Art is good for the brand

From business courses to management training activities, the corporate world is making more and more room for art. A creative approach can be a good way to ignite innovation and manage complexity; in fact, art is now being showcased in managerial development. As for employees, exposing them to art in all its forms engenders a fuller integration of emotional and aesthetic components into value creation processes, which in turn augments performance. In more concrete terms, companies can find practical, implementable uses for art. By incorporating artistic elements or works of art when marketing their products, for example, they can create additional intangible value for customers.

There are myriad methods for introducing art into marketing. The first is to develop artistic product design, but clearly without compromising functionality. The second is through communication: displaying art in product packaging or advertising can have a powerful influence on customer evaluation. This is called the art infusion effect, which is particularly noticeable when the marketing campaign uses the real thing (i.e. the actual work of art as opposed to a copy or an illustration). In fact, artwork enhances the perceived luxury of the product. But what still needs clarification is the mechanism underpinning this process of adding value to products, and whether it emerges across the board for all product types.

The triple study we conducted online centered on the role of the brand affect in the process of value transfer from artwork presented in an ad to the product being advertised. (Brand affect is a positive emotional response to a given brand.) Our reasoning is that since exposure to a work of art elicits emotions in the viewer, using that same artwork in an ad could increase a customer’s perceived value of the product thanks to the emotional response the art will elicit. This art infusion effect could be more obvious for utilitarian products (like toilet tissue or soap) as compared to hedonic products (chocolate or perfume). Since an emotional component is already inherent to this last type of item, the added value of artwork might be less in this case.

To verify our hypotheses, we developed three separate online surveys through Mechanical Turk. The first one showed two ads for the same fictitious brand of mineral water. In one ad the bottle appeared next to the Jan Vermeer painting of The Girl with the Pearl Earring; in the second there was a photograph inspired by the same work of art. For each respondent we measured indicators of brand affect, perceived luxury, and overall product evaluation. In the second survey we adopted the same approach but with a different product (toilet tissue), a different work of art (a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh), and using a different product value indicator (willingness to buy). Finally, for the third survey we collected consumer responses on two different products, one that was utilitarian (mineral water) and the other hedonic (chocolate), both advertised in two different ways (with no art, or next to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa). In this case, we measured product evaluation with willingness to pay (that is, the highest price that consumers say they’d pay for a given item).

The positive impact of artwork on product evaluations was clear, even when we used different indicators for measurements. Equally clear was the role of brand affect in the process of transferring value from artwork to product. The brand affect was a significant factor – actually more so than perceived luxury – in explaining the more favorable evaluation that respondents gave to products advertised with art. In addition, the art infusion effect was stronger for utilitarian products as compared to hedonic goods. In fact, in our third experiment, for the same bottle of mineral water, respondents were willing to pay more than three times as much when the corresponding ad showed the Mona Lisa, as compared to the one with no art.

So the positive effect of art on the perceived product value is anchored in emotions. In fact, it’s precisely the emotional component that represents the condition for an increased perception of luxury associated with a given product. This mechanism is more accentuated for utilitarian products because they inherently have lower emotional impact compared to hedonic goods.

Art can create value for companies. And this can happen not only by giving a fresh perspective to managers in their decision making, or to employees who go about their daily work. The effect of art can be even more direct and tangible by adding value to products – for example, pushing up the price that consumers are willing to pay.

The fundamental mechanism underlying this process is emotion. In fact, people who promote the notion of focusing on art in corporate training programs often emphasize the need to integrate the emotional dimension in the profiles of managers and employees. But this applies downstream as well: the emotions that customers experience, through marketing initiatives that include art, are levers for value creation.

Art evokes positive emotions, and this capacity can trigger a positive emotional response in customers toward the brand associated with a product. This positive response, in turn, can help shore up the connection between the customer and the brand, a connection which can even go beyond the specific product advertised with a work of art. In this sense, a marketing approach centering on the use of art can boost overall brand equity.

What’s more, when competition is intense, the emotional response the customers have may prompt them to choose that specific product. In this case, emotion acts as a differentiator in the decision-making process, fostering brand loyalty in consumers. This can be particularly pronounced for utilitarian products. The reason why is that generally people only take into account functional factors when evaluating these goods, and use a rational process; here brand affect is low, if not actually negative. But ads featuring art can invert this dynamic, a realization that should spur companies to completely revamp their communication strategies for utilitarian goods, converting an information-based approach into an emotion-based one.