Daniel recommended that we should take a look at Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts because it related a lot to our last lecture on ‘Beyond the Brand’, This book, like the lecture, revolves around understanding the emotional connection between people and the brand. Kevin Roberts believes that love is the way forward for a business, and he has that mentality of high love and high respect like Daniel talked about.

I started reading and he beings by talking about how his successful career in marketing and founding his business ‘Saatchi and Saatchi’. He talks about so many things in this book and what also interesting mw when was reading it was how every page was different, I mean the design. Every page has a different colour text or different style of imagery, this made the book very interesting to read and kept my attention the whole way throughout. There were certain areas that stuck out to me in particular:

• Emotion and Love
• Loyalty beyond reason
• High love + High respect

I was reading to get the the beyond the brand section and how to take your brand further – because this is what I want to find out more about.

Emotion

‘In my 35 years in business I have trusted my emotions. I have always believed that by touching emotion you get the best people to work with you, the best clients to inspire you, the best partners, and the most devoted customers’. It is clear to see that Roberts holds a strong feeling towards the importance of having emotion and emotional connection within a brand. ‘Human beings are powered by emotion not reas on’. He then moved on to ‘LOVE’ because he stated it was the most important primary emotion of them all.

Roberts discusesed songs he loved and facts about love which all led up to how he began to incorporate love into his work and brands.‘I knew love was what was missing. I knew that love was the only way to ante up the emotional temperature and create the new kinds of relationships that brands needed.’ This was interesting to me, the fact that he took peoples love for interests and hobbies and he found a way to use that within brands.

He also said that ‘lovemarks’ of this new century will be the brands and businesses that create genuine emotional connections with the communities and networks they live in. This means getting close and personal, this makes sense to me when I read it because when I think of the brands that I love and admire, they have a very good emotive language to it, very good customer service and all around have a good emotion connection to their customers.

Loyalty beyond Reason

This was another big part of what Daniel talked about, you want your customers to be loyal to you and love sometimes if the only thing that will keep them there. This part of the book was interesting because Roberts discussed loyalty to brands and what makes them stay.

 

He gave this example on Apple – ‘With loyalty beyond reason Apple could make mistakes and still be forgiven. This is the reward for a Lovemark. Only love will get consumers through the bad times when commenting sense tells them they should change. Because Apple users loved the product, they were committed to it as an idea for themselves. They were Apple people.’ This was quite relevant I think even for todays society, that people will stay through times when they shouldn’t if they love the product enough.

The Love/Respect Axis 

This is another popular section of the book that deserves recognition, as I read some reviews and people agreed that this was an important chapter, it is mainly what the whole book is about – high love and high respect.

How did this axis come about? Roberts wrote that he was showing his boss his new idea of how brands could become more successful because the essence of a brand is fading away. He drew a line on a napkin starting from love at the right and ending in respect to the left, he placed brands near love, stating that more love needs to be in brands ‘high love’. Products would stay at the left of the line ‘low respect, low love’. Then his boss fixed this axis by drawing another line horizontal, that is how the respect/love axis came about. The axis showed love as the goal above and beyond respect because a brand needs both to succeed.

‘Now we can show the ongoing importance of Respect and the urgency of moving into a relationship based on love. Love of design, love of customers etc’

 

I really enjoyed the imagery used demonstrating the axis and showing it in use, where you want to be and where you don’t want to be on the axis. This helped me to understand the concept more. After reading this chapter I now know why everyone thinks it is so important for a brand to have both high love and high respect. I then thought about the brands I love and everyone loves, they are so well received and well liked because they have both of these aspects – love and respect. Brands like Nike, Starbucks and Mercedes have love and respect from all of their frequent customers, they keep coming back for more.

What did I learn from this book?

• I learned the importance of emotion within a brand, that the client has to feel some sort of emotional connection with you or the brand.
• I learned the High love And High respect concept and its importance within a successful brand.
• I learned how love is also needed. If I do not love my brand and the work I am producing then how should I expect others to love it.
• I learned that quite sensual and intimate words can be used to describe all parts of a brand or company( which I have never seen done before) for example, passion etc. Further highlighting that emotional connection that everyone needs from a brand they love.
• I learned that respect is so important. People go back to what they respect and like what they respect.

How am I going to use this information for my own brand?

• I have to now look closer at my brand guidelines and ensure I use a correct tone of voice, a tone that evokes feelings of emotion and that I truly care about what I do and produce.
• I must ensure my work is a the highest quality possible to ensure respect from my target audience, high quality work shows I take my work seriously, earning respect.
• I must also make sure that it is visible that I love my brand and what I am designing so I can receive that high love factor. If I don’t love my brand then how do I expect others to.