Paul Cash

, CEO at

Rooster Punk

, urges B2B brands to adopt the consumer world’s ‘happy’ marketing strategies

You can’t have failed to notice the increasing number of brands bottling happiness and selling it to us. Cadbury’s spontaneous moments of joy, Andrex’s cute and playful Labrador puppies, and Innocent Drinks, err, ‘innocent’ humour.

Consumer brands have long understood the elasticity of promoting happiness as the marketing currency for higher customer loyalty and profits. Those that have been able to connect a brand to a personal feeling of happiness, create stronger emotional connections with customers so the brand is better liked, better recalled, and chosen more often. So a happy brand will be a successful one.

But what do the world’s most cheerful brands have in common? They tend to share the following characteristics: joy, trustworthiness, generosity, playfulness and optimism.

However, they are selling it differently because they know buyers crave more than joy and are driven by purpose. It’s human nature to need emotional fulfillment, to feel like we’re making a difference in the world and brands that create a hedonistic feel-good emotion and demonstrate how they’re contributing to society are the ones that will gain the competitive edge.

Happiness tactics

So what can B2B marketers learn from the likes of Cadbury’s when it comes to developing a happy strategy? Injecting some nostalgia is a surefire way to woo customers. Studies have shown that reminiscence evokes feelings of connectedness, which in turn makes people care less about money and more about the carefree times they experienced as children.

If you want to truly captivate customers, you need to make them feel part of the club – like they’re joining a bigger positive movement. If you can drop them into the centre of an issue they’re passionate about, they’ll be gripped from the get-go and will remain engaged if they can see the difference they’re making.

There is, of course, the danger of leveraging happiness in a hollow way. Make sure you focus on being genuinely positive and the experience you’re going to deliver to customers – your brand will be all the better for it.