The Psychological Advantage Behind Multi-Million Dollar Brands
- Brainz Magazine
- Jun 12
- 8 min read
Written by LaTricia Morris, Branding Agent
LaTricia Morris is The Brand Revivalist, founder of Ox & Iron. She helps legacy-driven entrepreneurs cut through the clutter and create bold, unforgettable brands. With a focus on purposeful design and strategic messaging, LaTricia crafts brands that connect deeply with their audience and leave a lasting impact.
Brand psychology has been the cheat code behind countless multi-million and billion-dollar companies, with original usage dating back to the 1920s and rapidly evolving from there.
Sometimes, it's as basic as using color, language, and placement to steer attention. At other times, it's as advanced (and expensive) as neuromarketing research, which involves biometric eye tracking and fMRI scans to measure how a buyer's brain responds to a product or package.
Case study 1: A well-known study on AXE showed how consumers' pupils dilated when exposed to specific packaging styles, signaling increased arousal and engagement.
Case study 2: Coca-Cola revealed that just seeing the brand triggered brain activity similar to what's seen in addiction response.
These companies are playing zero games and know how to leverage resources to mitigate guesswork. They're engineering emotional and cognitive dominance with cunning and intention.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have the luxury of hiring clinicians to run these tests. However, that doesn't mean we can't steal a few hacks from their playbook. There are psychological triggers, behavioral principles, and brand dynamics that, even in small doses, can dramatically shift how people perceive, remember, and respond to your business.
Positioning lives in the mind, not in your messaging
Most founders assume their brand is what they say it is. It's not. It's what your market remembers, assumes, and reacts to before they consciously think. It's the gut feeling, the mental shortcut they take, that's your true brand position.
In psychological terms, your brand exists as a cluster of associative memories:
Words they instinctively link to you
Emotions they've experienced while interacting with your content, product, or team
Visual and verbal cues they've unconsciously stored
Social meaning they attach to doing business with you
If those associations are foggy, weak, or misaligned, no amount of clean design or clever copy will fix your positioning.
Consumers ultimately choose how they categorize and file us away in their minds, but that doesn't mean it's out of our control. Brilliant brand strategy accounts for perception as a central variable, not a side effect. Too many companies unwittingly leave this to chance. They focus entirely on mechanisms, features, and what they believe is so cool about their product or service while forgetting virtually every other factor in brand perception. They speak what they think sounds good, with too little consideration for what the consumer is actually seeing or hearing.
If people are left to guess, they're likely to miscategorize us altogether. That misalignment can quietly kill momentum, wreck revenue, and stall a brand's future, regardless of how strong the offer is or how many promos the company runs. At best, it still leaves for a crap ROI on marketing, driving the marketing budget needed to promote the offering unnecessarily.
Understanding that, we have a duty, not just as marketers but as brand architects, to guide that categorization process. That means putting our best foot forward and thought into it, deliberately shaping how people categorize us, and understanding that when a brand gets mentally misfiled, it rarely gets picked again.
You're not just trying to be understood. You're trying to be remembered correctly.
If you hear nothing else I'm saying here, note that marketing is a battle for relevance.
Why should anyone care about you or your company? There's no room for egocentrism here. You don't get to give me a schpeel about how cool and how great you are and expect that I'm just going to say, "Okay, awesome! Here, take my money!" Even if you have the noblest cause, you can't assume that entitles you to people's time, attention, or resources.
Ideally, we need to understand who they need us to be in the moments they need us the most and do our utmost to reinforce that identity throughout our brand strategy.
Brand loyalty isn't rational; it's identity-based
People don't stay loyal to brands because of their features. They stay because the brand reflects something about who they believe they are or who they want to be. This is a fundamental psychological foundation most businesses ignore until it's too late.
At a surface level, this plays out in the form of preferences. Someone says they always buy Apple. But ask why, and you'll get vague responses: "It just works," "I like the interface," "I trust it." Beneath all that, there is a strong internal association between Apple and traits such as intelligence, creativity, and minimalism. They don't just like the product; they want what it says about them.
Apple has reinforced brand positioning to the point that there is a mass population that has heard and come into agreement with the "fact" that "Apple is the best." How does this then play out in reasoning?
Alright, now watch this.
We understand that personal status plays a key role in consumer behavior. Again, will this product or service help me maintain or elevate my sense of personal status?
So, taking Apple as an example, Bill believes Apple is the best. He has nine relatively new devices and is always on the lookout for the latest release. Why?
Bill may enjoy cool, new things and being at the cutting edge of technology.
However, many don't use any more of the tech than what they could reasonably get on several other devices. Still, "Apple is the best," right? So, now, every purchase reinforces Bill's status as having elevated class, financial positioning, and acute technical savvy. Bill likes this.
