Forget brand love: Your customers see you as an employee – not their hero
Sorry, marketers. Most customers don’t want an emotional bond with your brand, but instead want performance, consistency, and value. Alex Vishney, the Sydney MD of research consultancy 5D, explains.
For years marketers have spoken of “brand love” as the holy grail, a kind of deep and emotional loyalty akin to friendship, even romance. The thinking goes: if a brand can make consumers fall in love with it, they will become loyal, advocate on its behalf and maybe even forgive its flaws.
You need to forget that. It’s time marketers stop pretending your customers might fall, or have fallen, in love with their brand. They won’t. Why? Because, if you’re lucky and/or good at your job, they will hire your brand. Hiring is not the same as falling in love.
The most useful way to think about customer relationships is in terms of employment – not love or romance. We don’t pay our loved ones to spend time with us, but we do pay brands. We rarely feel guilty switching from one brand to another, but we would typically avoid cheating on a partner. And we absolutely expect brands to be better tomorrow than they were yesterday, just like we do with employees.
