This document outlines a methodology called BRAND AVIATORSTM that identifies fundamental human motives that underpin consumer behavior towards food. It presents 20 different motives organized from more superficial to deeper levels, including expression, exploration, order, destruction, transubstantiation, balance, companionship, playfulness, pleasure, growth, care, and comfort. The deepest motives like care and comfort are argued to satisfy basic needs for security. The methodology is said to help marketers develop engaging brand narratives by expressing these underlying human motives.

1. CONNECT
CONTROL
The wheel of motives™
GROW
CARE
BALANCE
DESIRE
FEEL
SAFE
SEEK
PLAY
CREATE
DEFY
TRANSFORM
TM
FOOD
BUYING
BEHAVIOUR

2. Hi! My name is Constantinos
Pantidos and I believe that
companies could improve
people’s lives even more
effectively if they had
deeper human insight.

3. Using a multidisciplinary
approach, BRAND AVIATORS™
has captured and presents, for
the first time, the fundamental
human motives underpinning
our consumer behaviour
towards food at the deepest
levels of their deployment …

4. … all the way from:
• their biological value
• to the neurosystems they engage
• to the cognitive operations and
psychological states they activate
• to the major social reinforcers they
cause and
• to the rich hierarchy of inherent
concepts they infuse into our
everyday life.

5. This methodology helps marketers
develop Intrinsically Engaging
Narratives™

6. The motives are presented in
order of increasing relative
importance in line with their
power to influence our
buying decisions.

7. EXPRESSION: On an initial layer of
motivation, food offers a very
quick way of explaining who we
are, where we come from, what
we like. We are what we eat not
only in a biological sense but also
in a symbolic one.

8. EXPLORATION: More
significantly, humans
are omnivores who
must continually test
new foods. Variety
opposes satiety.

9. ORDER: Food’s core role in life
and the ritual surrounding
meals, structuring our day, give
us a sense that we control our
environment. Cooked food
makes us civilized. The very
refinement of the matter being
consumed, makes us feel that
raw human nature is governed.
Food plays a central role in the
formation of the symbolic
structure of society.

10. Food is a symbol of
status, a prime means
of self-gratification
and in reality a way
of controlling others

11. DESTRUCTION: Yet another
motive for why we buy food
products rests in their capacity
to resonate with our fear of
hunger - our most primal fear.
Unless we eat we die. Unless
we eat every few hours, we
start to view things around us
as distorted. Food by its nature
requires its own destruction.
Life comes through the death
of animals and plants, which
other animals eat.

12. Eating is the most direct way
to incorporate a substance.
It is an aggressive action
against the food which is
attacked and consumed.
Biting and chewing are
outlets for aggressiveness.

13. TRANSUBSTANTIATION:
Going into deeper
motivation, embodying the
capacity of food to act as a
mood catalyst, some of the
most successful brand
narratives promise to
influence our physical and
psychological states.

14. In substance, food is
chemical conversion, a
direct descendent of
alchemy. At every meal,
food transforms us into
relaxed and satiated
beings.

15. BALANCE: Proceeding into deep
motivation, eating is the most
frequent union with our own
body. Food helps us achieve an
equilibrated relationship with
our body. Our attitude towards
food influences our short term
and long term health. A sane
attitude towards food can form
the basis for good living and a
balanced mental state.

16. COMPANIONSHIP: Food puts us back in touch with the
source of life-force, creating a universal fellowship.

17. There is no greater fusion of the individual and the
world than in the moment when we sit at the table
to eat. We inherently dislike eating alone. But
even when we do, food can create a feeling of
connectedness. Experiencing a branded product
shared by millions the imagined group is joined.

18. PLAYFULNESS: On an even more
profound layer of motivation,
some of the most successful brands
help us experience food as a daily
celebration of life. Food nourishes
the spark of life within the body.
Food is life, each time we eat we
affirm life. Eating helps us focus on
the moment. It is a momentary
diversion, a small vacation from
the rest of our actions.

19. PLEASURE: Moving closer to the
heart of the matter, incorporating
the profound relationship of food
with pleasure some food brands
make us experience some of the
most erotic narratives among all
consumer goods. Food and sex are
the two major incentives nature
offers us as rewarding pleasures
for living. Between the two, food
comes first.

20. Food rarely succeeds in the
marketplace unless it is tasty,
despite all the other benefits
that it may have. On a deep
level, sexual hunger and
physical hunger have always
been allies. Food itself can be
an indication of a deeper
yearning.

21. GROWTH: On yet another
layer of motivation,
incarnating in their
narratives the key function
of food, some of the most
successful brands in the food
industry promise us strength
and development.

22. That we call nutritional value
“energy”, is not accidental.
Food is energy in its potential
state, enclosed in solid matter.
Food is strong and substantial,
it is performance. Its basic
function is to increase the life of
the individual. Food helps us
grow.

23. CARE: On a yet more profound
layer of motivation, food has
always been a token of the
beneficence of the world.

24. Food’s function is to preserve the
life of the individual. All eating is
archetypically linked with the
early memory of food and love
as a unified experience. We are
completely nourished not by the
food itself but by the emotions
and love that accompanies it.
Feeding each other and allowing
ourselves to be fed are amongst
the most primal of human
impulses.

25. COMFORT: On the innermost layer
of human motivation, food acts as
the most elemental and primitive
of all comforters. Indefinable well-
being, fullness and wholesomeness
are derived from our instinctive
understanding of rejuvenating life.
As a good meal soothes the soul
and regenerates the body,
archetypically, in our mind food
equals comfort, familiarity,
continuity and predictability.

26. From a meal’s abundance,
flows a benevolence. For
food to be available in
abundance, to last, to not
be scarce, is what we have
always longed for.

27. We are born hungry. The first
thing we do when we are born
is to reach instinctively for the
breast and eat. We yearn for
wholesome food to feel full. Our
survival depends on reaching
out and suckling. Essentially, in
satisfying our original hunger
we satisfy our need for security.

28. This map
illustrates the
way some
major food
brands are
positioned in
the consumers’
mind

29. Successful brands
coherently express
the fundamental
human motives
driving their
category

30. BRAND AVIATORS™ are trusted by some of the world’s
leading companies:

31. (Re)define your brand through the human
fundamentals if you seek to:
• Deeply engage people locally and
across cultures
• Develop genuine concepts that work
year after year after year
• Align all brand communications under
one master idea
• Increase the ROI of all your brand
activities

32. My mission is to help clients
around the world build
brands that liberate the very
forces of life. Contact me now
for a free discovery audit by
clicking on the icon: