Daryl Travis
CEO, Brandtrust
Author, “Emotional Branding: How Successful Brands Gain the Irrational Edge”

Understanding Consumers: A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Daryl Travis, author of “Emotional Branding: How Successful Brands Gain the Irrational Edge” is a branding consultant with more than 20 years experience building and revitalizing brands for Fortune 500 corporations, non-profit associations and academic institutions. Among others, Mr. Travis helped get FedEx off to a flying start and led the revival of Nipper, the RCA dog, as a brand icon. He also was instrumental in the highly successful Monogram and Profile brands of GE appliances and leveraged "Second-Hand Smoke" as a brand on behalf of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. He serves as chief executive officer for Brandtrust, a top branding consultancy in Chicago. His book, “Emotional Branding,” is about how the positive emotional connections created through the brand ensure success and build value in business.

In his engaging presentations, Mr. Travis vividly demonstrates that branding has more to do with emotion than reason. Conventional research discloses specific behavioral patterns, but often fails to reveal underlying emotional drivers, which are needed to create an effective brand strategy and gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr. Travis explains that breakthroughs in the neurosciences, “right brain research techniques,” will forever change consumer research and tap into underlying emotions that are critical to building a brand.

As a frequent speaker at conferences across the country, Mr. Travis exhorts executives and senior marketers that the brand is the world’s most powerful business tool. Specifically, he reveals that an organization’s brand promise is its most powerful asset and can drive new business, accelerate a product or service launch or re-launch and protect its image during a crisis.

Mr. Travis’s recent speaking engagements include Chicago and Northern California Business Marketing Association events, American Marketing Association, The Marketing Forum, Reputation Institute’s Conference on Corporate Reputation, Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Strategies and Healthcare Opportunities Executive Summit, Florida International University, Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Brand Summit, Zaxby’s National Franchise Annual Meeting, The Council of Growing Companies, Abbott Immunology Sales Conference, Northwestern University, International Events Group Leadership Conference and YMCA of the USA.