No! Customers don’t love your brand

The idea that consumers love your brand is outdated and myopic. Most brands fill a need, which is the relationship’s extent. However, some brands consumers DO seem to be in love with as they showcase their purchases on social media, but they only have so much love for brands in their lives.

I’ve been a loyal Subaru owner for a long time and am currently on my 8th Subaru. People proudly post pictures of their new cars on the Subaru Outback page on Facebook. Subaru has a very loyal brand following, and it shows, but when was the last time someone posted a picture of their peanut butter brand?

While Apple has had a very loyal brand following, a deeper dive shows that it’s probably due to customers being handcuffed to the Apple ecosystem than the products. The yawns from consumers on the new iPhone and Apple watch indicate that Apple believes its brand can overcome the lack of innovation.

When a customer chooses your brand, it’s it’slly not out of love for your brand as much as your product meets their needs. I like Barilla pasta, but if it disappeared from my store shelves, I would choose a competitor. I occasionally go to McDonalMcDonald’se because I know what to expect, not because I love their brand.

Brand loyalty is dead. If it was ever alive. The truth is that a brand’sbrand’st competition is no longer the competition. A brand’s competition is flat indifference. We have too much to care about brands. An agency researched if consumer indifference was real and found that 90 percent of consumers say that, aside from a few, they don’t cdon’tbout the vast majority of brands. And 73 percent of consumers said that most brands they buy daily are interchangeable.

Brands succeed not because of love but because of location. Brands are simply an efficient means to an end. And powerful brands stand for and represent a distinct category or concept in consumers’ minds.

The Havas Group’sGroup’sgful Brands 2019 report, based on 1,800 brands and 350,000 respondents in 31 countries, uncovered a startling statistic: consumers said they wouldn’wouldn’tf 77% of everyday brands disappeared.

• 58% of respondents thought brands were providing poor and irrelevant content.
• 61% of respondents want brands to provide engaging, entertaining content and offer valuable experiences apart from the brand’sbrand’sservices.

Where are brands dropping the ball?

1ne: They fail to meet customer expectations.

2wo: They’reThey’reg prices and shrinking product sizes.

3hree: They don’t respond to customers in internet time.

4our: They provide poor customer service or make it hard for customers to contact them.

5ive: They ignore poor customer reviews.

In other words, they fail in essential product marketing execution.

Don’t make the mistake that customers love your brand. Consumers only have a little love for specific brands, and marketers need to understand where their brand ranks.

Originally published at https://www.newmediaandmarketing.com on September 11, 2022.