Did you know that chocolate acts as a love message, epitome of insatiable desire, provider of joy, invitation to childhood, instant redeemer, security blanket, edible luxury, a mood-altering food, and one of the most effective non-pharmaceutical antidepressants? This pioneering research cracks the code of buying behaviour related to chocolate and puts forward a framework for shaping brand strategy and for growing revenue.

1. WHAT MAKES
CHOCOLATE SELL

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. We do not just buy
chocolate. By integrating
intrinsic functionality
with predefined
meaning we create and
express the master
narratives of our lives.

4. We derive the maximum
value from narratives
that are automatically
identifiable and viscerally
classifiable as evolving
parts of our human
experience

5. What deeply engages us
always fulfils some
fundamental motive, the
evolutionarily-preserved
dispositions that have
helped us survive and
grow

6. Concepts are neural structures that
allow us to order and categorise all
stimuli around us

7. Our psyche consists of a code. We are an ordered pattern
of fundamental motives capable of generating life.

8. Successful brands
coherently express
the very patterns of
our psyche

9. Using, for the first time, a multidisciplinary
approach, including brand communication
decoding, motivational research,
psychology, affective neuroscience,
cognitive linguistics, cultural anthropology,
sociology, philosophy and their
proprietary tools, BRAND AVIATORS™ has
studied the motives underpinning buying
behaviour in over 70 global categories of
goods including chocolate

10. Beneath all the phantasmagoria of global
marketing communication, lies order and rhythm,
the source code of our human behaviour

11. What follows is a brief analysis of the
deep motives for buying chocolate.
The motives are presented in order of
increasing relative importance in line
with their power to influence our
buying decisions. The further we read,
the stronger the associations they
build in our mind, the more powerful
their influence on the sales and profit
in the chocolate category.*
* A book will shortly be published, extensively
analysing the motives underpinning 33 categories of
everyday consumer goods and our fundamental human
motives. It puts forward the most integrated platform
for engaging people to date.

12. INTELLECTUALITY: On an initial
layer of motivation we
consume chocolate because of
its association with
sophistication and balance -
chocolate contains over 1,200
chemicals, none of which is
dominant. What makes
chocolate successful rests in
our impression that inspiring
deeper meditation than other
sweets, it adds efficacy to
mental endeavours.

13. DISTINCTION: Proceeding into a
deeper layer of motivation,
chocolate satisfies our reckless
indulgence. Theobroma (food of
the Gods) has long been used
as a precious good and even as
a currency of exchange. As,
even today, access to fine
chocolate continues to be a
privilege, high quality chocolate
acts as an “edible luxury”.

14. SHARING: As a food
available to all, chocolate is
associated with giving and
receiving. In fact, no other
taste has the universal
appeal of chocolate.

15. EMPOWERMENT: Some of the most
successful brands of chocolate
promise to help us fight life’s
problems. Cocoa per se is a
stimulant which increases our
staying power, improves reaction
time, boosts our morale. Chocolate,
with its concentrated power, acts
as a potent, sharp, intense, dense,
rich, powerful and energizing
confection, a fuel to our organism.

16. METAMORPHOSIS: On a
deeper level, embedding the
capacity of chocolate to
change our emotions, some of
the most successful brands
claim the transformative
essence of chocolate, as their
own. Chocolate acts as a mild
mood-altering food which
casts a strong spell from a
distance.

17. ESCAPE: Chocolate has the capacity to
trigger our need to search for thrill and
novelty. Ever since its discovery,
chocolate has always evoked images of
long journeys to unchartered territories.
What makes chocolate sell is its
unmatched biological and psychological
experience, its promise of mental
excitement. Chocolate favours self-
experimentation and mind-expanding
experiences.

18. PLAYFULNESS: Another motive
underpinning our chocolate
consumption lies in its capacity to
fill the moment with high spirits.
Intrinsically spontaneous and
playful, chocolate is one of the
most effective non-drug
antidepressants.

19. INSOLENCE: A deeper motive for consuming
chocolate is its strong association with
decadence and immorality as some of its
most attractive features. Infamous, shameful,
wicked, immoderate, unrestrained,
excessive, intense, indecent, forbidden, bitter,
intoxicating, darker than opium, sweeter
than hashish, worse than Original Sin,
chocolate is associated with ferocious
hunger, irreducible inner pressure, an
uncontrollable urge, irrepressible passion,
entropic plenitude, illicit pleasure, lethal
mania, a dive into our dark side.

20. SECURITY: Chocolate stimulates the
release of endorphins that can
improve mood and restore a sense
of comfort. The sugar and cocoa
milk it contains provide the user
with a feeling of satiation.
Chocolate is the quintessential
sweet, the sweet of all sweets. It
makes everyone smile, refreshes
the weary, allays frustrations,
offsets disappointments, reduces
anxiety and provides joy.

21. DESIRE: On the innermost layer of
motivation, chocolate sells because it is an
imperative passion that when satisfied,
offers real ecstasy. In our collective
imagination, chocolate has assumed the
role of the most libidinous food, the food
we crave the most. Chocolate is unlike
any other sweet. While most
confectionary buoys the spirit and makes
us smile with sweet innocence, chocolate
creates complicated emotional
attachments.

22. This map illustrates
the way some
leading brands in
the chocolate
category are
positioned in the
consumers’ mind

23. Deep category understanding is just
the first step in creating engaging
narratives. To build a proposition
that is deeply engaging, the brand
must germinate the bare motives
that drive the category in a unique
and profoundly human way.

24. Having captured, for the first time,
our fundamental human motives at
the deepest levels of their
deployment, 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,
BRAND AVIATORS™ helps marketers
develop Intrinsically Engaging
Narratives™

25. Based on in-depth research
and practical implementation,
BRAND AVIATORS™ helps
marketers develop brands
with a solid inner architecture
deeply rooted in the
fundamental human motives,
using a three-phase
methodology

26. Phase 1: Map the territory
The first phase of the methodology
deconstructs the fundamental human
motives driving the sales and profit of
the category, establishes the relevant
psychographic territories and reveals
the way that the brands are mapped
in people’s mind

27. Phase 2: Give soul to
your brand
To be authentic and
engaging, narratives must
always be sourced from the
core of the brand. The second
phase captures the core of
the brand, and mobilises its
genuine codes in order to
satisfy our common
motivations relative to the
category.

28. Phase 3: Enrich
people’s lives
Powerful strategies require
effective articulation. In this
third phase, the consumer
proposition is translated
into ownable experiences
written in the language
that uses our primary
emotions as structural
elements.

29. Above all, by founding brand
strategy on our fundamental
human motives, and by embedding
Intrinsically Engaging Narratives™
the brand becomes deeply
humanistic in that it offers holistic,
universal experiences that no
longer simply satisfy some
individual needs but the needs of
the species

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: