As I was watching BBC-series “The Hard Sell: Gadgets and Gizmos” a couple of nights ago, I became increasingly aware of just how much television advertising has changed over the past few years.

From the technical feature-based commercials of the 1960s to today’s televised attempts to create “warm and fuzzy feelings” towards consumer brands, it struck me that marketing appears to be following a familiar trend.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow published his hierarchy of needs, where he proposed the theory that individuals move from basic to more advanced levels as their needs are fulfilled. Since then, Maslow’s ideas have been applied to virtually any form of human activity – so could they apply to branding as well ?

As the diagram demonstrates, branding has since continued to move upwards from the lower levels of the pyramid. Even product categories that for decades were marketed on the physiological level (often with a high degree of technical detail) are increasingly being pushed upwards on the value scale.

One clear example of this evolution can be found in the wealth management industry.

Traditional marketing efforts focused entirely on the lower levels of the pyramid, by providing “proof” of superior investment performance or segmenting clients according to their risk profile (in effect an attempt to classify clients according to their need for safety).

More recent campaigns (Barclays Wealth, Julius Bär) focus increasingly on the sense of achievement or try to evoke a feeling of how a product or service can help clients meet their evolving life goals.

As consumers grow increasingly weary of attempts to outright influence their buying patters and technological advances allow them to selectively avoid advertising, marketers need new ways of getting their messages across.

This is where “branding through people” can really make the difference: by far the most important branding tool at the disposal of service brands’ marketers are their people. The level of expertise, intelligence and customer-focus they demonstrate will translate directly into brand perception with consumers. In other words, if your people talk about the right things, your brand will be perceived in the right way.

As brands in general move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, companies need to start adapting their tone of voice across all touch points. Moving beyond product features or basic human concerns means they can start adapting their messaging around how they can boost clients’ sense of self-esteem and ultimately answer a basic human question: “What’s in it for ME ?”.