The phrase "love brand" appeared in the early 2000's, but has been really booming only over the last few years. Being a "love brand" means winning consumers' hearts and building a strong, even intimate relationship with each of them. Today, many brands are transforming their customer relations and re-adapting their marketing strategy to gain access to this status. Why should you become a love brand? Is your company already a love brand? How would you know? Let's shed a light on this concept that generates so much love (and discussions).
Become a love brand to conquer consumers' hearts
At a time when the emotional dimension plays a more and more important role in the mechanics of consumption, becoming a love brand is proving to be one of many brands' prime goals.
Indeed, a few years ago we were buying a product because it was useful, yesterday because it was the best, and today because it provides an experience! More than just marketing their product or service, brands are trying to tell their story - the famous "storytelling" capability - like Michel and Augustin crossing the Atlantic to shake hands with Starbucks' CEO and sell their cookies. Thousands of fans passionately followed their journey, as if it was theirs.The young French brand managed to mobilize a whole community around them and reach consumers' hearts through this adventure.
By positioning yourself as a love brand, your company can generate a potential costumer's through emotion.
However, upstream efforts to become a love brand are considerable. Brands that choose to seek this status must respond in a deep and very targeted way to their customers' needs. Being a love brand is also about being irresistible and memorable: understanding customers' emotional asperity so that no other alternative can be considered.
Become a love brand to deepen your brand identity: add a special touch
To become a love brand is to build your brand's identity.
First of all, this allows to distinguish yourself from competitors and to be more visible in your sector. But beyond this need to differentiate your brand from others, in a society where customers' need to stand out, to identify with strong values.
Red Bull, for example, is one of the brands promoting self-improvement. Consumers who identify to these behaviors will be naturally drawn to this brand. In this game of seduction between brand and consumer, it is not only the product that counts: erudition, humor, personality, extravagance or restraint, some of these characteristics are what makes a brand's charm.
If Michel and Augustin, Sodebo, Oasis, Monoprix or Innocent have seduced the public with their humor and their "adorable craziness", Apple has conquered the world with the brand's sleek appearance. Having a strong identity, and "really" existing, is one of the goals you also reach by becoming a love brand. also the goal of brands by coveting this coveted status. Being a love brand, is also making your brand come alive.
Become a love brand, for a lasting and exciting relationship with your customers
Brands also set the goal of becoming love brands for customer loyalty, thus customer retention.
As in a real love relationship, the relationship between a customer and his love brand must be spicy, provide emotions, lead to a certain intimacy and also paradoxically a certain routine. Involving the consumer as soon as products or services are developed, as L'Asphalte does - a French clothing brand- offering loyalty programs, events, contests and annual meetings, for example, makes it possible to weave the link with customers.
Maintaining customer relations requires attention and efforts which show that the brand is listening to them, and above all, knows them. Loyalty is also based on paying particular attention to their requests, their expectations, their questions. Love brands have understood this well: they need to know their customers, and to personalize their customer relations in order to succeed long term.
Love brands' challenges in the digital age
If the digitalisation of marketing and customer relations has contributed to the rise of love brands, mastering the digital dimension is also one of their main challenges. In terms of customer relations, the multiplication of touch points with customers who share their joys and dissatisfaction can become unmanageable.
For a love brand, investing in their customer relations' management becomes necessary, insofar as it plays a major role in its reputation, its valuation, and is a real growth lever. The excellence of customer relations for a brand is also based on its ability to consider people beyond the data they represent, as well as personalising and enriching its relationship with each of them. Love brands, such as Meetic, Galeries Lafayette and Michel et Augustin have all chosen easiware to cultivate their customers' love for their brands through customer relations' management and customisation.
Therefore, easiware accompanies these love brands, and many other love brands in the making, in their approach of customer relations through proximity and continuous improvement.
