Creating Brands that are
Inherentely Happy.

The world can be a depressing place — sometimes. Pandemics, wars, economic upheaval, governments in flux, police brutality, mass shooting, riots, protests, inequalities of every kind. We may not be able to fix all of the aforementioned insanity but, by using “Happiness”, we can make the world a lot more engaging and fun.

It turns out, many brands have already seen that “happiness” is a powerful KPI (Key Performance Indicator). The key is to be optimistic and pour this energy into your work. Conceptually, it helps to find ways to have strong ideas based on strategic insights. The main insight is happier brands perform better. These happy brands bring joy and energy to all who encounter them. Being happy is important for living a fulfilling life and treating your fellow humans with a dose of happiness. Yes, there are a lot of bad things in the world but, we can make our lives better with positivity in our branding. Give others hope by using this philosophy in your design.

Just as scientists study positive psychology, marketers should treat design thinking with this positive philosophy. This kind of thinking can also be observed in advertisements — highly successful ones have shiny happy people and a positive message. Usually they deliver a clear benefit that will make your life better.

Big brands have been using positive psychology in different aspects of their marketing. Such positive approaches are likely to become more accepted, and people will expect companies to think positively as well— who could argue against this?

“Companies attracting the most attention nowadays are those which use design thinking, use strong emotions in their products, and are transparent about how they achieve successes.”

• Dr Sandip Roy, Happiness Science Speaker

Being constantly optimistic and positive is important to change the negative mindset we have throughout the years. Sometimes you could even say pessimistic thinking is the first step to an inwardly gloomy personality. Seeing the world in a positive light makes the time go by a little better and also gives us more energy to create positive outcomes in our pursuits. Having a sense of hope is good for living a balanced life and emotionally equipping your business can help with this. There is a psychological principle called Roof Effect, which suggests that the better something looks, sounds, smells or looks like, the happier people are likely to be. A first impression on the outside does not necessarily count. It matters how the second impression feels and feels happy. Feeling happy about receiving a more positive review or a return on investment from a project is a strong indicator of a happy brand. I have always told people that if you ask me to name a few best-looking logos, it would be instant recognition. If you can take a logo and make it aesthetically pleasing and high-performing within a short period of time, you have won the design competition. For instance, mobile phone manufacturers have always relied on heart-shaped icons — from HTC to Apple to Samsung — universally recognized by everyone. Nowadays, many players have tried to adopt this shape. However, could heart-shaped logos really be considered the best aesthetic shape? It depends on how you define aesthetics. Some would define it as minimalism. An example of minimalism is when the only thing that is on your product is a logo rather than the whole design. In this case, simplicity could be more important than beauty.

Happy designs average about a 14% better experience among customers. The world can use more ideas like that. Purpose, design, and branding shape a bright future for the world.

Today, it is an essential branding accessory that a horde of marketing heads are using increasingly to promote their services and products. The advertisements associating their brands with Happiness that I crossed paths with in the last six months range from realty, cars, apparels, holidays, manufacturing hubs, sodas, gifting solutions, office cultures, college campuses, spa services, mall experiences, gadgets, kitchen appliances, and even stationery.

Forbes came out with a list of the Happiest Brands. Forbes called them ‘feel-good brands that pluck all the right heartstrings.’ Apple was at the top. Incidentally, UK has its own Isobel index of Happiest Brands; Cadbury took the top slot last year.

It began at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998, Martin Seligman became the President of the American Psychological Association. He signaled a breakthrough movement borrowing a phrase from Abraham Maslow – Positive Psychology.

Those two words soon burst upon humanity as “The Science of Happiness.” Spearheading the movement were some of the best-known psychologists from the US and Europe.

His premise was this: Psychology throughout most of its existence has been a science that was based on the disease model. Traditionally speaking, it was all about studying what’s wrong with people. Seligman proposed it was time to move the fulcrum and balance the negative weight of this human science with the positive.

And in 2005, Time published its cover story, The New Science of Happiness. Next year, in 2006, Tal Ben-Shahar’s course on the subject, popularly referred to as Happiness 101, became the most popular course in Harvard ever, with its enrollment of 854 students, surpassing even introductory economics.
This rhetoric on happiness arrived as a gigantic opportunity for brands, according to Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT. She said, “People are thinking of happiness in a more prescriptive way.”

Positive Psychology proved that purchasing of experiences gave much more lasting happiness than purchasing of material objects. This immediately worked out well for ‘experiential services’ as holidays, spas, and the likes. It was the products – the material things – that needed to be redefined in the advertisement stories.

Jennifer Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, also a social psychologist, suggests the marketing of happiness can carry an appeal to the people that feels like The Dragonfly Effect.
She says,

“The idea of brands enabling happiness and providing greater meaning in the world is powerful. People have an aversion to anything that feels overly manufactured.”
Happiness is the greatest of all motivators, and experiences are entirely about moments that make us happy. Right? So, let’s work hard to create a brand that brings happiness to all of those who come I contact with it. Let’s be a force for good. Let’s make people HAPPY.