When it came out in 2003, filmmaker Nancy Meyers’  Something’s Gotta Give sparked a wave of requests from American renovators wanting a dream kitchen just like the one in the Hampton’s house Diane Keaton’s character owned in the movie.

At the opening of West Week in March 2013, Meyers joked that there were definitely kitchens more beautiful than the one Jon Hutman designed but also acknowledged that the kitchen “is the movie”.

Inspired by the way Meyers lives her own life, it’s where most of the action happens in the film. Diane and her young lover Keanu have a hot make-out scene in the kitchen.  Later Diane and Jack Nicholson talk pancakes and slowly fall in love in the kitchen.  In fact, many of the movie’s key emotional moments happen there.

Remember the house in Father of The Bride (FOB) pictured in the first image of this post?  Or the kitchen in It’s Complicated?

I’ll bet you do because those were Meyers’ films too.  In fact, the FOB exterior started popping up in TV commercials and in episodics years after the film was released as representative of the perfect American home.

Meyers figures that what the audience experienced emotionally while watching Something’s Gotta Give became subconsciously tangled up with their visual experience of it.  So chances are, if deep down you wanted to fall in love and you loved that movie, you probably also had to have a kitchen just like Diane’s, even though you didn’t fully know why.

People Buy The Why Not The How

It’s this kind of emotional resonance that is key in the creation of powerful brands.  When people buy your interior design services, they’re also buying excitement, transformation, serenity, family, love, whatever emotional experience they long to have in their rooms.  When you tell an authentic story, both visually and emotionally, one that connects with your audience of ideal clients at a subconscious level, and taps into what they really want, they will pay you what it takes to get it.

What about you?  Does more than one client tell you their rooms make them feel a certain way?  What is it?