This pioneering research redefines the way we market ice cream. Artificial segmentations based on personality differences offer weak foundations on which to build brand strategies. To deeply engage us, a brand must have a solid inner architecture deeply rooted in the fundamentals of humanity. Beneath all the phantasmagoria of global marketing communication, lies order and rhythm, the source code of our human behaviour. Summarising the results of our research, this presentation analyses the fundamental motives underpinning consumer behaviour towards ice cream and proposes a way to build ice cream brands that engage people at a profoundly human level. Our fundamental human motives are like bare patterns in any language. Successful brands infuse the pattern, fertilising the basic forms, in a unique and profoundly human way, enabling people to experience deep patterns that make them feel alive. There is a direct correlation between our fundamental human motives, the most direct way to engage people, and the level of sales and profit. The efficiency of communication budgets is maximised when the authentic codes of the brand germinate the deepest motives driving sales and profit in the category. Today we have no excuse for saying that “we waste half of our advertising budget but we don’t know which half”. Above all, by satisfying the most fundamental of our human motives the brand is deeply humanistic in that it offers holistic, universal experiences that no longer satisfy some individual needs but the needs of the species.

1. WHAT MAKES
ICE CREAM 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. Using a multidisciplinary
approach, BRAND AVIATORS™
has captured and presents, for
the first time, the fundamental
human motives underpinning
our consumer behaviour
relative to ice cream 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. CARE: On an initial level of
motivation, by offering ice
cream we demonstrate our
care. As a treat, ice cream
represents tenderness and
affection.

8. Ice cream acts as a substitute
for the sweet experience, as
substitute for love. Held in its
mother’s arms, the new-born
not only receives good
nutrition as it suckles but is
completely nurtured. It is
being touched, loved, sung to,
spoken to, and cared for in a
way that is experienced only
once in a lifetime.

9. In an ideal world parents would have enough time
and energy to fill their children with love. But in a love
deprived world we learn to seek love in material form.

10. TOGETHERNESS: More significantly, ice cream
is ordinary, democratic, convivial. It has the
capacity to bring people together.

11. Ice cream’s sharing builds and cements
relationships. All classes have access to ice
cream. Studies demonstrate that when we
interact with someone who eats sugary
food, we are likely to perceive that person
as being nicer, more genial.

12. Eating sweet things releases
endorphins which regulate the need
for closeness. Eating an ice cream is
often a substitute for company.

13. IMPETUS. Ice cream is
strong and substantial, it is
performance. Milk is our
primal food. Sugar is a fuel
producing heat and energy
and the primary energy
source for brain cells.

14. Ice cream cools our
throat, injects sugar into
the pancreas and boosts
our activity levels. Its
basic function is to
increase the life of the
individual.

15. TRANSFORMATION:
The experience of ice
cream begins with a
shock. Ice cream
transforms us into
statues in less than
no time the first time
we taste it and every
time afterwards it
makes us stand
awestruck at its
powerful workings.

16. First we sense a paralysis of
our mouth and then its
flavor. As our oral
temperature changes, we
receive a blast, a mild
electroshock. The tantalizing
transition from solidity to
fluidity in our mouth makes
ice cream probably the most
enthralling food found.

17. Ice-crystals, air bubbles, fat
droplets and sugar
solutions, create the
microstructure that gives
the sensory manifestation
of the texture we
experience as ice cream

18. Ice cream is a
powerful healer
that restores vigor,
a sensory illusion, a
tromple d’oeil that
turns exuberant
people into
innocent angels.

19. What ice gets, ice holds
forever. Ice cream stops
time and prolongs it. It
escapes time and yet it can
reenter reality at any
moment. Through ice cream
people manage to reduce
the dominance that space
and time holds over us.

20. Ice cream is uncanny,
mystical, ghostly, unearthly.
In contact with the air it emits
vapour. It makes seasons
appear as pseudo-events.
Summer now can last
forever.

21. SENSUALITY: On a deeper
level, in ice cream the mind
creates an epitome of oral
voluptuousness. Ice cream
chills off and cools down, but
unlike sex, it is insatiable. Its
texture is of a velvety,
dense, rich and smooth
body: firm but melting.

22. The preferred form is
rounded by means of the
scoop, anyone with
experience would want to
lick it, breast-shaped with a
neat, inviting skirt - the
ragged edge which often
forms where a round scoop
of ice cream rests on the
cone.

