This document outlines a model called "The Wheel of Motives" for understanding fundamental human motivations and using that understanding to build compelling brand strategies. It argues that most brands ignore insights from neuroscience and focus too much on superficial attributes rather than deeper human needs. The Wheel of Motives traces emotions back to their biological roots to create concepts that resonate profoundly. When applied in a three-phase process, it can help brands develop unique narratives that intrinsically engage people in a holistic, universal way. This approach aims to build brands that align communications, engage people across cultures, and increase long-term ROI.

1. (RE)DEFINING
WATCH BRANDS
THROUGH HUMAN
FUNDAMENTALS

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. For consumer satisfaction to be
as complete as possible, we must
take care not only of the needs
consumers understand and are
able to evaluate but also and
especially the ones they are not
consciously aware of

4. While 95% of our purchase decision making
takes place in our unconscious, we tend to
spend a disproportionally high time on product
characteristics and price and promotions
because they are easier to grasp

5. Instead, this presentation delves
into the unconscious mind of the
consumer, the 95% that really
matters, and makes it possible for
marketers to build irresistible
brands

6. Biological Value Brain &
Body
Systems
Cognitive
Operations
Psychological
States
Human
Morality
Behaviour
Rewards
Engagement
The
pathways
of human
behaviour
While the models for shaping
brand strategy used by most
multinationals today ignore
the contribution of modern
sciences such as
neurobiology and cognitive
science, BRAND AVIATORS™
use a comprehensive model
having an evolutionary
foundation and a
multidisciplinary approach
enabling marketers to build
consumer propositions that
are impossible to resist

7. Our psyche consists of a code.

8. We are an ordered pattern of
fundamental motives capable of
generating life

9. Having captured our
fundamental human
motives, the irreducible parts
of our nature, all the way
from their biological values,
to the inherent concepts they
imbue into our everyday life,
this model traces emotions
from their roots, and creates
concepts that bear the
freshness of the source.
CONNECT
CONTROL
The wheel of motives™
GROW
CARE
BALANCE
DESIRE
FEEL
SAFE
SEEK
PLAY
CREATE
DEFY
TRANSFORM
TM

10. Motive Main biological
advantages /
survival value
Possible
neurosystems
involved
Examples of
cognitive
operations
Main psychological
states
Main sociocultural
manifestations and
reinforcers
Feel safe Detection of threats,
Dissipation of fears,
Endurance via
rewards,
Creation of
optimism that
facilitates success
Reward systems
(opioid
neurosystems that
induce a sensation of
pleasure and
suppress pain), Fear
dampening systems,
Defensive system
Retrospection,
Reminiscence,
Comfort and
enjoyment,
Believing,
Increasing positive
emotions,
Constancy, Coping,
Resolution of
emotional conflict,
Incognisance,
Anthropomorphism
Stability,
Regression,
Renewal, Nostalgia,
Daydreaming,
Comfort, Hope,
Happiness, Satiety,
Plenitude, Joy, Bliss,
Instant gratification,
Reward,
Perfectionism
Postponement,
Shame, Guilt,
Humbleness, Self-
sacrifice, Narcissism
Belief systems such
as religion, Morality,
Ethics, Mores,
Folkway, Tradition,
Authenticity
Example: the pathways of our motive to feel
safe.

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

12. The motives for buying watches are
presented in a summarised form in order
of increasing relative importance in line
with their power to influence our buying
decisions*

13. INTELLECTUALITY: On an initial
layer of motivation we buy
watches because of their intrinsic
qualities of sophistication and
intellectuality. Watches make us
look more cautious, expert, even
smarter. Time experienced as
movement sharpens judgment.

14. Taking one’s time, slowing
down, one takes deeper
decisions. Is not the secret of our
life to balance our overactive
mind and with the slow pace life
needs, to balance emotion with
logic, the affective with the
cognitive?

15. CONNECTEDNESS:
Proceeding into a
deeper layer of
motivation, what
boosts sales of
watches is our
need to bond.

16. We all share time in equal
measure and distribution. Time is
always with us, keeping us good
company.

17. We are part of global collective time

18. Watches help us
synchronize
ourselves with
the world

19. SECURITY: Even more
significantly, embedding the
capacity of watches to
measure the instances we
live, some of the most
successful brands mark the
essence of watches to
reassure us about our own
existence as their own
territory.

20. As time is an instance
continuously new,
perpetually renewed, our
life is renewed every
second

21. The movement of the minute
hand and the suggestion of the
heartbeat of the ticking make us
feel safe. As the heart beats
inside the shining watch the case
should be hard to protect it from
all types of external dangers.

22. Everyday obligations are
stressful but capturing
and substantiating time in
specific units through a
watch, we feel comforted

23. TRANSFORMATION: It is the
function of watches to enable
us to master and consume time
rendering it discontinuous and
classifying it. Indeed, watches
immobilise time in instances.
They freeze it into abstract,
empty hours, minutes, seconds
and a succession of “nows”.

24. Watches serve us to capture the concrete
moments of our life, the moments we are really
alive. They help us convert instants into life.

25. By involving ourselves in
the process of time and
space movement we
intervene in the universal
movement of time, the
imperishable magician.
What we actually wear
are the very workings of
the cosmos.

