1. Sentiment Mass: Forming Emotional
Relationships with Brands
By: Arshad Ahamed, Senior Strategic Planner at JWT Group, Colombo.
(Editor's note: Originally written for the WPP Atticus Awards. WPP's Atticus Awards honour
original thinking in communications services and are open exclusively to professionals
working in WPP companies.)
Watch the way I put on my pants every morning. It’s not a very significant thing is it? But it’s
one of my many ways. Upon observation of how I put on my pants, one gets a loose sense of
what kind of person I might be, and that creates a sentiment in your mind towards me.
Virginia Woolf, in her writing, demonstrates how some of the smaller things in life go
completely unnoticed and unappreciated; because the importance of them does not
immediately smack you across the face.
Let’s get out of my pants and into the world of brands. During the course of small things
taking place, to the uninitiated they might seem small and insignificant. But they do a very
important thing with the people who interact with your brand. It creates what I call a
‘Sentiment Mass’. People are not sitting around waiting for the next big thing to come out of
a brand to form a sentiment on it. Sentiments are formed every day. The everyday things are
not always big, because that would be stupidly expensive and impractical. It is small
behaviours, expressions, and imagery that people are in touch with.
So what is Sentiment Mass? It is when a sentiment is formed about your brand, and that
sentiment grows amongst people forming a mass of sentiment around the brand. When that
mass hits a critical point it grows exponentially, creating a gravitational pull drawing more
and more people into having the same sentiment about your brand and thereby forming a
lasting emotional relationship with your brand.
Small positive things creates, over a period of time, positive sentiments in the same way that
small negative things, over a period of time, creates negative sentiments. The proof of this
can be found, strangely enough, in a criminology theory. The Broken Window Theory by
Kelling and Coles (1982) states that when one simple broken window in a building is left
unattended, soon there are many broken windows, the building gets abandoned, it becomes a
crime den, and eventually there are full scale gang wars happening in the neighbourhood
around the building.
A classic example of small things creating massive positive sentiment mass is Mahatma
Gandhi defying British rule. He began his quest by shedding his western garments and
donning a ‘Dhoti’ (Traditional Indian Garb) and shawl made with yarn that he spun himself.
This incidentally was ridiculed by Sir Winston Churchill, who called him a “half naked
fakir”, clearly demonstrating how he completely disregarded the possibility of this small act
making any significant challenge to the British. But that symbolic act grew to become a
beacon for self-sufficiency and ultimately political and economic independence. It led to a
defining moment in Indian history: The Salt March (which also started small with Gandhi

2. wanting to make his own salt and not pay the British for salt), which triggered the wider Civil
Disobedience Movement and changed the world’s attitude towards Indian Independence.
Let’s look at Apple and how they used a simple core focus to guide their small actions, which
created such a strong sentiment mass for their brand that the gravitational pull of Apple made
them the most valuable company in history. They focused on delivering beautiful,
aesthetically pleasing computing experiences. With this focus they went about making small
incremental design progressions in their devices. The MacBook Pro line of laptop computers
has not changed much aesthetically since 2008. Small refinements were made to it and the
belief of good design manifested throughout all the brands expressions and symbolism. The
sentiment was creativity. Creative people, such as us advertisers, flocked to the brand like
cats to milk. Soon, those who like to project themselves as creative people joined force. Soon
sales of Mac’s were outpacing the entire Personal Computing industry.
Taking a quick step back to the Gandhi era, non-violence wasn’t the only movement going on
in India. Violent movements were widespread. But the people who believed in violence went
about doing big things. A bomb here, an assassination there, and nothing in between. Without
the smaller things to build sentiment, there was no sentiment built. Therefore the movements
propagating violence failed.
So what is the key to becoming initiated to spot the significance of a seemingly insignificant
action? The key is consistency. When a brand does the small things consistently well, even a
moderately good action or product can be accepted as phenomenal. On the flip side if a brand
fails to understand that small actions are creating negative sentiments, suddenly the brand
will realize that even a moderate action or product is greeted with hostility. A bad one: that’s
catastrophic.
A big flash in the pan does not create a lasting sentimental relationship between a brand and
its people. It is the small things; done consistently well, guided by a larger purpose that is the
very root of the brands existence, that creates infallible relationships between brands and the
people they serve.
And now, back to my pants. If I wanted to control the sentiments that my pant-wearing habits
were creating in the minds of those who were observing me, the starting point for me would
be to understand who is observing me and what sentiment has already been built in their
minds about me. If I’m in agreement with that sentiment I should keep wearing my pants the
same way. If it’s not in alignment with what I want myself to stand for, I need to start
changing the way I wear my pants. For very soon my pant-wearing habits could become the
root cause of my entire image & character being propagated in ways that are detrimental to
me. I must be savvy to this. Because nobody would tell me, nor realize for themselves that
the way I wear my pants results in them forming sentiments about me. When nobody is
speaking to me at a party, it could well be because of a negative sentiment caused by my
consistently sloppy pants.