23. By adding chocolate sauce we
increase pleasure even more. Sucking
and licking it, we are fairly
uninhibited when we eat ice cream.
We often touch the food with the tip
of the tongue, where there is a high
concentration of our taste buds for
sweetness, and that gives us an extra
jolt of pleasure.

24. PLAYFULNESS: Ice cream is
vivid, intense, bright. The
mood picks up following the
humor of the palate. There is
no other known way of
reviving the spirit so quickly.

25. Its antidepressant effect and
unique character come mainly
from the brief change in topical
body temperature that humans
had been accustomed to for
thousands of years but is rarely
experienced today

26. Because of its gooey,
creamy, messy satisfaction,
ice cream can create an
exuberant disarray

27. Ice cream may be flavoured
outlandishly, covered in chocolate,
sold on a stick like a lollipop; Its
flavors are intensified to
overcome the coldness of ice
bright colors. We have to eat it
while we can because soon it will
melt away to nothing. Temporary
like life itself, it urges us to hold it,
share it, and enjoy it to the full
during its brief moment out of the
freezer.

28. ESCAPE: Moving closer to
the motives that dominate
the category, ice-cream
melts rapidly in the mouth.
A ruthless cycle of chilling
and warming is established
which alternate the
experience sending a
vertigo to the mind.

29. Ice cream easily leads itself to
novelty. Our brain has a craving
for novelty, which produces a
thrilling effect through the
release of endorphins. Novel
stimuli cause the release of the
neurotransmitter noradrenaline.
Our body reacts and our
emotions are exalted.

30. SUBVERSION: Due to its
repercussions, ice cream is the
most prohibited among sweets.
The violence of the cold
suddenly changes the balanced
system of the body. When
people die they turn cold. The
first time we eat it, we are
scared to death: When the cold
ice cream touches the roof of
the mouth a nerve response
causes rapid constriction and
swelling of blood vessels. An
ice cream headache also
known as brain freeze is
produced.

31. Ice cream has an addictive
capacity. It contains casein
which creates morphine-like
effects. Ice cream comes to
symbolise uninhibited
overindulgence, something
we cannot do without, a
kind of obsession. Ice cream
eating breaks all rules of
ritual and formality. And
we want more of that
which is forbidden.

32. SECURITY: On the innermost level of
human motivation, the heavenly
treat expresses cold comfort in
every bite. Ice cream tops the list of
comfort foods to represent instant
happiness, edible nostalgia,
nameless felicity, blissful calm, pure
delight in portable packaging. It is
cold but makes us feel warm inside.
Ice cream consoles, offers
psychological roundness, becalms
and soothes difficulties.

33. Chilled desserts stimulate brain
regions responsible for feelings
of pleasure and joy, and
affect immediately and directly
the parts of the brain that
control mood

34. Ice cream is the apotheosis of
milk and of progenital
innocence. The first ice cream
was flavored snow. Milk
replaced snow. The crisp,
sharp, frozen blast (as
opposed to the heat of hell),
refreshes, purifies, clears the
palate, the guilt, the sins.
Clears. Like a cold shower, a
little fresh air in summer, ice
cream takes us almost out of
our mind, ready to cry for joy.

35. Ice cream is effortless food.
We do not eat an ice cream.
We swallow it. Ice cream
implies fullness and richness
not inherent in any other kind
of food. Ice cream is a symbol
of abundance.

36. Because of its familiarity and
the recollection of childhood
times of vacation when life
was simple, ice cream makes
us feel young and safe

37. All traditional sellers of ice
cream are outfitted in snappy
white uniforms and crisp caps,
and their vehicles also in
sparkling white and fitted out
with bells project unalloyed
wholesomeness and purity.
Cows, emerald green grass,
and churns, are often used in
advertising to activate
nostalgia for the countryside.
The absence of spoons recalls
the mother’s breast.

38. What a gleam in the eyes of
the child who has just been
given permission to have an
ice cream! And what an
ecstatic moment when the
child is finally allowed to
lick it! Melting itself can also
be an allegory for the
inevitable passage of time.

39. This map
illustrates the
way some
leading brands in
the ice cream
business are
positioned in the
consumers’ mind

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

41. BRAND AVIATORS™ specialises in
activating the unique codes of your
brand, those that engage people
at a profound human level using a
three-phase methodology

42. 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

43. 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.

44. 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.

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

46. (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

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