This deodorant stops you sweating. This bleach kills bacteria.

Functional marketing tells you what a product does for you.

Emotional marketing on the other hand, tells you how a product makes you feel. So if the deodorant stops you sweating, you’ll feel more comfortable. Using the bleach to kill bacteria makes you feel reassured that you won’t get sick.

Brands themselves have emotional benefits too. You might buy Dove deodorant because Dove stands for body positivity and empowerment. You might buy Domestos bleach because Domestos stands for power and trust. Brand storytelling is a powerful thing (just like that beach).

This is a phenomenon luxury brands depend on. The liquid in a bottle of Chanel perfume isn’t worth £80, but the name on the side of the bottle is. It’s classic product positioning: buying Chanel tells the world you’re the sort of person who buys Chanel, which in many circles is a positive association.

How to differentiate a commodity product

So what about food? Basic foods certainly have functional benefits: vegetables can help you avoid getting ill. The proteins in meat help your body repair itself. But when you get down to food that’s more for pleasure than health, the picture gets less clear.

Let’s take ice cream as an example. It tastes nice, and that’s basically why it exists. So how do you convince people that yours tastes nicer than all the other tubs on the freezer shelf?

1. Create an origin story
Everyone sells vanilla. So how do you make sure they choose your vanilla? Say where it’s from. Madagascan vanilla, Mexican vanilla, Tahitian vanilla.

Some ingredients, like mint, grow just about everywhere. So there’s less power in stating the country of origin. In those cases, just zoom in. Does the mint grow on a mountainside? Near a stream? In volcanic soil? Paint a picture for your customers.

2. Home in on the process
Storytelling in content marketing takes inspiration from unexpected sources. Think about that mint – maybe you pick it by hand? Perhaps you use a special brush to clean off the dirt, or you crush it in an industrial-sized pestle and mortar to bring out the flavour. Whatever you do, if it helps improve the product then people will want to know about it.

3. Tell stories
If you have processes that don’t improve the product but have their own unique charm, shout about those too. I went on a tour of the Noilly Prat distillery in the south of France recently and they told us about the stirrer.

All the other vermouth brands have machinery that stirs all their barrels simultaneously, but at Noilly Prat there’s a man with a paddle who goes from barrel to barrel stirring by hand. It’s more expensive, slower and less effective, but it’s charming. It tells you they care.

4. Tantalise the senses
Which makes you hungrier?

Delicious fudge ice cream or Silky ice cream with flaky fudge.

The magic is in the adjectives. Delicious tells you how I feel about it. That’s fine if you know me and trust my judgement, but if I’m a big brand describing my own product you’d be right to be cynical.

Using sensory language in marketing is no new thing. What makes something delicious is going to be the way it tantalises the senses: the way it looks, feels, tastes, smells or (sometimes) sounds. So describe that.

5. Break the norms
People are so used to seeing certain words and phrases that they don’t even notice them anymore. Even Madagascan vanilla probably falls into that category. So shake it up. Say vanilla from Madagascar at the very least, or vanilla from Melaky in northwestern Madagascar.

And that’s it. Now, I think we all deserve a scoop.