People don’t do a terribly good job of seeing or talking about themselves objectively. They can tell you what they want (or what they think they want) and they can tell you how they might see themselves relative to the rest of society – but they can rarely convey accurate information about their true motivations, wants and desires.

When it comes to branding and product development, this can present a bit of a challenge – especially during the research phase. We are left with the question of do we design a solution to meet their reality… or rather their view of reality? The answer, I believe, depends on the brand, product, or service you are seeking to position.

People most strongly associate with brands that represent the type of people they’d like to be. One doesn’t have to look far to see examples of this in our everyday lives. Think of the $2,500 mountain bike that has been hanging in your brother’s garage for the past three years. Yes he takes it for a spin now and then and he even entered a competitive off-road race a few weeks after making the purchase (from which he is still recovering), but for the most part he uses it to pull his three year old son around the neighborhood sidewalk. He could have sprung for the $250 schwinn at Wal*Mart, but that wasn’t the point. His extravagant purchase was about more than mere functionality, it was about the story of his life or, better yet, the story of the life he aspires to – rugged, cutting-edge, and extreme.

What about the $300 Northface jacket hanging in your closet? Have you climbed Everest lately? Probably not. But pulling that puffy, insulated, mountaineering jacket over your head transforms you, if just for an afternoon, into someone that “gets it” – you become a part of a tribe of suburban adventurers, prepared for whatever climate-related devastation might befall us.

This is nothing new of course. Brands like Harley Davidson have elevated the process of aspirational branding into a bona fide art.

But how does this translate into markets that aren’t supercharged with sex, glory and danger – like aforementioned brands? What if you’re selling orthopedic shoe inserts or accounting software?

Recently, In the Harvard Business Review, Alex Lee, the President of OXO International, the New York City-based maker of OXO Good Grips household products told a story about a focus group his firm had conducted.

I was reminded of this principle a few years ago when OXO conducted focus groups to find out how far we could move from our core business, kitchen tools, into other products by applying our design philosophy of making things easier to use. We asked participants to pick photos showing people they perceived to be OXO users and nonusers. Consistently, they picked people who looked fit, successful, and interesting as the sort who would use OXO products, and people who looked conservative, older, and less fit as the sort who wouldn’t. Yet the participants, all owners of OXO products, looked a lot more like the latter than the former.

The point of course is that, as humans, we all aspire to more. A little more hip, a little more attractive, a little more urbane, etc. Consumers look as brands as tools that help them acheive a type of consumer-driven, self improvement. I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life working in this business. I’m hip to the cliches and the cheap attempts to manipulate my sense of selfworth. I understand that there are many in this business who’s primary function in life is not to articulate the truth, but rather to create a need where one didn’t exist previously. And even with all of that context and knowledge of the enemy, I would still rather purchase my orthopendic shoe inserts in packaging that features attractive, atheltic models rather than the “realisitic” alternative.