align. And you stop reinventing the wheel every quarter.

When purpose holds, even the lights-out moments shine

Brands that understand their truth gets stronger in the turbulence, they don’t simply survive it. Take Patagonia for example. Back in 2020, they pulled all advertising from Facebook and Instagram. A bold move, especially for a consumer-facing brand. But the impact was minimal. Their commitment to sustainability and activism resonated so strongly with customers that sales held firm, with annual revenues still topping $1bn, despite spending less than $100m on advertising.

Apple is another case in point. Its truth, beautifully engineered tech that fits seamlessly into people’s lives, hasn’t changed in decades. But the business has. Revenue from wearables like the Apple Watch has more than doubled since 2014, now making up over 10% of their total sales. They evolved the product. Not the purpose.

Or consider LEGO. After a period of near-bankruptcy in the early 2000s, they could’ve drifted. Instead, they doubled down on what made them matter, sparking creativity in every generation. That clear emotional promise powered a remarkable turnaround, with 2024 marking another year of double-digit growth.

These brands adapt. But they never compromise on the emotional truth at their core.

How should a brand feel? A few examples.

If you’re struggling to define the emotional edge of your own brand, it helps to start with how others make us feel, often instinctively, even before a word is spoken or a product is seen.

Let’s take a bank. Think NatWest, Barclays, or Monzo (at the more progressive end). A well-executed banking brand should feel solid, secure and dependable. The kind of place where your money is not only kept, but protected. This sense of emotional security comes through at every touchpoint: the tone of the app, the physical weight of the bank card, the language in customer comms. There’s often a calmness to the brand voice, a deliberate slowness in animation, even muted colours that speak to caution and care. Even in times of crisis management, the way a bank communicates builds on that sense of security and dependability, so that people ‘feel’ they can rely on them even when something goes wrong.

Now contrast that with Innocent Drinks. A brand that leads with warmth, wit and a touch of absurdity. From the hand-drawn doodles on their packaging to the charming, offbeat tone of their social media, Innocent creates a sense of friendly irreverence. So when you buy an Innocent smoothie you’re buying into a brand that feels alive, personable and slightly cheeky. It’s not random, it’s extremely well-crafted. Because behind the playfulness sits a clear truth: a brand that wants to make doing good things for your body (and the planet) feel easy, not preachy.

Then there’s Aesop: a luxury skincare brand that feels considered, elevated and quietly intellectual. It doesn’t shout or give a hard sell. It invites its audience in. Every interaction, from product naming to the scent in store, is deliberate, elegant and subtly sensorial. Their tone of voice is articulate and pared back, reflecting a brand that values timelessness over trend. It’s a feeling of restraint and refinement that attracts a discerning audience. And that quiet confidence creates loyalty that runs deep.

These three examples couldn’t look or feel more different. But all are consistent, distinctive and anchored in something real. And that emotional consistency is what creates trust, loyalty and preference with audiences over time.

Five signs your brand is emotionally intelligent

If you want to build a brand people would miss if it vanished, start by asking the hard questions:

• Could your brand still be felt if you switched off paid media for three months? If your visibility relies entirely on ad spend, you’ve got a visibility strategy – not a brand.
• Can every team member explain, in plain English, why your brand exists? If not, the emotional equity probably isn’t making it past the boardroom.
• Are you as strict about tone, behaviour and customer experience as you are about colour palettes? Consistency needs to stretch beyond the visual identity.
• When your values are tested (under pressure, in public, or in fast-moving situations) do they hold up? Or do they twist to fit the moment?
• And finally, are you measuring emotional connection? Or just clicks, shares and sales? You’ll need both. One fuels the other.

A 170-year-old reminder that still rings true

“It is my love’s being, yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside.”

Swap love for brand, and you’ve nailed the brief. Great brands don’t vanish when platforms pivot or competitors copycat. They’re built on truths that outlast any shifting sands.

What next?

If you want to bring emotional clarity to your brand, here’s where to begin:

• Clarify the truth. A session on your brand’s purpose with the leadership team can help you articulate your core belief.
• Design the feel. Translate that purpose into your tone of voice, your service and products, your rituals. Every single customer touchpoint.
• Stress-test it. Build scenarios to pressure-test your positioning. How does your brand behave in a crisis?
• Measure meaning. Add qualitative brand tracking to your toolkit. Gut feel matters, but so does data.

When your brand feels right it stays with people.

It becomes something your audience trust in a crisis, enjoy in the everyday, and return to instinctively. Not because they’ve been retargeted. But because their experience with your brand meant something.

So many brands are adrift in their markets today, so a clear emotional truth is a brand’s anchor (and competitive edge). And when every interaction reflects that truth consistently, intelligently and creatively, your brand builds lasting connections.

Do you need help defining what your brand should feel like?
Get in touch – we’d love to help. Alternatively, for the latest thinking on brand strategy, take a look at our Articles page.