Lifestyle Brands and Brand Loyalty: Brands that Save Lives

A common question asked by our clients is "how do I get my customers to feel a greater sense of attachment or loyalty to our brand?"  The truth is, there is no surefire way that works for every audience and every brand, but for some brands, the proper positioning can really get things moving.

Recently my friend's father was in a car accident.  Thankfully he is okay, but the car, a Mustang, was totaled.  It just so happens that my friend himself had also been in an accident in the same vehicle years before and walked out fine as well.  When I spoke to him about it he said that he would only buy Mustangs for the rest of his life.  That car had saved their lives twice and he trusted the brand above any other.  He kept the hood ornament off the vehicle as a memento and a display of the brand he will forever be loyal to.  This mirrors a recent commercial by Subaru, which features a man retrieving the shifter knob from his totaled vehicle that saved his life as well.  This scenario is a powerful example of how a brand can earn loyalty with its audience and although the bond in this story occurred naturally, without the brand's involvement, if we dissect what happened we can actually build a formula for increasing brand loyalty.

Formula: Lifestyle Branding

First, cars are one of the most well known types of lifestyle brands.  Outside of price and fuel efficiency, the reason we pick a certain brand of vehicle usually pertains to its representation of the buyer's lifestyle or personality.  A parent of three buys a large van or SUV because it sells safety and allows the buyer to transport the whole family.  The successful entrepreneur buys a luxury vehicle to display his wealth and status.  The young kid or middle aged man buys the muscle car to represent masculinity and power.  Car brands identify these lifestyles and decision choices and market products around them.  Volvo has consistently marketed itself as the brand for safety.  Outside the auto industry, Apple is well known for its lifestyle marketing strategy.  Apple represents creativity and self-expression and owns a diehard fanbase of loyal users who self-identify with the brand.

Formula: Lifestyle Branding + Emotional Marketing

Second, the increase in loyalty occurred as a result of an emotional experience.  Emotional marketing is no secret.  Brands have been using it for decades.  The "Kodak Moments" campaign epitomizes emotional marketing.  Kodak knows that families cherish their memories and played off that emotion to entice buyers to trust their products if they want their memories to last a lifetime.  The semi-secret is that the emotion doesn't always have to be sad.  When Kodak partnered with Disney, Kodak Moments focused on fun and excitement while still appealing to love, togetherness and family.  MasterCard's "Priceless" campaign is another great example.  In the beginning, the ads focused on heartfelt emotions to instill the idea of priceless moments. As time progressed, however, MasterCard began to make the commercials comical, still triggering an emotional response, but in a humorous way.  Emotional marketing is one of the easiest and most effective ways to aid audience understanding of why your brand improves customers' lives.

Formula: Lifestyle Branding + Emotional Marketing + Delivering on Experience

If these two factors alone were enough to trigger brand loyalty, marketers would be a whole lot richer and brands wouldn't be struggling through price wars.  The final piece, and real key that makes your brand more than just a commodity, is truly delivering on the the needs of the lifestyle and the emotional experience your brand promises consumers.  Know your target audience.  If your product doesn't meet the needs of the lifestyle you are marketing to, your brand will be quickly dismissed because you don't truly understand the customer and industry.  Similarly, choose an emotion that is relevant to your product.  Making an emotional plea that doesn't align with your product will backfire.  Using your product must deliver on the emotional experience being advertised.  Say your brand sells winter wear.  If you choose to identify with an extreme sports lifestyle, ensure that your product enables freedom of movement, functionality, convenience and self-expression.  Furthermore, don't choose marketing that focuses on safety, but rather adventure or individuality.  By doing so, your audience will better identify with the brand and begin the path towards brand loyalty.

Formula: Lifestyle Branding + Emotional Marketing + Delivering on Experience = Brand Loyalty

So what's the answer I give our clients? Position your brand around your target audience's lifestyle choice, create authentic emotional marketing and deliver a brand experience that aligns with the brand's promise.

Girl Scouts Using Social Media - Modernizing a Brand

I grew up, as I'm sure most of us did, with the doorbell ringing and a little girl in uniform on the other side trying to sell me delicious overpriced cookies using her award winning smile.  Buying Girl Scout cookies is so ubiquitous that it almost equates to a rite of passage for new home owners - one of those inevitable events you know anticipate is going to happen that, unlike some first time experiences (like a pipe breaking), you can actually look forward to.  However, I haven't had a Girl Scout come to my door in years.  It certainly can't be because I'm not friendly :-D.  Is door-to-door selling just not bringing in the returns these future entrepreneurs are looking for?

According to an article from Mashable, more and more Girl Scouts are turning to social media in order to reach larger audiences and sell cookies faster - and with less work.  This may sound like a good idea at first, a smart way to use modern technology to increase sales, but the article warns that this may actually be tarnishing the Girl Scout brand.  For two years shy of a century, the Girl Scout brand has been aligned with cute girls coming directly to your door hawking baked goods.  That personal connection of knowing your neighborhood children and shelling out $5 a box to support her is what made the interaction so powerful.  You were more likely to buy from her in person because how could you say no to that innocent face price gouging you?  If this scenario took place entirely online, not in real time, through plain text, would you be as convinced to buy as you would be in person?  If done correctly, yes!

