A New Perspective on Building Brand Loyalty

One of my must-read blogs each week is Aaker on Brands, and this week's post offers some interesting new thoughts on building brand loyalty. The post is titled "Does Brand Love Really Exist", and recounts a recent study exploring what a person means by loving a brand or other object and a quantitative study to identity its underlying dimensions and the output or value.

The qualitative studies found that subjects identified these ten characteristics for brands they loved:

1. The brand is the best in every way from value, to key attributes, to experience. 
2. The brand connects to something deeper than its functional benefits. (e.g. Apple represents creativity and self-actualization.).
3. The brand creates emotional benefits like being happy (e.g. “Pinkberry frozen yogurt makes me smile.”).
4. The brand provides self-expressive benefits and high levels of word-of-mouth buzz.
5. The brand generates affection and warm-hearted feelings. 
6. There is a natural fit and harmony between the user and the brand they love.
7. The brand stimulates a desire to maintain proximity to the brand and even feeling “separation distress.” 
8. The brand engenders a willingness to invest time, energy and money into loved brands
9. The brand is somehow involved in frequent, interactive contact with the consumer.
10. There is a long-standing relationship history.

These findings were from a qualitative study, but a separate quantitative study by the same researchers found that the brands people profess to love predict loyalty, word-of-mouth communication and resistance to negative information.  As David concludes in his post "This, to me, is an impressive validation and elaboration of what had been basically a common sense analogy. Each of the 10 characteristics has implications about the creation, maintenance and measurement of loyalty."

So what does this mean for you and your clients, and the marketing programs you develop?  
Well, it is certainly a validation of the need to understand and communicate the emotional benefits, not just the attributes of your brand. But more than that, I think it says that brands should be treated as a  living, breathing extension of their users if they want to be "loved".

And if they want to have a loyal user base.

Latest Pew study shows 59% of smartphone users access social networking sites, and 55% using mobile or geo-location services

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The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project - 2011 Spring Tracking Survey confirms that smartphones continue to capture our imagination and our usage.

And if your company isn’t learning all you can about how to use mobile for marketing, you will be left behind.

In their study of over 2,270 adults (18+), more than a quarter of all American adults—28%—use mobile or social location-based services of some kind.


While the majority of smartphone usage is for texting (92% of users), photos (92%) and email (76%), these statistics stand out as it relates to mobile marketing:

• 59% of smartphone owners use their phone to access social networking sites, and 15% use their phone to access Twitter.
• 55% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location—that works out to 23% of all adults.
• A much smaller number (5% of cell owners, equaling 4% of all adults) use their phones to check in to locations using geo-social services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Smartphone owners are especially likely to use these services on their phones.
• 9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services. That works out to 7% of all adults. 
  

In total, 28% of U.S. adults do at least one of these activities either online or using their mobile phones—and many users do several of them. This is the Pew Internet Project’s most expansive study of location services to date. As smartphone usage continues to grow, I expect we will see these numbers continue to climb.

It’s time to get on board the mobile train (or at least get prepared to help your clients determine their needs and strategies), or be left at the station.

For a complete look at the Pew study, click here.

Help Your Clients Define What Business They Are In.

I just read an interesting article in the latest issue of Marketing Management that reminded me of the importance of knowing what business a company is really in. Looking at a prospect's business from that perspective offers an interesting ice-breaker approach to developing a new client.

The author began the article with these statements: McDonald's is not in the hamburger business, Mercedes-Benz is not in the car business, Clinique is not in the cosmetics business and Hush Puppies is not in the shoe business.

His answer is that all of these companies are in the solutions business, based on the Theodore Levitt quote from his 1983 book The Marketing Imagination (still one of the most influential books I have read) :

People don't buy things, they buy solutions to problems.

Levitt's answer at the time was that McDonald's should consider themselves in a broader context, i.e. the fast-food business, Clinique in the beauty business, etc. But that answer falls short in the reality of today's overcrowded business environment.

This means that McDonald's has to go beyond the broad stroke description of fast-food to realize they are in the business of convenience, entertainment for kids, family-friendly dining, quickness, efficiency, etc. Similarly, while Clinique may sell cosmetics, they are really in the beauty, self-image, self-esteem, age transformation, sex appeal business.

This isn't totally new thinking, but in today's "long tail" marketing world, where product specialization has become essential, companies need to revisit this line of thinking on a regular basis. Knowing what business you are really in opens up new thinking about marketing strategy, competitive environment, and new product development.

And for agencies and marketing services companies, it opens up a new way to reach out to business prospects with value-based thinking that can grow a client's business.

And that should be the business every agency is in!


Don Morgan is Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.