“Lovemarks” is a marketing term that was intended to replace the idea of brands.
The term was coined a few years ago by Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Roberts claims, “Brands are running out of juice.” While I don’t entirely agree that brands are running out of juice, I do believe that the term “brand” has become so watered down and misunderstood that companies need some extra jos to reconnect with customers.
Love is what’s needed to rescue brands. This love stuff isn’t marketing “fluff.” It’s the truth and whether or not you choose to believe it is irrelevant. That being said, if you are interested in building loyalty beyond reason, if you are looking at becoming truly great; the following are key ingredients to elevating your company’s status to that of a Lovemark: Mystery: Tell great stories. Exercise your past, present and future. Tap into dreams, myths and icons. Inspire people.
Sensuality: Sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste. Excite the senses. We are sensual beings making emotional decisions. Tap into the 5 senses and you’ll be a winner.
Intimacy: Commitment, empathy, and passion. Show your customers you are an intimate person/company, and they’ll show you love back.
The difference between a product, fad, brand and Lovemark is simple.
The schema is based on respect and love.
Mere products (commodities) command neither love nor respect. Think salt. (Or Comic Sans).
Fads attract love, but without respect this love is just a passing infatuation. Transformers anyone?
Brands attract respect, even lasting respect, but generally without love. I respect Burger King, but I don’t love them. Lovemarks command both respect and love. BMW. Grey Goose. Virgin. These are Lovemarks and they’ve achieved Lovemark status by binding the holy trinity of mystery, sensuality, and intimacy.
Talk about taking a campaign to the next level. Not only did Wear It With Pride encompass web, print, apparel and public events into their marketing plan, they also helped create a hit single and spark a fashion movement in Australia.
When Australia reformed their 85 formerly discriminatory same sex laws, a national campaign called Wear It With Pride was formed to educate the public about the changes. The campaign officially launched February 2nd, 2010.
Wear it With Pride, along with designer/art director Hannes Ciatti, commissioned 85 artists to interpret each law and create a t-shirt graphic around it. These t-shirts would become the centre point of the campaign.
Apart from the shirts there was also an interview/story element of the campaign showcasing various Australian celebrities and public figures battle with discrimination and homophobia. The stories and interviews were published on the site and created into posters to be displayed across the country. Ciatti commissioned a number of typographic artists to work on the posters, and the end result is really eye catching and powerful.
As if the web site, print and t-shirts weren’t enough, the Wear It With Pride Campaign also partnered with Australian pop star, Natalie Bassingthwaighte who dedicated her single ‘Love Like This’ to the cause, donating all the profits to the LGBT community. Within 24 hours the single had reached number 10 on the iTunes album charts.
If you would like to be inspired, look to the most coveted brands of our day – Mac, Google, Virgin. They have all built outstanding love affairs through their sensuality, mystery, tenderness, and their quiet confidence.
Building a great brand means making sense of the senses.
As our lives have seemed to become more complex, it is odd that we tend to ignore our senses rather than let them guide us. It is our senses that lead us to emotion. The beauty of a Technicolor prairie sunset. The pop of a champagne cork. The taste of dark chocolate and red wine. The crisp smell of the forest after a rain. The soft touch of another human being. Since the beginning of time, our senses alert us, enflame us, warn us and fill our hearts with joy. Without sensuality our existence would become unbearably bland and ultimately impossible. I cannot imagine the world without light, food without taste, or days without sound.
Music makes the people come together.
I love music! I listen to it all the time. At home, in the car, at the gym; and when I’m not listening to it I usually can be found singing, whistling or humming a tune. Music for most people, builds the soundtrack to their lives.
Think of a special time in your life – a ski trip, a summer holiday, a birthday, the purchase of your first car. When the right tune drifts into your life, it can open the floodgates to moments and memories like these. And it’s not just the music or the tune of the song that plays this powerful role. The lyrics too give us phrases that are so strong they can set our course in life. The greatest poets and lyricists can give us a voice when we don’t have one. They can articulate our feelings when the words just don’t come out right. Armies have been rallied; lovers have been bound closer together.
One band that springs to mind is U2.
Take a look at the YouTube video above. At about 1:21 you’ll probably agree that not many brands connect better with their audience quite like U2. Whether you love them or hate them, they are one of the greatest bands of all time. There aren’t many greater voices for the masses of our pop culture. Sunday Bloody Sunday, (Pride) In the Name of Love, With or Without You; no matter what the song, you can probably hum the tune and likely cite the words.
