Let's Get Real About Brand Love
“A stroll down the average British high street on a Saturday night is enough to reassure you that ‘brand love’ still exists. Given the cacophony of logos, names, and patterns on display, this is clear; but this applies to a select few. Given the sheer number of brands in the world, only a handful can truly claim to be loved, yet focusing on this idea has preoccupied marketeers for too long.”
Simon Moore, senior creative director at PrettyGreen, makes a fair point. The debate around whether people can really ‘love’ brands has been knocking about for decades, often framed as Sharp versus Sinek: in essence, Byron Sharp of ‘How Brands Grow’ declares it a myth, arguing that mental and physical availability are rather the primary drivers of consumer behaviour; author and speaker Simon Sinek, meanwhile, believes that purpose and belief in brands and their motivations are what foster a loyal base.
To shed some light on the debate in a modern context, LBB’s Zara Naseer asked leaders, strategists, and creatives in what sense brand love exists, to what intensity, and whether it ultimately even matters.
Affinity
Jay Davis, senior creative strategist at Seen Presents, warns us, “[Brand love] has become a catch-all, stretched so far it risks explaining everything and nothing at once.” He explains that it’s best, therefore, to be more specific about what brands really ought to strive for: not the difficult-to-define love, but something simpler. Affinity is one example, where shared values and positive connection drive long-term loyalty and advocacy.
Magnus Hoeltke, group strategy director and partner at Jung von Matt, hones in on salience as the way to achieve this. “The best brands aren’t loved. They’re shortcuts in people’s minds.” It’s particularly poignant right now, with regards to AI. “As buying decisions are increasingly mediated by AI agents, brands now need to be top of mind and top of machine. Getting there is not about making brands loved; it’s about making them familiar and easy to retrieve before agents – human or machine – make the choice.”
PrettyGreen’s Simon contemplates this as he thinks about the Cherry Blossom shoe polish he recently purchased – probably never loved, but it doesn’t need to be. Being reliable, good quality, and memorable enough to be chosen again is what matters. “Most brands need salience, built through consistent messages over a long period of time,” he concludes.
This reliability and recall creates customers who might even advocate for a brand, and showing up consistently and widely is a key step in achieving it, says Joe Harris, head of strategy at Wonderhood Studios. He declares that brands need “a great product communicated memorably across lots of big and little interactions. You’re rarely going to love a brand just because they did a banging Christmas advert. You’re much more likely to love a brand who also dealt with your returns seamlessly, turned the IMAX into a massive pie, allowed you to donate to your favourite charity at checkout or entertained you on social in an unexpected way. Every interaction matters and that’s why the role of a sharp and simple brand strategy matters more than ever.”
In This Economy?
While ‘love’ may not be what we really mean, RCP’s chief strategy officer, Dom Roe sees no harm in dropping the L bomb to express appreciation for the brands that improve our lives or make us feel good. “I love the brands that do that for me. Especially those that I can rely on to consistently provide that for me. You have no doubt said it about a favourite shop, restaurant, trainers brand etc. Brand love is a reality, even if that is predominantly colloquial.”
Dom’s response hints at the practicality that factors into which brands people feel fondness for: consistency, reliability, usefulness, and enjoyability are what win us over. Harry Wright, strategy director at Imagination, underlines how the current economy has amplified that pragmatism: “The conversation has shifted away from brand love and toward brand preference, shaped by a tougher economic reality and a growing sense of trade-off in every purchase decision.”
Financial uncertainty has put value under constant scrutiny, Harry continues, as brands compete with energy bills and rent increases, and “in that context, emotional attachment has limits. What we’re seeing is a more rational form of commitment, where relevance, utility, and value take precedence over sentiment. Consumers may still care deeply about brands, but they’re choosing them with their heads as much as their hearts.”
Paola Rodrigues, strategy director at dentsu Brazil, contrasts this with the almost romanticised, aspirational view of brands held by previous generations, but in her view, the shift is driven by the growing importance of shared purpose and relatability. “We see millennials, gen z, and even gen alpha connecting with brands in a much more rational way, seeking cultural and purpose-driven links, and building emotional bonds through symbols and languages that reflect their own evolution over time. A brand is no longer admired for being distant or unattainable, but for embodying and expressing what people are living today.”
Gia Lee, CSO at NinetyEight, highlights how increased exposure in the modern day has also prompted people’s relationships with brands to evolve. “Gen zs (as the modern consumer) are increasingly critical and intentional about the products they buy and the brands they buy from. Nothing really goes unseen with social media and transparency is the name of the game. With the over-saturation of brands in every product category and increased accessibility through e-commerce, it's not enough anymore to just be distinctive and available because let's face it, everyone kind of already is.”
