This document discusses the deep human motives that drive shoe purchases and how understanding these motives can help brands connect with customers on a deeper level. It analyzes 13 fundamental motives for buying shoes like spontaneity, protection, affiliation, self-expression, transformation, desirability and confidence. The document advocates mapping these motives to understand the "psychographic territories" consumers inhabit and developing brand narratives that authentically tap into these underlying human motivations to create intrinsically engaging experiences that enrich people's lives.

1. WHAT MAKES
SHOES 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 shoes. 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 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 shoes

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 shoes. 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 shoe 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. SPONTANEITY: While
clothing is subject to norms
and rules, shoes give space
for manoeuvring with
spontaneity. What makes
shoes successful is their
colourful and flamboyant
character helping the
wearer mock seriousness
and play with life.

13. PROTECTION: Shoes protect our
feet and our personality.

14. AFFILIATION: We unconsciously
believe that feet are our contact
with reality. In their essence,
shoes are ordinary items that
keep us grounded. Through these
we communicate with the world.
Allowing someone to get close to
our feet is a sign of trust. We
grow attached to our shoes: They
are amongst the items that we do
not want to throw away.

15. DISRUPTION: Shoes modify our body,
restrict our feet, disrupt our contact
with the earth and we like this. To
“impede” means to restrict one’s
freedom. The stiletto is the high heel
at its most extreme, the modern
interpretation of the effort to restrict
one’s feet. Wearing them one
intrinsically derives a sado-
masochistic pleasure; the pleasurable
pain in feeling desired.

16. SELF-EXPRESSION: More substantially,
embodying the capacity of shoes to
competently model our image, some of the
most successful brands claim the essence of
shoes to unmistakably express our
personality as their own. Shoes say a lot
about who we are, what we do, where we
have been and most importantly, where we
are going. It the role of shoes never to
cheat.

17. TRANSFORMATION: Shoes have the
capacity to transform us physically
and psychologically. As Cinderella
danced her way to liberty with her
magical shoes, the right pair of shoes
can change the direction of our life.
No other accessory can similarly
transform a woman into a sex siren in
a matter of a few seconds.

18. SECURITY: Putting us into
contact with the ground, our
great security anchor, shoes
are responsible for much of our
feeling safe. At the same time,
shoes elevate their wearer off
the filth of the ground.

19. BALANCE: Shoes determine our movement
and the way the entire body works. Shoes
determine our balance. By association, we
commonly believe that with the right pair of
shoes, the world overflows with rhythm and
harmony. Expressions like “firm footing”,
“getting off on the right foot”, “standing on
one’s own feet”, and “one step at a time”
reflect the importance of the foot and shoes
and their underground connection with
knowledge and wisdom.

20. DESIRABILITY: On a deeper level, what
makes shoes sell is their powerful erotic
connotations. Because of the connection of
feet with the earth, shoes have always
symbolised fertility and progress. It is not
accidental that shoes are the most common
fetish. In high heels, the leg is lengthened;
the body becomes thinner, taller and more
curvaceous. Extra-long legs are a powerful
non-verbal signal that a woman is at her
most fertile point in the sexual reproduction
cycle.

21. CONTROL: Shoes shape our feeling of
stability and groundedness. They act
as our “firm foundations” and we all
know that when the foundations are
right, we feel in control and we can
focus without distraction on our
development. With the right
foundations we can go anywhere.
Following their association with
fertility and the reproductive process,
shoes are also connected with
prosperity and power. In many
cultures, to step on something is the
ultimate sign of authority.

22. Elegantly cladding our feet, the signs of
our animalistic past par excellence, is the
starting point of civilisation and a sign of
status.

23. ESCAPE: Embodying the fleeting nature
of shoes some of the most successful
brands help us get away and explore
life. The natural function of the feet is
connected with freedom. In our collective
fantasies shoes represent instruments of
escape from everyday life.

24. CONFIDENCE: On the innermost layer of motivation, shoes are
armour in a battle with the hostile environment. Shoes lift us
physically and emotionally. What makes shoes sell, is their
association with the stature and calibre of the wearer. Shoes
exude confidence; by association they incarnate the primal vital
impetus.

25. This map illustrates
the way some
major brands in
the global shoes
industry are
positioned in the
consumers’ mind

26. 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.

27. 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 in our
brain, 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™

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. There is a direct correlation
between our fundamental
human motives and the
level of sales and profit

33. Nothing fuels creativity more than understanding
and mobilising our fundamental motives and the
rich hierarchy of inherent concepts they infuse
into our everyday life

34. The efficiency of communication
budgets is maximised when the
authentic codes of the brand
match the deepest motives which
drive sales and profit in the
category. Nowadays, we have no
excuse for saying that “we waste
half of our advertising budget but
we don’t know which half”.

35. 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

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

37. My mission is to work with
consumer insight managers
and marketers around the
world in order to better
understand and liberate the
very forces of life. Contact
me now for a free discovery
audit by clicking on the icon: