Do brands make us happy?

With the radiant glow of World Happiness Day 2014 setting on the horizon, could brands take over as our happiness heat lamps and spread smiles throughout the year?

“Happiness can be said to be a mixture of short-term joyful moments and long-term contentment”, says Steve Hastings, planning partner at Isobel – who published a recent HappyBrands study, which aims to identify the UK’s happiest brands.  

“We believe brands are an important source of happiness,” said Hastings.

“Oddly so, because true happiness is not a measure of material, product wealth but of something more intangible. Yet here we are saying brands can help make you happy,” Hastings added.

He argues that brands can stimulate short-term joy through light entertainment, making us feel warm and fussy and special. Brands can also help us by “solving problems” for us which in term will lead to us associating them with good, positive feelings and repeat out customs through this association.

“Brands can help our long-term sense of contentment by being consistent, trustworthy, honest and rewarding. By being a hitching post for our identity and our habits. A source of comfort, always there and a part of life we would miss if they went.

“We don’t want to drive this ‘brandthropomorphism’ too far but there is so much evidence that people respond to the texture, nature and personality of brands that we should be alive to the life-enhancing quality of good strong brands.”

So shine a light on your campaigns marketers and make consumers glow from within. “Don’t just think of the surface, think of what you can’t see: think of what you might feel,” Hastings adds.