Yes. Buying decisions are to one degree or another emotional.

All of them. This assertion deeply offends marketers who trust rationality, logic, evidence and ten-reasons-why facts.

Because the evidence is stacked the other way. Customers buy from (vote for, believe in, trust) people they like, and by extension, brands they like.

Consider that college choice, by reputation a considered purchase given the 6-figure price tag. No impulse permitted! Two years of research to whittle 3000 schools to 25 to 10 to 3 looks on paper like the most rational, careful make-a-list-with-check-marks kind of selection process ever. Totally left-brained.

But what happens next? College visits are planned, and the prospective student sets foot on Campus A. If it’s a positive experience (most often triggered by seeing attractive friendly people), evidence shows the odds are better than 70% that Colleges B and C will never even get visited. An emotional commitment has been made; search over, buy the t-shirt.

What’s your takeaway for your brand? Your planning – whether you’re selling B2C, B2B, causes, candidates, memberships or philosophy – must never focus totally on content. While what-you-say still matters, devote even more attention to make the campaign (ads or website or Instagram or catalog or email or lecture or presentation or skywriting) likable, credible and unexpected.

Being the first examined in the selection set is vastly more powerful than establishing what we used to call a USP. Make the first experience of encountering the brand engaging (think: the atmosphere of the Apple Store, the front desk of the Ritz-Carlton, goofy announcements on Southwest Air, the speaker’s amusing anecdote) to see how to create the empathy that allows the impulse that begins to forge a bond.

Is this radically different from what we called Salesmanship 101? Yes, indeedy. But old-school sales (e.g., heavy repetition of the USP) is in a death spiral. The logic is clear on that.