Its a fact that the brands we end up with are as many friends as the people we share a pint with.
When you think how many adverts you see everyday, how many offers, texts, emails, cookie inspire banners and app push ads you get exposed to, and just how many choices there are out there for pretty much every product you can think of. If you don’t believe me Google dishwasher salt funnel – you get a few. It takes a lot for us to settle on and stick with the products and services we call our brands. The one’s we return to and use time after time. The onee’s we see as particularly ‘our brands’.
What goes into making a product one of ‘our brands’?
What goes into it is the effort, time and experiences we have that are very similar to all that gubbins that turns someone we know into a good friend. Friends are those people you trust, you respect and like. You may like some people but wouldn’t necessarily trust them, you may respect people you don’t like etc etc whatever the combinations, ruminations, results and consequences, if you like, trust and respect (in some small way) what a product or service does for you, then you are brand loyal as much as you are loyal to your mates.
This is just my theory you understand, for what constitutes our brands, the ones we are loyal and return to time on time – and at its core, the process is about the heart and mind in tandem, generating all those positive emotions we need to build long term r. The brands I return to have my loyalty, my trust, my respect and, in many cases, some degree of affection. They are, in effect, friends.
A thought moved on ….
My brands understand me and satisfy the varying degree of needs I have more effectively than the other offers on the shelves or couched in Amazon’s hangar; they may make me feel happy, they may comfort, entertain, intrigue or even excite, they may just do the job I exactly want them to do. Whatever, whichever way they deliver they are my brands and in some way they are my friends.
This of course works both ways, we lose brand loyalty the same way we fall out with friends, we may think they have let us down, been unfaithful, mean, dishonest – it may simply not feel like they understand us as well as tehy used to. Our lives move on, our friends change, our brands change, friends change and brands change too.