Where am I going with this? In many studies, around 70% of both sexes said that music was important to them because: 1. It elicits emotions and feelings, and 2. It’s ability to alleviate boredom. For the most beloved brands in our world, music is taken literally. It provides us with the well-worn phrases; it gives voice to the product and more importantly it speaks the voice of the consumer and the voice of our time. To hear and to speak are 2 of the most powerful forces in creating deep emotional connections with anyone. The greatest brands are into sound and you should be too!
Music isn’t just for those that can afford the big budget TV commercials – it’s for everyone and can be put into almost everything – retail environments, phone messages, brand signatures, radio, and the Internet.
When is the last time you dug, not just asked, but really got dirty and dug into what your customers and clients love/hate about your industry? What kinds of emotional connections have been made? Are they good? Great? Beautiful? Painful? Until you have started your excavation, you will never know.
Some special brands are so far out in front that they seem to have evolved into something else. They have created a loyalty that goes beyond reason. Loyalty is created through mystery, sensuality, intimacy and creativity; those that can put these ideas into action will become truly coveted brands.
Left brain thinking doesn’t cut it anymore.
Rationale; features; benefits – what a steaming pantload. In order for your clients and customers to be loyal to you they have to love you! As in any relationship, without loyalty and trust there is no love, without love there is no loyalty and trust. They go hand in hand. Rationale is not enough!
Do you read the newspaper – front to back, word for word?
Do you watch the 6 o’clock newscast for the entire hour?
Have you ever had a telemarketer puke all over you for 15 minutes (as you watch your dinner get cold), and you eat up every word of it? Not a chance!
People don’t have time for information.
You eat on the run, you drive your kids to football and dance, you work, you workout, you do it all! We do not have the time, nor do we really care to be convinced that what company X has to sell us is intellectually the best choice. Information isn’t a competitive advantage any more; we are way past that age – and thank God. How boring. What a crappy time to have been a part of – best this, finest that, fastest this, strongest that. BORING!
In my opinion we are in the beginnings of one of the most fantastic times ever. We are re-establishing an age of old, some might even dare to say an age of new.
The age of discovery.
The age of the idea.
The age of hope.
The age of dreams.
The age of emotion.
Where’s the emotion?
Doesn’t it seem like emotion has been taken out of the equation of most purchases? Deep down, don’t we all just want to find an emotional connection to something? Take real estate for example – we aren’t buying into the realtor’s knowledge of real estate, or because he has “the guaranteed home selling system” – features and benefits like this are transparent. What we are buying is their integrity and belief that they actually give a damn about us; that they actually care about the type of house we want to build our hopes, dreams and memories in. All we want as consumers is to feel the world through all 5 of our senses. Brands that can take us to that fantastic place; brands that can move us from logical reasoning to emotional responses will in all likelihood create loyalty beyond reason.
The goal of any entrepreneur, business owner, manager or marketer shouldn’t be to make tons of money. The focus is skewed and therefore the end result will be too. The focus should be to create loyalty beyond reason. Why? Because that means you can appeal to your customers and clients in a much deeper way; forever. And forever is where success lies. Isn’t it true that if you look at your best customers, the ones whom you love, the ones whom you laugh with, the ones whom you go for a coffee or a pint with, the ones that bring you the most money; are the same ones that are committed to you and have been with you forever?
You want “lifetime” customers and you want them to have a love affair with you, so that no matter what the competition does, no matter what a A-Buck-or-Two or Wal-Mart (commodities) are offering cheaper, they will stay with you and they will pay a premium price to do so. Just as you will stay with your husband or your wife over 30 years because you have loyalty towards them beyond reason; a force that is bigger than a feature and much larger than a benefit is at work.
Now go make some love with your customers. Create loyalty beyond reason!
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Lovemarks
As our lives have seemed to become more complex, it is odd that we tend to ignore our senses rather than let them guide us. It is our senses that lead us to emotion. The beauty of a Technicolor prairie sunset. The pop of a champagne cork. The taste of dark chocolate and red wine. The crisp smell of the forest after a rain. The soft touch of another human being. Since the beginning of time, our senses alert us, enflame us, warn us and fill our hearts with joy. Without sensuality our existence would become unbearably bland and ultimately impossible. I cannot imagine the world without light, food without taste, or days without sound.
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