Functionality as the Focus of a Brand

There are a few companies who focus their brand on functionality, although this happens much less than one might think. Even when a brand is functional, however, emotions still play a big part of a company’s branding efforts. After all, when functionality is about helping people to achieve a goal, in this sense using functionality as a branding focal point is a lot like using empowerment or living better as your overarching emotional benefit. Functions are better supported by emotions than evidence as people need to understand how any function will improve things for them, and people remember emotions better then rote statistics.

There are, of course, many products whose entire focus in consumers’ minds is functionality. Laundry detergent and tires are examples. In such cases, functionality is forced upon the brand. However, keep in mind that when this happens, all companies and products are in danger of having the same brand which, in turn, would destroy their ability to be successful. In such cases, emotions stand as the means of differentiating one brand from another. Michelin Tires made its brand stand out by seeking to become the traveler’s friend; creating a travel guide with a restaurant star system has become the paramount of high-end restaurant success. They also created ad campaigns which showed babies riding in tires in order to remind consumers that, as boring as they might seem, there’s a lot riding on their tires. Michelin has used its branding efforts then to highlight how important its seemingly ordinary product is to our emotional wellbeing.
Tide, a laundry detergent, uses a similar approach. Realizing that people buy detergent to get their clothes clean, Tide works to become a brand which empowers self-expression through clothing and style.

While some brands get pigeonholed into a specific functional benefit which requires them to differentiate from the competition, functional benefits are often at their most powerful when they are used to differentiate products and services from each other. Axe, a line of body washes, shampoos, and other similar products for men did this by altering the focus of what its products were meant to do. While most beauty products and cleansers focused on getting clean, looking beautiful, and feeling good about yourself, Axe realized that these benefits were generally boring to its target demographic. Axe focused instead on telling men that using their products would help them get women. After all, that's the purpose of beauty products for many people, and women do prefer clean men as a general rule.