Global advertising and ideas company Saatchi & Saatchi has released a Red Paper on the future of brand loyalty. The paper is issued on the 10th anniversary of the best-selling business book Lovemarks the future beyond brands, written in 2004 by Kevin Roberts, the company’s Chairman and former Worldwide CEO.
The Red Paper views the trend of declining brand loyalty as a major opportunity for brands that have the emotional wherewithal to meet the heightened demands of consumers in the Internet and mobile era.
Rather than seeing the end of brand loyalty, the Red Paper paints a landscape where on one side the hi-tech consumer era makes loyalty easier to lose, yet on the other side easier to win. This is because – through technology and connectivity – brands are better empowered to understand people, get close to them, make friends with them and inspire communities of fans and involvement that can drive loyalty to new heights.
Kevin Roberts said: “The brands that are going to win big will do so because they are loved, which inspires loyalty beyond reason. Tech and hard data are taking us in closer, but the more robotic and targeted marketing gets, the more the win is in the soft human touches. People want empathy, inspiration and love more than ever, which brands have always struggled to create. Brands that deliver the human factor on time, at speed, scale and with the right cost model will succeed.”
While focusing on loyalty, the Red Paper addresses the role of emotion as the brand success factor across a spectrum of measures, including through sales, margins and extendability. The Paper gives brands five actions to succeed in the consumer era.