brand affinity

How do you develop customer relationships that are strong and sustaining? How do you connect with people in meaningful, valuable ways? My new video in the series, Denise Lee Yohn Answers Your Brand-Building Questions, tackles this topic — take a look:

“Emotion is the bridge to take to cross the chasm from the early market to the mainstream market.”

That was one of the points from my address at a Women in Technology International luncheon last week. The topic of my talk was “Crossing the Digital Health & Fitness Chasm.”

Do consumers want to have a relationship with brands?

On one hand, a research study published by the Association for Consumer Research says yes, and states:

Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios when it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What's that book name "Lovemark"? That's an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

I’m at the Forrester Marketing Conference in Los Angeles, which kicked off with a spiel about a woman in Cincinnati who pretty much dedicated her life to Ikea.

After regularly driving hundreds of miles to shop at the closest locations, she took it upon herself to campaign for a store closer by. Well, that, and a whole lot more:

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

Wal-Mart has announced that it is cutting prices, setting up holiday shops in its stores, all in the hope that it can capture holiday sales now...instead of waiting for the selling season that traditionally arrives the day after Thanksgiving.

by: Iqbal Mohammed

"No two people ever buy the same brand."

by: Roger Dooley

Jim Edwards of Brandweek has penned an interesting and lengthy article describing his own experience as a neuromarketing subject, as well as providing some general background on the promise offered and challenges faced by the nascent science.

by: Mark Rogers

When you are selling a product with features - like a car or a piece of functional equipment - the conversations about your product are very useful and practical. I hate feature X. Why did they add all this new stuff? I can’t figure it out. Why can’t they do the same as product A? With service industries conversations are full of feedback about the minutiae of how the service is delivered, complaints about mistakes, but delight about good things.