Developing an emotional connection with customers through a series of Lego figures with different expressions.

Developing an Emotional Connection with Customers: Insights from HP’s Antonio Lucio

February 23, 2016

Telling a story, creating an experience or building a relationship of any kind, with anyone, starts with an emotional connection.

This idea sits at the back of the classroom for most marketers.

Antonio Lucio, Chief Marketing Officer, HP

In an article from Forbes, HP CMO Antonio Lucio talked about his formula for building a sustainable brand: E = I₂+DEA or…

Emotion=Insight+Innovation+Digital Engagement+Experiences+Accountability

In our book, Experiences: The 7^th Era of Marketing, (to which Lucio contributed) Robert Rose and I talk about the elements of this formula, and Lucio eloquently puts them together in this very relatable and usable formula.

The relationships that customers have with a brand are based on the many aspects (insight, innovation and digital engagement) that make up an experiences. As marketers, we certainly have to be accountable for that process, something which we also haven’t been good about.

It’s all of this that ultimately inspires the emotion that people feel. And when people experience an emotion about a brand – good or bad – they extend that emotion onto the brand.

Tell me, what’s the first step you take in uncovering the emotions that matter to your customers?

Read the Forbes interview with Antonio here…

Photo credit: Flickr user Daniel

About Carla

Carla Johnson Innovation Creativity Speaker Author

Carla Johnson helps leaders who are often paralyzed by traditional thinking. They suffer from slow growth, an eroding competitive advantage, low employee engagement, and depleted investor confidence. Their teams lack purpose and progress and constantly battle a resistance to change and new ideas.

As the world’s leading innovation architect, Carla’s spent 20 years helping leaders shatter limits and discover undiscovered possibilities. Through years of research, she’s developed a simple, scalable 5-step process that teaches people how to consistently produce inspired ideas that lead to uncommon outcomes.