September 27, 2004
love is viral
You ask folk to name some brands that really resonate with them, what Saatchi & Saatchi's would call a “Lovemark”.
So they rattle off a list: Reebok, Bluetooth, Mercedes, Apple, Captain Benny’s Seafood Restaurant, Typepad, whatever…
Usually, they list around a dozen. Then they lose interest and the coversation tails off.
The average person with a decent job (i.e. with money to spend on your product) interacts with around 40 thousand brands, and even that’s a conservative estimate.
12 out of 40,000. So even if the person buys your product, you brand has about a 0.0003% chance of being a Love Mark with them.
Anyone who enters a market thinking to beat those odds is a fool.
Advice to marketeers: Stop worrying about whether people you don’t know love your brand or not. Stop worrying about if your brand conforms to some vague ideal in a business/marketing book written by a clever guy you’ve never met. Worry instead about how much you and the people you know, love and respect love it. I mean REALLY love it. Be brutally honest.
If you and yours don’t love it, nobody else will. If you and yours do love it, others will.
Love is viral, indifference isn’t. It’s that simple.
love is viral but so is indifference. That is the problem.
Posted by: jason at September 27, 2004 12:40 PMMan, if indifference was viral my job would pay 50 times as much ;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 27, 2004 12:44 PMi think indifference is equally as viral as love. say you become indifferent toward your blog. your content suffers, your readers become indifferent and drop off, you see the drop and become more indifferent, content suffers more, more readers drop off...
i would think it would work the same way in the business world. if you don't love your product, no one else will. if you're not spreading love, you're spreading indifference.
Posted by: cynthia at September 27, 2004 4:37 PMCynthia, the "Mediocrity is infectious" argument does not lead to higher insight and you know it (Shame on you!). All is does is give temporary comfort to mediocrities.
;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 27, 2004 9:16 PMhow does a warning that being mediocre breeds mediocrity give comfort? i don't get it.
Posted by: cynthia at September 27, 2004 10:17 PMI don't agree entirely. If asked that question, my girlfriend would never mention her hair-coloring brand. Those answers would go to Louis Vitton, etc.
Yet, when she sent me to get her some she specified the brand and described the box in detail. So there is some kind of brand loyalty. I guess the question is, how did she get it.
(Okay, probably told by someone else, thus, virally).
I think we're confused between mediocrity and indifference. Mediocrity is a standard of human action and may be caused by indifference but indifference is an emotion and can spread through any demographic like wildfire.
I would have thought that indifference would make your job harder, Hugh. I don't know much (well, anything really) about advertising or its associated industries but I would have thought that indifference to a brand/advertising campaign would make it more difficult to sell the product.
Thanks to a daily read of your blog I am learning more about personal philosophy and am beginning to set my own stall out (late as it may be at 28!) based on principles not unlike your own. I am beginning to see past the Bill Hicks mantra of anyone in advertising killing themselves ;)
Anyway, less of me, on with show...
Posted by: jason at September 28, 2004 9:25 PMIf you find indifference infectious, Cynthia, not my problem ;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 28, 2004 9:30 PMno one said anything was your problem, i was simply asking for clarification of something you said on your blog.
Posted by: cynthia at September 28, 2004 11:10 PMbut your indifference toward answering has infected with me with indifference, so don't bother answering, i'm no longer interested.
Posted by: cynthia at September 28, 2004 11:15 PMCynthia, you've made me so indifferent now!!!
I demand you apologize!!!
;-)
I think everything is infectious, but we all want to love and be love, and the best way to do that is give some love. Some say said it's infectious.
Posted by: Jack Kennard at October 6, 2004 10:34 PMbut although I can hear music to set them to, pokemon it's nothing solid, or it isn't fully Right. That's michelle vieth weird for me
Posted by: Brooke Burke at October 30, 2004 1:44 AM