What is the point of brands if not to be remembered? As we look towards the coming year, the need to be memorable will be more imperative than ever. Amid the clutter, fragmentation and competition, making your brand stand out and secure in people’s memories should be a priority. It’s all about being the first choice and top of mind for people when they need a product or service.
But for many brands this is a challenge and too many are failing to establish long-term connections with their customers. To stand out, brands must make 2025 the year of being memorable.
While the competition and the clutter don’t help, too often it’s because of the gap between what a brand promises and the experience it actually delivers. The bigger the gap, the less likely that memorable and positive associations will be formed. So, let’s look at the six areas brands need to focus on in 2025.
Emotion – Make people feel something
The primary and most powerful driver of memorability is emotion, thanks to the powerful connections with reward pathways in the brain.
No matter a customer’s demographic or lived experience, connecting personally with people and uniting audiences around a common feeling is invaluable for brands.
Basic emotions like happiness, surprise and sadness can be triggered quickly but more complex emotions like anticipation, serenity and optimism take longer to build. Brands must develop a strong understanding of what drives their target audience and their emotional responses, then ensure they can deliver.
By truly understanding their customers, brands can create stories that build strong emotional bonds.
Attention – Make them notice, keep them interested
Brands need to stand out; then, they need to keep audiences interested for as long as possible. Over time, people will create positive meaningful associations between the experience and the brand, ultimately becoming long term advocates. Capturing people’s attention lies in key moments along the user journey. So, brands must give serious thought to a journey that’s authentic to the brand and will keep people engaged.
Story – Pique their curiosity
Humans have told stories for thousands of years as a sophisticated way of passing on valuable information. Telling a good story is all about transforming the personal into the relatable, the momentary into the memorable, and the everyday into the emotive. Good stories stay in people’s minds, and the best ones live on in our collective consciousness. Stories help build trust – more valuable than facts alone.
Involvement – Include them
If a brand involves people in a positive experience that is connected to what’s meaningful to them, they feel included and empowered. It makes that experience memorable. The more someone is involved with a brand’s experience, the more interested they become – the more they remember it. Whether it’s customers proudly wearing a brand’s logo, a word-of-mouth recommendation or posting unboxing content online – involvement in a brand can manifest in many ways.
To boost long-term recognition, brands must identify what customers find rewarding, and why they would want to be associated with the brand. A psychologically rewarding experience has a series of ‘just right’ challenges that keep people absorbed but not overwhelmed.
Repetition – Show up regularly
Repetition is a reinforcer of memories. People’s brains are wired to remember experiences that make them feel pleasure or pain – so they know whether to repeat or avoid them in the future. These memories need to be regularly reinforced by being repeated – for brands, this means being consistently present in their customers’ lives, reinforcing their promise and delivering it through their experiences.
Consistency – Be familiar every time
Consistency is what audiences crave – people are creatures of habit, reassured by the predictable. Consistency allows the brain to recognise patterns and anticipate what to expect, creating familiarity. Familiar brands are memorable because people’s impressions of them have been reinforced over time.
But consistency doesn’t mean complacency. Audiences don’t expect rigidity, so brands must balance stability and evolution. While an updated app or digital experience may be initially surprising for customers, it may be necessary. So, if the change is reinforced with familiarity and in keeping with the brand DNA, customers will accept the update.
Building memorability is more than ensuring people recall your brand. It is about creating a positive integration into their lives. Heading into 2025, brands should prioritise experience-based memorability, putting their customers at the centre and building positive emotional connections that will last long beyond the next 12 months.
Charlotte Black is chief strategy officer at Saffron Brand Consultants
