This pioneering research redefines the way we market financial products. 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 financial products and proposes a way to build financial product 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. PSYCHOGRAPHIC
MAPPING OF
FINANCIAL
SERVICES

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 in
relation to the financial services
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. INTIMACY: What really makes brands in
the financial sector highly successful is
their capacity to embed the essence of our
relationship with money, which actually
mirrors the very characteristics of human
nature. Why do we need money at all?
On an initial layer of motivation what
attracts us to money, is its promise of
pleasure. There is an underground but
direct relationship between money and
love. Money is, intrinsically, connected
with the need for approval and attention,
the fear of rejection.

8. JOIE DE VIVRE: More
significantly, what
attracts us about money
is its impulsiveness and
spread over life. Money
is life. The opportunity to
spend money does not
only make us feel that
we exist, but alive.
Ultimately, spending
money is the best
antidepressant.

9. CARE: On a yet more
profound layer of
motivation, money
can protect us and
can be used to show
our care for others.

10. CONNECTEDNESS: Incorporating
money’s nature of being all-
embracing, some of the most
successful brands of financial
institutions make us feel connected
to each other. Exchanges of money
are reminders of our dependence
on one another.

11. Money facilitates social
interaction. It is a way of
demonstrating attachment to
others. Conveniently, money
and credit offer a world of
equal access to every good. As
money is empty of content,
characterless, it can take any
meaning.

12. TRANSMUTATION: On a deeper level of
motivation, what makes money
irresistible is its transformative nature.
Abstract and intrinsically meaningless,
money derives its value from our
shared illusion that its value is written
on it. Money creates a liquid
environment in which it can better
perform its wonders and
transformations. Money makes things
real. It is difficult to think of anything
that cannot be bought with money.

13. Money can transform even
our personality. When money
keeps rolling in, we feel
favoured by the forces of the
universe, rulers over the
quirks of fate.

14. DISRUPTION: What attracts us
about money is its destructive
capacity. It destroys, dislocates,
suppresses, and simultaneously
creates, negating what already
exists.

15. There is an association of money and
filth that makes it attractive. People
who have amassed money in an easy
or sudden way sometimes resort to
forms of self-destructive behaviour,
feeling better when they have rid
themselves of some of their money.
The deepest roots of self-defeating
behaviour might lie in unreached
goals, unlived life, fear of success.

16. We can become slaves to money. As a matter of
fact, there is no cardinal sin invented by human
culture that is not motivated by money. Some
banks break rules and redefine standards. Fear is
successfully used in advertising of some financial
products especially insurance.

17. WISDOM: In yet another
motive underpinning our
money behaviour is money’s
association with prudence and
the ability to see the big
picture. Money leaves us if we
happen to earn it by chance.
Money follows wisdom. Banks
can become consultants,
offering advice to consumers.

18. CREATION: Money helps us show who
we are. It is said that money talks.
Actually, money is a form of creation, it
helps us write our own story. The use of
money can be inspired. With money,
one can attain the power of gods, the
power to create, can give vent to his
talents or even finance the creative skill
of others while feeling like a participant
in the creative process.

19. CONTROL: Moving another
layer closer to the fundamental
motives driving our money
behaviour, money is one of
the prime devices of our mind
to bring order to the
environment. As money is the
measure of things and values,
controlling money means
controlling everything.

20. Nowhere are we more
“rational” than in aspects
concerning money. The
money economy brought
about a preponderance of
intellectual over emotional
functions.

21. SECURITY: On an even more profound level, what money
promises us is security, happiness and optimism. Money in the
bank is a sign of security. In our unconscious, money is a form of
nourishment.

22. We come to believe that
money can abolish the
need for all work and
make all our problems
disappear. Money
represents debts and
claims. Money - which
equates to work and self-
punishment - helps us rid
ourselves of guilt.

23. INDEPENDENCE: Money, the most liquid of all goods, is made
through a restlessness to provide liberation and unlock almost
all pleasures and pains. It is a passport to autonomy, the
desire to be left alone. With money we can buy our way out of
almost anything. We have the freedom to use money for
diverse purposes as opposed for example to labour or the
ownership of specific goods.

24. As money supports
our dream of
financial
independence, it
must involve risk
taking, tension,
excitement and
adventure. The
greater the risk, the
greater the
pleasure.

25. EMPOWERMENT: On the innermost
layer of human motivation, people
invented money to conveniently
reassure themselves of their self-
worth and their power to
accomplish. Money is potential, the
infinite capacity of humans to
surpass themselves, an inner
strength and belief in oneself.

26. Through it, we expand, fortify and
strengthen our existence. By
winning competitions and business
wars we are saved from ever
doubting ourselves and cover our
inner void. Feeling invulnerable
we unconsciously believe that
even death can probably be
defied.

27. This map
illustrates the way
some major
brands in the
global banking
sector are
positioned in the
consumers’ mind

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

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

30. (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

31. 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: