A Marketer's Guide:
Engineering Brand Love
Key Insights and Best Practices to Engineer True Brand Love
Brand love can be as elusive and fleeting as romantic love if marketers are not fully committed to its pursuit and constant nurturing. Marketers can begin to achieve true brand love by moving past the functional and transactional aspects of consumer relationships in order to create stronger emotional bonds and lasting partnerships.
CORE CHALLENGE
Your customers don’t have strong attachments to your brand
ENGINEERED SOLUTION
Move past functional and transactional aspects of consumer relationships to create stronger emotional bonds
KEY PRINCIPLES TO ENGINEER BRAND LOVE
- Prioritizing the emotional aspects of the brand story—this may mean you need to simplify your creative brief
- Aligning corporate communications around a shared vision of brand love
- Embracing the storytelling power of associates and employees
INSIGHTS & BEST PRACTICES
Today’s marketers can engineer brand love by making key moments happen during the eight stages of brand love. Further, they can focus their strategies and tactics on the stage where a promising new relationship seems to fall apart.
THE EIGHT STAGES OF
BRAND LOVE
Love at First Sight
Get Your Flirt On
Catching Feels On a First Date
Hooking Up
Going Steady
Kiss & Tell
Fall in Love
Put a Ring On It
Be wary of the bloated brief. Keep your eyes on the prize — a compelling narrative — while avoiding checklists and data dumps.
Emotional drivers are especially critical in any category that lacks a clear set of functional differentiators. Sell the attitude, not the stuff!
GUT CHECK
Will your brand experience live up to the hype once the relationship is consummated with its first sale?
Is your company putting the customer first at each and every channel interaction?
ASK THE EXPERT
Mindful of Huntington’s mission to be “people first and then digitally powered,” Adam Ferguson is advancing new ideas like a capability that would allow customers to FaceTime a banker at any time through the mobile app. “Why would we invest in that when we can make digital convenience the driver?” he says. “Because riding the wave of why your brand is famous in a commodity category is really important. If you’re known for being personal and humane and putting the customer first at each channel interaction, whether it’s a mobile payment or anything like that, how are you making that moment felt?”
How are you protecting your brand’s heritage while continuing to surprise and delight customers?
Maintaining brand love requires consistency of message between brand teams and corporate communications.
Store associates and corporate employees are on the front lines of customer outreach and can serve as powerful and effective communicators of brand love.
CASE IN POINT
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The Marketer's Guide to Engineering Brand Love
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