Lovemarks Campus

Why is the art of the narrative the ultimate vehicle for reaching audiences in the Age of Now? Storytelling involves participation, language, images and action. It ignites the audience and encourages them to go on an emotional journey with the storyteller.

This Master’s thesis studies the affects of product involvement on brand loyalty for cars and batteries. The research tested “factors for regression correlations to identify links between pleasure, sign and risk probability and brand loyalty for cars and interest/pleasure, sign, risk probability and risk importance for batteries.”

Digital communication is now a table stakes. It’s not a question of will you have a digital component to your business or campaign, but rather how you will use this platform to move your brand towards being a Lovemark. Now that we’re all sitting comfortable on the digital boat, where do we go from here?

One way to ascertain if a brand is a Lovemark is to look at those who are largely responsible for awarding the brand with that status – consumers. Lovemarks have relationships with people that are based on more than transactions; they have what we call Inspirational Consumers – people who act as advocates, community members and brand owners.

New is old. We live in the Age of Now, a new Economy made up of a soft grid of electric moments, where creativity is the entry point and consumer is curator. How does this cultural shift impact the theory of Lovemarks, and is there a place in this always-on, instantly demanding, immediately-sharing world for a concept that is built on Respect and Love?

The participation band wagon rolls on in adland with agencies and clients seeming content to sacrifice effective communications in the name of ‘doing something on Facebook’. So how do you get it right?

“Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Consumers are in control. Or so we”re told. In ‘Buying In’, Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important cultural shift, including a practice he calls murketing, in which people create brands of their own and participate, in unprecedented ways, in marketing campaigns for their favorites.”

“This 122-page easy-to-read book discusses the potential that Virtual Worlds have to dramatically alter the emotional code of the human race, and also reviews the opportunities for individuals, corporations, advertising and media companies to build personal and corporate marketing campaigns in Virtual Worlds.”

2006 was a year when ones and zeros blowtorched the old production and distribution model into antiquity. The Consumer is Boss and if you’re not connecting with her you’re already her ex-lover. Women are now thought to control up to 80% of every consumer dollar spent. Branding is becoming about personalization, bonding with consumers, but only in the right way.

The dominant interface of the future is the screen. When in front of a screen, people have the choice to either lean back or lean forward. You have to engage people emotionally so they can lean in and get involved. “The promise shouldn’t change. What should change is the context and the way it is handled [for different mediums].”

“A brand has to move you.” The role of Lovemarks in the new Consumer Republic, where consumers are boss and companies would do well to listen. Roberts also discusses how supermarkets are not reaching their full customer relation capacity. (German with English translation)