Brand Lovemarks

Note: this blog has been updated from an earlier version.

A marketing student at Cranfield, Rob Hardy, notified me of this article in Fast Company, How do I Love Thee? Let me Plot the Graph. Here are some "choice" excerpts:

In a business world relentlessly driven by numbers, the word "love" doesn't roll easily off the corporate tongue. It's too squishy a concept, too touchy-feely compared with nice, measurable things like market share, unit sales, or gross margins. "I've been in some boardrooms where there was a definite, audible gulp when I put the words 'love' and 'business' together," says Kevin Roberts, author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, As CEO of the giant global ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Roberts has been on a five-year crusade to convince clients and colleagues that in a viciously competitive marketplace, love is not a flaky concept -- it's a realistic profit driver for the 21st century.

Lately, even rabid rationalists seem to be getting the message. McDonald's ads blare, "I'm lovin' it!" Jenn-Air urges shoppers to buy its ranges "for the love of cooking." And Honda's "It Must Be Love" campaign invites car owners to send in photos showing how they resemble their vehicles. Why all the public displays of affection? Money may not be able to buy love -- but love, it turns out, brings money. Research suggests that brands that engage people emotionally can command prices as much as 20% to 200% higher than competitors', and sell in far higher volumes.

And now, in a breakthrough for market researchers and love bunnies alike, Roberts and a British company QIQ International Limited, have developed a tool to quantify the emotional power of a brand. QIQ's research technique measures the twin drivers of what Roberts dubs a "lovemark": respect (performance, trust, and reputation) and love (mystery, sensuality, and intimacy). Marketers have long measured performance and trust, but mystery, sensuality, and intimacy are brand attributes few have thought to worry about, let alone quantify.

then...

All these results are then mapped on a love-respect axis. In the lower-left quadrant -- low love, low respect -- are commodities such as sand, salt, and brussels sprouts. Roberts says many telcos risk falling into that unlovable hole. On the flip side of the chart -- high love, low respect -- are fads, fashions, and infatuations: things we love for the moment but soon abandon. Think Beanie Babies and reality TV. Most solid, respectable brands live in the upper-left quadrant, home of high respect and low love: Maxwell House, Dell, Colgate, Holiday Inn. Roberts says even he was surprised at how many products consumers consign to this less-than-desirable class. "Lovemarks might, on first blush, sound sweet," he says, "but the approach is actually ruthless -- Darwinian, even."

Quite frankly, this is the one of the most ridiculous things I have read on Brand Management for some time.

That Roberts and his "Ideas Company", Saatchi and Saatchi, feels able to "plot" such deeply human values as love and respect on a 2x2 is absurd - "marketing matrixmania gone mad" as Stephen Brown puts it. Not only that. The glossy blurb behind the Lovemarks concept argues that only through "Ideas Leadership" (i.e. that self-appointed to Roberts and his company) is business and more specifically, advertising able to fix the "postmodern human condition". If this were the case, what a sad state of affairs we have gotten into..

Well, if you follow the Lovemarks argument, it would seem that Roberts and Co. have stumbled upon some unusually deep and profound insights into the human psyche. As brands aim for the top right-hand quadrant to be crowned with ultimate Lovemark Status, not only do they have the ability to earn "loyalty beyond reason" but also they have the unearthly capacity to mend our broken consumer hearts (and minds)...! Well, thank goodness for that - Lovemarks are now the Elixir of Life! I must go out and consume one to save my soul and replenish my self-esteem!

Second, to think that just adding the word "love" to the foot of a TV ad or brand strap (as the article quotes) suddenly makes your brand - and by extension your company - into an object of desire is ludicrous. They must think people are not able to see through the gloss to the truth that lies behind the rhetoric, the imagery and puffiness.. Did they forget that a global, networked, active, empowered consumer can undo this brand "non-substance" at the push of a button?!! For example, does the new McDonalds "Lovin' it" brand shift its position on the "Love/Respect Axis"? Hardly. If anything, people are so cynical about rebranding efforts such as this that any emotional connection that existed is nowadays more likely to deteriorate rather than improve....

I'm with Roberts on the need for organisations, their products and services to fulfil deeper connections and experiences with their customers - as long as it is done authentically on more mutual terms, with integrity and transparency, high commitment, high trust and high performance. My problem with Lovemarks is that it a) trivialises these challenges and b) overemphasises the roles of brand management and ad agencies to address them.

Comments

[alan moore]

Amen to that.

If I were a CEO and someone told me I was going to cover my company in LOvemarks, I'd have the certified and escorted off the premises.

But I do think the issues of intangibles, aligning organisations to best succeed interanlly with external objectives. I beliove in Engagement rather than interruption. Experieince is an important word but it does mean experiential.

advertising agencies seem to have this knack of taking something valuable and destroying it. with a cheapo cheapo version. Which they can "sell".

Though I would say that, often companies are not too much better in what to change bad practice into something more useful.