Brandom
As always, there are exceptions to the rational rule. “Look at the relationship people have with sports teams,” says Gen Kobayashi, group CSO, M+C Saatchi Group UK. “I spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, emotion and money on following my football team Arsenal up and down the country, on TV and just about anywhere else. Whilst the fan in me winces slightly when looking at my team as a brand and not as a club, my love for ‘brand Arsenal’ is very real, as is the money Premier League clubs invest in brand marketing.”
Fandoms surrounding music artists or character IP brands are another example, as Gia points out. “It's the type of love where people get tattoos of these brands (can confirm for Paul Frank) and stand by them amidst rumors and controversy (as I do as a certified Swiftie). It's seldom to see this deep fandom and cult-like love for traditional brands, but it does exist for the ‘greats’, AKA brands like Apple, Nike, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s. These brands have stood the test of time, continue to maintain a deep fandom, and can survive controversy unscathed.”
“Guinness taps Irish heritage, MINI evokes British nostalgia, iMacs signal creativity,” says Fold7 strategy director, Buster Stonham, zoning in on how it’s deeper, positive associations that attract audiences to such iconic brands. He advises marketers to lean more into this irrational side of love if they want to fuel growth. “LEGO reignited lapsed brand love amongst adults, tapping childhood nostalgia to unlock a lucrative new segment.”
Pauline d’Albis-Desforges, global strategic planning director at Ogilvy Paris, also makes the business case for this kind of resonance. Alongside repeated positive functional and emotional experiences, it can create “bonds that in some ways look more like companionship than consumerism, and this depth of connection has been proven to be connected to better resilience, premium pricing, strong advocacy, loyalty, faster new product adoption, and engaged employees.”
New tools used wisely could make it easier to foster such connection between brands and audiences, and turn it into brand performance. “With gen AI, our job and responsibility as marketeers is to develop truly personalised communications that foster this brand love,” says Ed Howarth, deputy CEO at OLIVER. “Understanding consumer values and unlocking relevance in culture has always been central to good brand building – 20 years of Dove's Real Beauty campaign exemplifies this beautifully.”
However, suggests Lorna Hawtin, CSO at Zeal, even these examples of the closest thing to brand love might not be best described in that way: “Research suggests that the same neural responses are triggered in religious believers as in those strongly attached to brands, making ‘faith’, perhaps, a more useful reference point than ‘love’. In that frame, the job isn’t to manufacture emotional intimacy. It’s to build a committed following. Brand equity isn’t a romance. It’s not about being adored, it’s about being believed.”
Don’t Be So Needy
Striving to attain this level of desirability can, however, have undesirable effects. Hugh Munro, founder and CSO at Rick Barry holds up a mirror to love-needy brands to reveal how they can end up adopting “behavioural patterns we normally associate with insecurity and low self-esteem.” There’s the “clingy communicator”, cluttering up inboxes with high-intensity messages; the “people pleaser” in constant need for validation; “the chameleon”, which masks its identity crisis by trying to mirror its audience and adapt every trend; and the “purpose pusher”, which perceives customer transactions as enlisting to some kind of mission in an odd form of corporate conscription.
In Hugh’s book, the antidote is self-possession. “Confidence in your own skin. Taking pride in difference. Self-love. This type of ‘brand love’ doesn’t seek external validation to fill an internal void, and must be measured accordingly. Not by asking others if they love us, but by asking ourselves – the people who own and build the brand – how much we love it.”
DUDE London’s head of strategy, James Clee adds that confusing purchasing patterns with profundity has resulted in a landscape that’s too heavy. “The idea that people don’t – and can’t – love brands should be liberating. Advertising is at its best when we remember that what we do is always secondary to the bigger emotions of the human condition. We make better work when we accept our role in people’s lives. We win when we aim for familiarity, entertainment, and affinity.”
While Suz Keen, executive creative director at CYLNDR Studios, also notices the insecurity in needy behaviour, she argues brand love can still be achieved – but through years of proven usefulness and restraint, not begging for it. “Most brands are still in the ‘don’t be annoying’ phase, yet they’re already asking for devotion. That’s backwards. Make something good. Show up consistently. If love happens, it will be a byproduct, not a positioning strategy.”
Sharp and Sinek
“It’s worth remembering the idea of ‘brand love’ emerged as a reaction to a time when marketing was overly rational – assuming people chose brands by comparing price, features and performance, then picked the logical winner. ‘Brand love’ forced emotion, meaning and memory back into the picture. That was useful,” says Nicky Vita, head of strategy at Atomic London. “But, of course, our industry took the metaphor too literally.”
No matter how much brands might want them to, their audiences probably don’t love them in the way they’d like, Nicky continues. What they do feel is still important, though subtler, whether that’s trust and appreciation built by years of reliable functionality, or fondness through familiarity. When it comes down to it, even in the case of brandom-worthy giants, people typically love what the brand does for them and says about them, rather than the brand itself.
“This is where Sharp and Sinek talk past each other. Yes, buying is often habitual and situational, but emotion and meaning still matter. It’s both.”
