#SMLive Brand Love 101: Recipe to stand out amidst clutter

Benjamin Soubies & Pragati Basu from Talkwalker take us through the ingredients for creating Brand Love and key takeaways to up the game in the post-COVID-19 period.

At a time when people are coming in solidarity to help each other, brands need to be on their toes to building connections, understanding their customers, and in-turn move towards creating brand love.

As Benjamin Soubies, Managing Director, JAPAC, Talkwalker said, Brand love, can be summarized through this quote by Zig Ziglar, "People don't buy brands for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons." In-line with this thought, Soubies & Pragati Basu, Sr. Digital Communications Officer - India, and ROW at Talkwalker take us through the recipe for creating Brand Kove basis research, data, and insights by the organization.

Why create brand love?

For most of the brands, the question that often arises is why create Brand Love? To this, Basu shares that apart from an increase in the share of voice and invariably, getting an increase in the market share in the long-run, Brand Love is of optimum importance due to the following reasons:

• You are able to charge a product at a premium price as consumers are so connected to your brand
• Brand love translates to brand loyalty, which leads to repeat purchases.

36% of brands don’t consider them loyal till they haven't made 5 times purchases from you. Also, 61% of customers are loyal to no more than 5 brands, shares Basu

• Brand Love leads to brand advocacy: some customers who love your brand will behave like influencers in the future.

As per Mckinsey, up to 50 % of the purchases, today are based on recommendations

Ingredients for brand love

After sharing why is it relevant for brands to create love and resonance, Basu sheds light on the ingredients for brand love. At Talkwalker, she shares, the team analyzed 250,000 conversations from 28 industries before coming to the eleven prime factors that serve as the ingredients for brand love:

• CSR: strengthens the relationship
• Sponsorship: creates an emotional bond
• Nostalgia: tapping into your consumers' past. Easier for legacy brands.
• Employee advocacy: a brand that employees love to work for. They become like influencers within the organization and this helps in brand equity. Eg: Google
• Customer experience: seamless experience for your customers. Eg- Amazon
• Social media strategy: a two-way conversation with consumers
• Trend engagement: Trend jacking is really a thing. It brings visibility and helps gain market shares
• Positive PR: grabbing eyeballs for all positive initiatives done
• Influencer marketing: Choose the right influencer for the brand, somebody that resonates with your people, message, etc
• Engaging fandom: a small tribe of influencers for brand
• Aspirational: Making your brand as a part of your aspirational lifestyle

Also read: #SMLive Influencer Marketing: The Leap from Content to Commerce & Performance

Up your game in Post-COVID-19 world

Soubies continues that in recent times, especially during the period of crisis, several brands reached out to their customers & various stakeholders to win hearts. This involved CSR, nostalgia, and other ingredients for brand love. For eg: Tata Group, Axis Bank, etc.

So, how to up your game in the post-COVID-19 period? It might seem like a distant possibility, but Soubies shares three focus areas for brands to stand out during after the pandemic:

• Trust: Focus on trust in the post-COVID-19 period as people need to know that you have their best interests in mind
• Convenience: Product & Service strategies need to shift around this
• Employee advocacy: Keep the safety of employees first. Work from home can be a real possibility in the post-COVID world.

The brands that create a lasting impression and a bond with their consumers might have a higher recall value and mutual love from the customers.

Key Takeaways

Summarizing the session, Soubies lists down the key takeaways for the recipe for brand love:

• Brand love is having a two-way conversation
• Brand love has a key impact on engagement metrics
• Brands that will stand out will be the ones – who have filled the gap between gap and need