How the World's Best Brands Create Desire for Their Products

How the World's Best Brands Create Desire for Their Products
You need to rethink the language you use to describe the kind of relationship you want to build with your customers.

1. Maintain an aura of mystery around your products.

Since desire is all about the unknown, companies should take steps to incorporate some sense of mystery around their brands and products. Ford says that the brands that are best at this, such as Apple and Google, are very transparent about what their company culture stands for.  But they figure out how to ways to keep people excited about new product launches and other events, by releasing as few details as possible before an event.

2. Mystery around how your company operates, on the other hand, is rarely a good thing.

If there's one area in which you should eliminate doubts and questions, it's in how your company operates and how it responds to criticism. 

Take Volkswagen for example, which came under fire in September for having cheated on environmental emissions tests. Volkswagen will now have to figure out a way to restore trust with its customers. If the company wants to create a sense of mystery in the future, it's going to have to prove that it isn't for nefarious purposes, Ford said. 

You never want to blindside customers. If you do, Perel said you must do three things to repair the relationship: admit the mistake, admit that you hurt the customer, and continue to acknowledge the betrayal as you try to repair the relationship.

3. Figure out what feeling you want associated with your brand.

Ford and Perel said that while luxury brands tend to get associated with a sense of desire more frequently, a high-cost product isn't a necessary part of the equation.

The key to inspiring desire is to identify what feeling you want customers to experience after they interact with your brand. That way, customers have something to look forward to with every new interaction, which maintains the sense of want that is a necessary part of desire. Consider, for example, how Uber does this.

"What they give you is a seamless, wonderful feeling of 'my ride just arrived,'" Perel said. A consistently convenient, easy experience can go a long way toward cultivating long-term loyalty. 

Thank you to Anna Hensel for writing this article.