It struck me that happiness at any level is the result of many other feelings and actions. The diagram below is the simplest mental model I could create. It says that happiness is created from Trust, Choice and Freedom. I think brands are able to create happiness when they help us tell stories of trust, stories of choice and stories of freedom. If we want customers to tell happiness stories with our brands as actors in the story we have to focus on getting brands stories to overlap around trust, choice and freedom. That’s not to say people won’t be moved to buy brands without these stories but its likely they will move quickly to other brands. Creating happiness allows you to create fans and generate long-term relationship.
Interesting thoughts. What’s the thought behind ‘choice’ as a driver of happiness that isn’t a part of ‘freedom’?
Mike. I call out choice seperately because at a communication level the stories and communication points you put across to your audience are different from freedom. I agree that the act of choice has a dependancy on freedom (freedom from and freedom to). By the way I do think IDEA Pharma tells good stories that support the need for strategy and communication about choice (what you do at phase II) value for payors (choice and freedom based on evidenced based medicine).
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