26. DISRUPTION: More significantly,
what makes watches sell is our
need to destroy time. Time is an
eliminative movement which
reverses the course of things. To
live, is live and die every moment.

27. Our mind makes of watches the
symbols of insatiable time which
devours everything. In our collective
memory they are registered as
monsters with grinding teeth,
chewing up the seconds or spitting
them.

28. When we catch sight of a
clock the spell of the
moment is shattered

29. EXPRESSION: Moving closer to the
motives that dominate the
category, what boosts sales of
watches is their capacity to
communicate personal interests
and style. Watches make us feel
that through them we fertilise
time instead of killing it.

30. In our mind, time started
from the creation of the
world. The awareness
of creation is awareness
of the efficiency of time.

31. We only live through time that
has content. Our works can beat
time. Inherently instruments of
creation with continuous visibility
to us and the others, watches are
prime objects of self-expression.

32. EXPLORATION: We experience
time as movement by or
towards an observer. What
makes watches successful is
their capacity to help us test
borders, living on the verge of
time.

33. Watches help us expand what we can
live in an instant, living at the edge of
time, experiencing novelty and variety.
Through new experiences, life seems to
be extended.

34. SPONTANEITY: Proceeding into a
deeper layer of motivation, what
makes us buy watches is the
feeling that they can intensify the
instant, filling it with as much life
as possible.

35. As time is the texture of
life, we essentially live
through the intensity of
the moments. In between
time is non-existent, we
do not remember it.

36. Every single moment is worth a
lifetime. Life is now, the watch is
ticking. The “later” does not exist,
the “later” will never come.

37. Watches cannot measure
immobile time, the instants we
do not live. Watches spur us to
seize the moment. It’s up to us to
enjoy a rich experience of time.

38. ACHIEVEMENT: Apart from
instances, time is duration.
Duration per se creates not
only realities, but also
possibilities. The watch fills
time by ensuring that
something happens – it
organises itself around the
event.

39. ACHIEVEMENT: Apart from instances,
time is duration. Duration per se
creates not only realities, but also
possibilities. The watch fills time by
ensuring that something happens – it
organises itself around the event. A
moment itself can achieve historic
proportions. To live by the clock is
synonymous to success. Watches sell
because they enable us to mix
duration with action.
A moment itself can achieve
historic proportions. To live by
the clock is synonymous to
success. Watches sell because
they enable us to mix duration
with action.

40. Watches make us feel heroes
who achieve things against
time, surpass time, break
records - unlike simple
people who let time pass.
Dependable, ever vigilant,
watches have speeded up
the rhythms of nature. They
make us live the moments
with heightened alertness.

41. CONTROL: On the
deepest level of
human motivation,
we invented time to
order our existence

42. Watches keep, record and
measure time breaking it into
manageable units. By connecting
time to our body, watches
superimpose measurement into
the unknown and give us the
sense that we keep time and our
life under control.

43. Being tools that control
uncertainty, watches make us
feel in control of the forces of
chaos and anarchy. As time is
a resource to be managed,
lack of time acts as a sign of
status.

44. The quality of the
watch symbolises the
quality of the time of
its wearer. We want to
believe that all humans
are not equal before
time and death.

45. * In some cases, the
same brand can be
manifested in
different ways in
different countries
Leading brands
express the
fundamental
human motives
driving their
category *

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

47. CONNECT
CONTROL
The wheel of motives™
GROW
CARE
BALANCE
DESIRE
FEEL
SAFE
SEEK
PLAY
CREATE
DEFY
TRANSFORM
TM
The Wheel Of Motives™ can
help us activate the unique
codes of a brand, those that
engage people at a
profound human level
based on a three-phase
methodology *
* For the complete theory about
how the fundamental human
motives work please contact the
author or wait until the
publishing of the book

48. Phase 1: Psychographic mapping
• Mapping the meaning people derive
from the category
• Deconstructing the meaning systems
of the brands
• Tracing underexploited territories
and meaning-saturated areas

49. Phase 2: Brand (re)definition
• Liberating the core of the
brand from its nonessential
elements
• Mobilising the core to give a
unique answer to what
consumers have always
wanted from the category

50. Phase 3: The unique
language of the brand
• Imprinting brand strategy
into our fundamental human
motives, the roots of human
communication
• Translating brand strategy
into Intrinsically Engaging
Narratives™ - tangible and
ownable experiences based
on the profound code

51. To capture the deep
resonances that make
a brand successful,
and its consonances
with the category, a
profound knowledge
of the rich hierarchies
of inherent concepts
of our mind, and their
underground
connections, is
required.

52. In tracing the pathways our
mind uses to create reality and
by activating the very forces of
life, The Wheel Of Motives™
offers considerable advantages
over the brand strategy models
used by multinational companies
today. Brands and concepts
developed through The Wheel
Of Motives™ are heartfelt, and
profound.

53. Above all, by founding brand strategy on
our fundamental human motives 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

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

55. (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’s
activities

56. 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 at
c.pantidos@brandaviators.com
or by clicking on the icon:
BRAND AVIATORS™
Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX
+44 (0) 203 693 3933