I'll admit that a status update from my neighbor saying "please buy girl scout cookies from my daughter," or, heaven forbid, actually setting up a Facebook store, would not entice me to purchase...unless she had some thin mints...mmm....err but um, no, that situation would not be so persuasive.  Imagine this instead, a personalized wall post with a picture of the daughter in uniform standing in an open front doorway, holding up an order form, with a caption attached saying "Ding Dong. Hi Mr. Cox, would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?" Um yeah, that's going to work.  Why? Because this scenario has modernized the classic Girl Scout interaction to play out in a digital realm.  On Facebook, my wall is the equivalent of my front door and a photo takes the place of looking through my peep hole.  In all effects, I feel as though I am still receiving the same level of personal service, but on a forum that I am more likely to respond to (I'm always available on Facebook, whereas it would be much harder to isolate a time when I'm regularly home).

This form of modernized service is the key to keeping historic brand interactions relevant today.  Feel out of touch with your local grocer or bakery? What if they posted their fresh produce or what's being pulled hot out of the oven? Not at home to receive that package? UPS could post a delivery notice to your Facebook wall, so that you could stop and retrieve the package on your way home rather than having to go back out.  Social media has upped the standards for customer service and it's no longer becoming a convenience, it's an expectation.  How is your brand adapting to better serve the customer?

Reviving Your Brand: Chatroulette

By now everyone should be familiar with Chatroulette, the internet site that allows users to video conference with random people from around the globe.  As the media and television shows like South Park have made very clear, the site is heavily used by individuals looking to perform sexual acts.  Despite the large market for a website serving this purpose, pornography had never been the original or desired intent of the site's creator.  This unwanted usage has lead to a surge of backlash from the media and a large portion of users disassociating with the site because they are tired of seeing naked images every time they try to hold a legitimate conversation.  For the last seven months, Chatroulette has done nothing to prevent or deter such behavior, most likely on the grounds of fostering free speech and expression; however, allowing the brand to grow organically and earn a negative reputation, especially in the US, has put the brand at risk of permanently becoming nothing more than another internet sex site.  Now, it appears founder Andrey Ternovskiy is taking a stand to intervene before it is too late.


According to an article on TechCrunch, Chatroulette is employing a series of new technologies that will use video recognition to weed out pornographic images and flag users who are repeatedly skipped.  Assuming the new technology works, will this effort be enough to save the decaying brand?  With the right set of actions, the answer should be yes.  Alone the technology improvements would not be able to re-energize the brand and reengage users who have already jumped ship, but with the right amount of crisis communication and a solid brand platform, Chatroulette can reinvent itself and ignite a growth in video communications and global networking.  


Similar to BP, but on a much less disastrous scale, Chatroulette needs to first initiate crisis communication to begin apologizing to its audience for the current state of the brand.  Following a current trend of using CEOs as spokesmen, Ternovsky needs to engage media representatives directly, stating that this was not the intended usage of the site, explaining why the situation was allowed to escalate to its current state, and thoroughly educating users on the technology being put into place to address the problem.  Second, Chatroulette needs to develop a new brand platform and positioning that sets the course for the brand's future.  If not pornography, what is the true intended purpose of the site? How can the service benefit its users? And what will the future hold if the brand revolutionizes the way we communicate and socialize.  The new positioning should give the audience a reason to care about the company and a promise of change to hold on to for the future.  Together, these two steps should display an effort to abandon the past and launch a new direction.


Of course, the last step is to carry through with what is promised.  Aside from the improvements to the underlying software, the biggest way to reflect the positive changes associated with the new brand platform is to improve the user experience on a visual level.  As the site looks now, Chatroulette is a very visually disengaging experience, resembling an early Windows 3.1 feel.  Although this may have accurately portrayed the brand as a startup (the vibe gives an old school feel, focusing on substance over quality and aligning with an initial audience that most likely isn't swayed by just a pretty visage), combined with the current perception of the brand, the visual scheme of the site actually portrays a very low tech and even distrusting persona. If Ternovsky cares enough about the brand's perception to change the technology, he should also care enough to create a visual scheme that appears modern and professional (Apple-esque I'm sure).


With all this in place, the brand should have the legs it needs to reposition itself in the market and reengage lost audience members.  After a trial period of testing the updated software and analyzing some initial feedback on the overall user experience, I would further suggest that Chatroulette begins to sponsor or partner with other aligning interests.  If the new positioning aims to bridge language barriers and span distances, sponsor a pen pal program for high school foreign language departments.  If the new positioning is focused on networking and meeting new people, partner with dating sates and social media networks.  Not only will this drastically increase the site's user base, it will further build trust in a brand that had once been greatly discredited.