There’s a growing belief in the marketing community that “brand
love” is a bogus concept. Attitudes follow usage, goes the argument,
people love the brands they use. So get more users and more people will
love your brand. That’s true, of course – but it turns out that people
like some brands more than others, and that “excess” emotional
connection makes them willing to pay a higher price.
Before I continue let me just make it clear that I think the idea
of “brand love” is, if not bogus, way over-stated. Do you feel
passionate about every brand you use? How about that cereal bar you just
ate? What about your insurance company? And do you really love your car
or does it just feel comfortable, like a pair of old shoes?
Millward Brown’s Neuroscience Practice regularly tests people’s
instinctive liking for brands and finds that most register as a mild
positive. However, when we tested the reaction of a marketing director
to their own brand, their response was off the scale. Unlike our
marketing director normal people do not love brands; in all but a very
few cases they take them for granted and feel a mild liking at best. But
that does not mean this emotional connection is without value.
We measure the strength of affection people have for brands in
surveys by asking respondents to place them on an affinity scale from
love to hate (the end-points don’t get used much). Sure enough, we find
that the proportion of people who say they like a brand is strongly
correlated with the proportion that uses it. But it’s far from a perfect
correlation; there’s a wide variation around the general relationship.
So we can infer that people like the brands they use, but they like some
more than others.
‘EXCESS’ AFFINITY
To explore the value of this emotional connection we compared
brands with “excess” affinity, stronger affinity than might be expected
based on usage alone, with ones that had “weak” affinity.
It turns out that brands with excess affinity are stronger brands.
People are slightly more likely to want to buy them and more willing to
pay a higher price for them. While they were thought to be more
expensive, people were actually more likely to think they were worth
what they cost.
In the real world this can translate to people paying over 20% more
for brands with excess affinity than those with weak affinity. In these
days when people can check prices with a click, the belief that it’s
worth paying more for your brand is a big deal. You can either take the
extra margin and impact profits directly, or keep your price low and
drive volume instead.
So how do you super-charge the emotional connection with your brand?
Not surprisingly the best way is to deliver an enjoyable experience
on a repeated basis. Positive, ongoing experience of the brand will
strengthen the emotional bond without any further intervention. But why
stop there? Why not make the usage experience as delightful as possible
by engaging the senses?
Research conducted by Millward Brown for BRANDsense confirmed that
the more positive and distinctive sensory impressions come to mind the
more loyal people are to a brand. People are not one-dimensional beings,
and the better brands engage with all five of our senses the stronger
the impression they’ll make.
EMOTIONAL ENHANCEMENT
The next step is to directly associate the brand with positive feelings.
A great example of emotional enhancement is Lurpak’s Weave Your
Magic campaign which envisions the cook as a magician: turning ordinary
ingredients into something extraordinary. In pre-testing the campaign
was often described as “inspiring”, and it helped drive sales growth in
multiple countries and win a Creative Effectiveness Lion.
Whether people buy into your brand’s purpose and values or simply
admire the celebrities associated with it, affiliation is a powerful way
of building a strong emotional connection. Look at how Under Armour’s
decision to feature American Ballet Theatre’s principal dancer Misty
Copeland in its advertising helped boost sales of its women’s clothing
line. Under Armour ranks with brands like M&Ms, Subway and Google
when it comes to creating a stronger than expected emotional connection.
Last but not least, don’t forget that people value value.
Offer a good product at a good price and many people will be
grateful. Not everyone can afford the brands they’d like to buy but that
doesn’t mean they want to suffer a bad product. The success of the Aldi
supermarket chain in Europe is testimony to the fact that people do
appreciate a good deal. In the UK people’s affinity with Aldi is
stronger than usage alone would predict, ranking alongside perennial
favourites like Pampers, Virgin Airlines and Dove.
Super-charging the emotional connection with your brand will help insulate against today’s constant pricing pressure.
While I’ve illustrated the ways brands build strong emotional
connections separately, the truth is that they’re inter-related and work
synergistically. Smart marketers know that they need to architect the
whole brand experience using product innovation, design and marketing to
evoke a positive reaction across all touchpoints.
You may never get people to love your brand, but if they like it that little bit more it will be worth the investment.
Nigel Hollis is the Executive Vice President and Chief Global Analyst, Millward Brown
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