At Ebow Digital, we talk a lot about the Battle for Hearts and Minds. What do we / I mean?
By David Douglas, Founder, Ebow Digital
It’s become a shorthand for how we think about brands, marketing and, really, most of the work we do. It’s something that I feel really passionate about – meaningful brands with soul.
It’s an idea that has been forming over 25 years of making things, breaking things, building brands, building websites, watching technology change everything and discovering that, despite all that change, the fundamental soul of anything is still human. It still has a heart and a mind.
The Battle for Hearts and Minds is our belief that if you want somebody to choose your brand, you need to do two things.
Make them feel something.
And give them a reason to believe the feeling.
Or vice versa.
My favourite example of this is Dunnes Stores:
- I love them as an Irish brand and Irish success story. The way we call them Dunnés Boutique shows their place in Irish hearts.
- I know they’re good value. Better value beats them all. My mind knows they can save me money.
(And that’s even after I read the book Dynasty by Matt Cooper!)
That’s kind of it.
Well, almost.
It started with the/my/your mind
One of the books that influences our thinking at Ebow Digital was Al Ries and Jack Trout’s Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.
The main idea is that marketing / advertising isn’t simply a battle between products. It’s a battle for a position in people’s minds.
That resonated with me and I really love the example they use in the book about 7up being the Uncola and how you ‘borrow’ from another brand’s hard work and positioning, and use it to build your own.
Then we have: The heart ❤️.
According to Wikipedia, the heart is a muscular organ found in humans and other animals.
According to us, the heart is where the love happens!
Because people aren’t spreadsheets. And people aren’t bots (yet).
We don’t make decisions entirely by comparing features, prices and carefully constructed value propositions. We have instincts. We have memories, smells, nostalgia. We like things. We dislike things. We trust certain people. We identify with certain brands.
We laugh at things we’re probably not supposed to laugh at.
We buy things because they make us feel good and then construct an entirely rational explanation for the purchase afterwards. We are, in other words: bananas. So, for me and the team at Ebow Digital, the battle isn’t just for the mind. It’s the Battle for Hearts and Minds.
A little bit of Ebow history
Ebow’s heart started to beat in Dublin in 1999. The internet was still pretty new. Google was barely a year old. Social media didn’t exist. Nobody was talking about algorithms in the pub over scoops and AI wasn’t writing your emails for you or writing the recipients response 🔄 🔄 🔄.
Much simpler times. But not as exciting as this wild roller coaster we’re all now on 🎢 . From the beginning I loved the idea that technology didn’t have to be in control but could deliver amazing creativity, particularly when it didn’t get in the way (Clear the cache trauma anybody??)
Digital could be creative. It could have personality. It could be playful. It could be culturally aware. And it could make people feel something.
That has stayed with me and the agency.
The world has changed enormously since 1999. The technology is off the charts powerful. The work has changed, people have changed but their drivers remain the same. The clients have changed. My hairstyle certainly has – it’s gone! 😱
But some things haven’t changed very much at all.
Creativity has a job to do.
Brands need to have personality.
Technology is at its best when people barely notice it.
And we still believe that good work should connect with people’s hearts and minds.
Communicate using a language people know and love
That idea has always been important to Ebow Digital. Speak normally. You can have the most sophisticated strategy in the world, but if nobody understands it, cares about it or remembers it, you’ve got a PowerPoint and not much else.
I like when brands communicate with people using a language they know and love. I like when communications score low on the Gunning fog index.
I like when we do work around understanding the people our clients are trying to reach.
Their culture.
Their humour.
Their references.
Their needs.
Their frustrations. (It’s soooo important to have a problem that you solve for them)
That’s how you begin to win the heart.
The heart gets you noticed
The heart is where brand, creativity, personality and culture live. It’s the thing that makes somebody stop (doom)scrolling.
The thing that makes them smile. A Smile In The Mind is another major influence on us.
The reason they remember your name. The feeling that says these people get me. It can come from an identity. A line of copy (one great sentence can do a whole lot more than a paragraph). A photograph. A brilliant piece of UX. A campaign idea. A tiny interaction on a website that somebody cared enough to get right. Because there’s a world of difference between recognising a brand and liking one.
And we’d much rather work on brands people care about.
The mind always turns up to the party
Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy the fun bits, at some point somebody is going to ask:
Does this actually work? Why should I buy it? Who ARE you?
Good question. The mind wants answers. It wants some logic (when it’s not being bananas or banging away like a load of monkeys at typewriters).
What do you do?
