For every brand manager and CMO, there exists a tension—the need to show the brand’s growth in the present while ensuring brand equity for the future. Stakeholders often demand quick wins but still expect sustained growth. With different demands coming from multiple directions, the pressure to deliver now while building for tomorrow has never been more intense.
Picture This Week
Monday: The CFO demands proof your brand campaign drives sales
Tuesday: A review of the tracking data shows declining emotional connection
Wednesday: The board wants cost-reduction suggestions
Thursday: The R&D Director sends a memo that the innovation pipeline needs fuel
Friday: The brand team presents less-than-ideal brand health metrics
The tyranny of the immediate often tempts brand managers to do what is expedient for better results right now. But beneath these daily firefights lies a more profound truth: Brands that sacrifice long-term emotional connections for short-term gains become tomorrow’s markdowns. Yet successful brands don’t choose between immediate results and lasting value. They harness Human Truth to achieve both. Does that sound a little too good to be true?
What is Human Truth?
Human Truth is the framework for how people experience the world and connect. It’s the “why” behind the “what”—the complex interplay of perceptions, emotions and nonconscious desires that shape our choices. These truths live beneath the surface of rational thought, driving decisions. We are mostly unaware of them as they are primarily the sum of our nonconscious thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
These personally meaningful but hidden forces explain seemingly irrational brand behaviors, such as driving past three coffee shops to reach a favorite, paying a premium price for a phone that works almost identically to the competitive brand or trusting specific brands with critical decisions about finance or healthcare. Human Truth powers these choices, creating brand connections that transcend rational comparison or logical explanation.
Because these truths don’t live in our conscious mind, they require a different approach to understanding. This is not the world of logical explanation or survey-taking. This is the world of feeling and belief, lore and memory.
Bringing Human Truth to Life Through Story
Human Truth reveals itself through stories, and the brain thinks in narrative. It processes experiences not through facts and figures but through images and emotional sequences. The story becomes the vehicle for discovering and activating Human Truth in your brand.
Take Apple. Their story isn’t about being first—they rarely are. It’s about democratizing technology and connecting with the human desire for simplicity and empowerment. Every sleek design, intuitive interface, and iconic packaging tells this story. It’s why people pay premium prices and irrationally keep empty Apple boxes. The story activates the Human Truth.
Listening to how people share their stories in their own words is central to understanding Human Truth. Through these narratives, we uncover emotional drivers that traditional research misses. When we know how people truly make meaning in their lives, everything becomes clear—what to say, how to innovate and where to focus. Brands that tap into these truths don’t just compete on features or price—they connect with fundamental human needs and desires.
The Power of Human Truth
Since humans don’t buy based on facts but based on a complex and interconnected system of feelings, perceptions, beliefs and stories, accessing these nonconscious needs becomes critical for brand success. When brands align with Human Truth, they can use those findings to tap into three essential dimensions of trust:
1. Connection
A connection is formed when consumers sense their identity is reflected in a brand. They see themselves in that brand’s story, their values, and what messaging they share with the world. The brand becomes relevant through authentic, positive feelings and does more than meet a need – it cultivates a sense of belonging.
2. Care
Consumers must believe your brand has their best interests at heart. Consider Chewy, the pet food company. When a customer accidentally orders the wrong dog food, Chewy doesn’t just accept the return – they send the correct order and ask the customer to donate the mistake to a shelter. That customer will never shop anywhere else.
3. Consistency
Trust built over time can be broken instantly. Your brand promise must remain across every touchpoint, from employee behavior to customer experience. Consider Amazon – they’ve built trust not through flashy campaigns but through relentlessly delivering on their promise of convenience and reliability.
These dimensions—connection, care and consistency—create measurable business impact. While traditional metrics focus on surface-level awareness and preference, deeper emotional connections drive actual business performance. When brands embody these dimensions meaningfully, the results show immediate metrics and long-term value for that target group. This is how authentic brands command premium pricing and maintain market share even in downturns. This is how brands who show they care see higher customer retention and positive word-of-mouth. This is how consistent brands build lasting loyalty and resistance to competitive threats.
But how do we prove it? We can quantify these emotional connections that drive business success through behavioral science and proven research techniques. Take eBay, for example. Their extensive quantitative testing transformed qualitative customer insights into measurable metrics that resonated with their C-suite. They demonstrated clear business impact by connecting emotional drivers to actual customer behavior.
This is crucial because the C-suite needs more than theory—they need proof. When presenting Human Truth to leadership, frame it in their language. Don’t just track traditional metrics like awareness and preference. Show how emotional connections translate directly to purchase behavior metrics and customer loyalty. This makes the business case for Human Truth irrefutable.
Adding Truth Across Your Equation
When Human Truth drives brand strategy, every element of your organization becomes more powerful. Each touchpoint doesn’t just deliver a message – it reinforces a deeper meaning. Each interaction builds upon your brand’s foundation.
Everything within your brand ecosystem is interconnected. From this understanding, employees don’t just deliver service; they embody your truth. A great example is Loyola University Health System’s promise to “treat the human spirit.” When new HR policies undermined this truth internally, morale and retention suffered. The solution wasn’t a new campaign—it was realigning the ecosystem with their core truth.
- Your brand ecosystem amplifies impact at every touchpoint, creating a network of interconnected experiences that strengthen or weaken your brand’s foundation. Employee experience directly shapes the customer experience, while internal culture inevitably radiates outward to influence external perceptions. Even minor inconsistencies can erode hard-won trust, so every interaction—no matter how small—either builds or diminishes your truth.
The New ROI Equation
The math is clear. Brands built on Human Truth deliver immediate returns and lasting value. They command premium prices, inspire loyalty and resist commoditization. They turn customers into advocates and employees into ambassadors. The metrics prove it. When brands achieve high scores across the connection, care and consistency measures, they see measurable business impacts:
- Increased purchase frequency
- Larger share of wallet
- Stronger price resilience
- Improved employee retention
This isn’t about spending more – it’s about spending smarter by tapping into existing human needs and desires. When you understand what drives human behavior, every dollar works harder and every interaction builds brand equity. The pressure to deliver immediate results while creating lasting brand equity is not going away. But by anchoring your brand strategy in Human Truth, you can meet today’s targets while building tomorrow’s brand.
Ready to drive immediate results and lasting brand value with Human Truth? Contact us today.
