Brands Are Media: What Every Incentive, Recognition, and Loyalty Professional Needs to Know About Merchandising
By Bruce Bolger
Why Brands Behave Like Media
The Difference Between Value and Meaning
Every Brand Has a Personality
The Case of Emotional Differentiation
Brands Help Tell the Organization's Story
What Incentive Professionals Should Ask
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For decades, organizations have viewed merchandise, gift cards, travel, and experiences primarily as rewards. Yet a growing body of research and industry experience suggests that brands do much more than provide utility. They communicate identity, values, aspirations, status, and emotion. In effect, brands function as a form of media in the world of rewards and recognition. This concept has important implications for anyone designing employee recognition programs, sales incentives, channel incentives, customer loyalty initiatives, business gifts, event gifting, or fundraising campaigns. The choice of reward is not simply a purchasing decision. It is a communications decision.
Just as organizations carefully select advertising media to communicate a message, they should be equally thoughtful about the brands they use to motivate and reward people. The incentives, rewards, recognition, loyalty, and gifting industries have traditionally focused on the economic value of rewards. Increasingly, the greater opportunity may lie in understanding their communication value. Brands are not simply products. They are media channels carrying stories, emotions, aspirations, and identities.
When organizations use brands to motivate employees, customers, channel partners, donors, or other stakeholders, they are doing far more than distributing merchandise or experiences. They are communicating messages about achievement, appreciation, belonging, performance, and purpose. The organizations that understand this distinction are often able to create programs that are not only more memorable, but also more effective. In a world overflowing with messages, the most powerful reward may be the one that tells the right story.
To succeed, today’s reward designers need to have merchandising experience with the understanding of how to properly promote brands on their catalogs based on the organization’s values, the audience, and the budget, etc.
Why Brands Behave Like Media
Traditional media communicates through words, images, sound, and storytelling. Brands communicate in much the same way. When someone receives a reward from a brand such as Apple, Yeti, Citizen, Patagonia, Nike, Bose, or KitchenAid, they are not simply receiving a product. They are receiving all the associations that brand has built over years or decades through advertising, product quality, customer experience, design, and reputation.
The product becomes a delivery vehicle for a story. This is one reason why research consistently finds that non-cash rewards often outperform equivalent cash rewards in motivating behavior. Merchandise, gift cards, and experiences create emotional and symbolic value beyond their monetary worth. Participants often remember the reward, the achievement, and the sponsoring organization long after the program ends. Cash pays bills; brands help create memories.
The Difference Between Value and Meaning
A common mistake in incentive and recognition program design is to focus exclusively on cost.
Organizations frequently ask: "What reward can we afford?" A more powerful question is: "What message does this reward send?" Two rewards with identical retail value can generate dramatically different emotional responses because of the stories attached to the brands involved.
A premium travel experience may communicate achievement, adventure, and exclusivity. A respected technology brand may communicate innovation and performance. An outdoor lifestyle brand may communicate authenticity, sustainability, or personal freedom. The emotional meaning often becomes more important than the price tag. This helps explain why many organizations are willing to invest significant effort in curating merchandise selections, incentive travel experiences, and gift card portfolios rather than simply distributing cash. The objective is not merely compensation. The objective is communication.
Every Brand Has a Personality 
One of the most important concepts for incentive and recognition professionals is brand personality. Consumers routinely assign human characteristics to brands. Some brands are viewed as innovative. Others are dependable, adventurous, luxurious, family-oriented, environmentally conscious, performance-driven, or socially responsible.
When organizations select brands for rewards, they are effectively borrowing those personalities.
A technology company seeking to reinforce innovation may select very different rewards than a healthcare organization emphasizing trust and caring. A sales incentive focused on achievement may require different brand choices than an employee appreciation program focused on inclusion and belonging. The brand becomes part of the message. In this sense, the reward functions much like a media placement. The audience receives both the object and the story attached to it.
The Case of Emotional Differentiation
The incentive, rewards, and recognition industry increasingly operates in a world where participants have virtually unlimited choices. Most employees, customers, and channel partners can purchase many products for themselves. As a result, the differentiating value of a reward often comes from the emotional experience surrounding it.
Research from the Incentive Research Foundation continues to show the importance of emotional engagement in reward and recognition programs. Organizations that effectively connect rewards to desired behaviors and meaningful experiences generally achieve stronger outcomes than those focused solely on transactional value. This helps explain why merchandise, gift cards, incentive travel, and curated experiences continue to play a significant role in the incentives marketplace despite the simplicity of cash awards. The reward is memorable because it carries meaning.
Brands Help Tell the Organization's Story
The most effective programs align the brand story with the organization's objectives. If an organization wants to promote innovation, sustainability, wellness, craftsmanship, quality, service, or achievement, the brands selected should reinforce those themes. This is where incentive and recognition professionals can create significant value.
Rather than acting as procurement specialists, they become communications strategists. Their role shifts from simply sourcing products to curating brand experiences that reinforce desired behaviors and organizational values. The Incentive Marketing Association frequently emphasizes that effective incentive programs create a stronger connection between desired performance and rewards. When properly designed, rewards strengthen awareness, loyalty, engagement, and business outcomes. The choice of brand can amplify that effect.
What Incentive Professionals Should Ask
Before selecting any reward, recognition item, gift card, experience, or travel award, consider the following questions:
- What story does this brand tell?
- What values does it represent?
- How is it perceived by the intended audience?
- Does it reinforce the organization's goals?
- Does it enhance the emotional significance of the achievement?
- Will participants remember the reward and the experience associated with it?
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 17th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