Why should I choose you?
Can I trust you?
Can you prove it?
How much does it cost?
Have you done this before?
Can I find what I’m looking for?
Does the website work?
Do you know what you’re talking about?
Kinda like dating! ❤️ 🧠
That’s where strategy, evidence, technology, search, content, UX, performance and good old-fashioned common sense and experience come in.
Because making people feel something is only half the job: they need a Reason To Believe.
Captivate. Then capitalise.
Years ago at Ebow, we described this idea as Captivate. Then capitalise.
First, get someone’s attention.
The language has evolved, but the thinking hasn’t. Creativity in marketing, without purpose feels like it could be just for decoration. Performance without creativity becomes more wallpaper and message blindness.
And technology without either is usually just an expensive headache…
The best work does both: the heart and the mind.
Think Jazz
Another idea that has travelled with Ebow is Think Jazz. We like jazz as a metaphor for how great brand and creative work happens.
The brief gives us the melody.
The brand gives us the structure.
Strategy makes sure everybody knows what song we’re supposed to be playing. But within that structure, people need room to improvise. Designers should challenge things. Developers should have ideas. Strategists should be creative. Client services should solve problems.
Writers should occasionally be allowed to write something that doesn’t begin with In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape…!
The underlying melody is always the brand.
Which brings me to our Four Corners of Excellence
Today, we describe Ebow through our Four Corners of Excellence: Strategy, Design, Technology and Marketing.
There is a reason they’re together and it’s to try to avoid thinking that brands live in one zone. Your prospective customer or current customer certainly doesn’t. They don’t know that your branding agency made the identity, another company built the website, somebody else runs the PPC and a fourth company is doing something mysterious with SEO. They don’t think of excuses for you.
They only see one thing: Your brand.
If your advertising is brilliant and your website design isn’t up to scratch, that affects their perception of you, and perception is reality. If you claim to be innovative but your digital experience feels like it was last updated last Christmas, that’s your brand.
Everything connects.
Which is why we bring Strategy, Design, Technology and Marketing together. Different disciplines. Same battle.
Brand isn’t the logo
We love logos. We have designed lots of them. Branding is one of our favourite services to provide.
But a brand is much bigger than the logo. It’s an attitude. It’s what people think of when they hear your name. It’s what they expect before they’ve dealt with you. It’s how your website behaves. It’s the language you use. It’s what Google knows about you. It’s what ChatGPT and other AI search platforms know about you.
It’s your reviews, display ads, marketing emails, a recommendation somebody gave them over a pint. All of those things contribute to the same thing: What people think and feel about your business.
Hearts and minds.
More stuff isn’t the answer
There has never been more content in the world. AI has made it possible to produce words, pictures, videos, ads, emails and endless variations of 10 Things You Need to Know About… at breakneck speed.
To cut through and to get noticed you must produce something worth noticing. You must produce something that your customers recognise as you making the effort, not just lashing out something in ChatGPT (Chatty Petey).
The effort you show will now become the differentiator.
Playful + creative = seriously great work
Our agency manifesto talks about being playful, creative, curious, culturally engaged and willing to think without the box rather than worrying about whether we’re inside or outside it.
That isn’t code for messing around all day. It’s about creating an environment where people feel free to ask and question…Why? Why not? Who says? Does anyone actually want this? Is there a better way? Could this be simpler? Could this be more interesting? Could we make somebody have a laugh? Could we make it work harder?
Culture matters. Humour matters.
Because we’re communicating with human beings, not fictional marketing personas.
Every brand has a battle
And this is really the point. Every client is fighting a different battle. You might need people to notice you, understand you, trust you, think differently about you or just choose you.
Sometimes the problem is emotional, sometimes it’s rational, we think it’s a bit of both.
So we start by understanding the battle. Then we bring together the right combination of our Four Corners of Excellence: Strategy, Design, Technology and Marketing to fight it.
They’re the four different ways we have of influencing what people think, feel and do
That is the Battle for Hearts and Minds. It’s something we’ve been working on since 1999, even if we didn’t always call it that.
We help brands win. We’ll help you win too.
❤️ 🧠
Dave.
A little about me:
I founded Ebow in 1999, since then, technology has changed beyond belief. But people haven’t changed nearly as much. That’s ultimately where our Battle for Hearts and Minds comes from: understand people first, then use strategy, design, technology and marketing to give them something worth thinking and feeling.
Read more about our history: The Story of Ebow.
Or go ahead and Connect with me on LinkedIn.