Yet, a bigger, often overlooked factor here is the threat of reduced status. What happens to Bill's self-perception if he now purchases a "lesser" device? Does he feel disappointed or as though he's "settled" and even lowered his standard or status?
People will do a great deal to elevate their status, sure, but they will fight like hell to prevent losing it. Elevation is still the goal, but maintenance is the baseline.
That's identity reinforcement, and it's not exclusive to billion-dollar brands.
When your brand becomes a mirror, loyalty stops being transactional. Customers will justify higher prices, tolerate mistakes, and ignore competitors, not because you've earned it logically but because psychologically, your brand feels like theirs.
This only happens when your brand clearly and consistently signals shared values and aspirational traits. If you waffle on tone or try to appeal to everyone, you'll end up reflecting nothing, and people don't build loyalty with blank slates.
This is why identity alignment should be baked into your strategy. Not as an afterthought, but as a core filter:
What does your brand say about someone who chooses it?
What kind of person does it exclude?
What are you reinforcing through language, visuals, and behavior?
If your brand doesn't help your buyers feel more like who they want to be, you likely mean virtually nothing to them.
Your price is a psychological decision
Pricing isn't just a numbers game. It's a perception game. And it's one your buyer plays before they ever see the price tag.
When someone sees your brand, they instantly begin comparing. Not just against competitors but against everything they've mentally categorized as "premium," "cheap," "risky," or "worth it." Where you land in that mental lineup depends entirely on what your brand has trained them to expect.
This is anchoring bias in action. People don't assess price in a vacuum. They evaluate it based on what your brand feels like. If your messaging, tone, and visuals say "top-tier," a $10K price point feels aligned. If they say "scrappy freelancer," even $1,500 might feel like a stretch.
This is where most brands undercut themselves: their pricing ambition is disconnected from their brand psychology. They want to charge premium rates, but their visual identity looks DIY, their copy is casual, and their customer experience is all over the place. The resultant cognitive dissonance inevitably manifests in lost sales.
If you want to charge more, you don't just need a better offer; you also need to demonstrate its value. You need a brand that psychologically justifies it.
Ask yourself:
Does your brand convey a sense of scarcity or mass availability?
Are you signaling expertise or accessibility?
Does your tone position you as a peer or an authority?
Until those signals align, your price will feel off, even if your value is real.
Repetition isn't redundant, it's rewiring
Most brands underestimate how long it takes for a message to stick. They worry about sounding repetitive before their audience has even had a chance to absorb their message.
While we don't want to sound redundant, repetition and continuity in messaging are key to branding. People will often need to hear your core message many times to get it. Why do you think so many companies pour a ridiculous amount of ad spend to put the same slogans and messages in front of people, even ad nauseam?
Before you argue with me on this one, think of a jingle, slogan, or campaign you remember from childhood.
Enough said.
This repetition isn't to be lazy. It's a neurological strategy for brand reinforcement. Every time someone sees your logo, hears your tagline, or reads a key phrase in your messaging, you're reinforcing neural pathways. Over time, those cues become automatic associations. That's how a brand moves from being noticed to being known.
This is how brand psychology helps you shift from marketing to memory installation. You're not trying to entertain. You're trying to encode.
However, repetition only works if what you're repeating is consistent and aligned. If your messaging shifts every quarter, if your voice varies by platform, or if your visual identity feels like it's still evolving, your audience never builds the familiarity needed to breed trust.
So instead of asking, "Have we said this too much?" start asking:
"Have they memorized it yet?"
Consistency is how you build mental real estate. And in a noisy market, that's the most valuable property there is.
Belonging is the competitive advantage most brands never earn
It's easy to out-market or undercut a competitor on price, but is that really desirable or even sustainable?
When a customer sees your brand as part of their identity, it stops being a transactional decision. It becomes personal. They aren't just buying a solution; they're choosing a reflection of themselves. Once that connection is in place, logic takes a backseat. They'll defend the brand, justify the price, and stay loyal even when alternatives exist.
This is where many brands fall short. They aim for recognition but never reach resonance. They appear online but never cultivate a culture. They may win the click, but they never earn emotional buy-in. Yet, without emotional buy-in, the relationship stays surface-level. They're off with your competitors as soon as the next best offer hits the market.
Belonging is built through clear positioning, consistent values, and a brand personality that doesn't try to appeal to everyone. The more specific and intentional your brand becomes, the easier it is for the right people to see themselves in it. That's what turns customers into insiders, and insiders don't shop around.
Read more from LaTricia Morris
LaTricia Morris, Branding Agent
LaTricia Morris is The Brand Revivalist, founder of Ox & Iron. At the core of her work is the belief in seeing the greatness in others and helping them communicate their true value to the people who need it most. LaTricia specializes in creating brands that are authentic, purpose-driven, and designed to resonate deeply. By aligning identity with strategy, she empowers businesses to stand out and build lasting connections with their audience.
