Brand Enthusiasm: Why some brands thrive while others dive.

Why would 100,000 people travel to a corporation’s anniversary event, competing for the opportunity and paying for the privilege?

Why would a group of die-hard enthusiasts keep a revolution alive to support a brand that most others have abandoned?

Why would five million people stand in line several times a week to pay a 200% premium on a commodity product?

Why would mothers hoard food and hide it from their children and husbands?

You may recognize Harley Davidson, Macintosh, and Starbucks as those first three power brands with fiercely loyal followers. You may also recognize the fourth one, SnackWell’s, the brand that created the wellness segment. Sales peaked in ’95, then fell 20 percent to 30 percent annually over the next three years. A brand that’s on top today has no future guarantees when faced with evolving consumer desires, excess choices, and perceived product parity.

Power brands compete above the shifting sands of product comparison and function because they market in a way that not only helps consumers in their daily lives but adds meaning to their lives. This position above the fray gives power brands a sustainable competitive advantage and makes them much more profitable.

Power brands are successful because they create consumer enthusiasm, then use it to drive ongoing purchase. The key to brand enthusiasm is to move beyond your product’s function and build an emotional connection with consumers. This happens when the brand plays a larger, more meaningful role in consumers’ lives by going beyond traditional marketing tactics to develop an empathetic, personal understanding. Brands need vivid insight into what consumers care about, beyond demographic facts and psychographic profiles. What are their concerns, values, emotional rewards?

Marketers must connect the consumer’s heart and the brand’s essence to drive ongoing purchase. SnackWell’s turned around its sales decline by transcending its “low fat/guilt free” positioning to become a facilitator of women’s self-discovery and personal growth.

The brand focused on the mother-daughter relationship because of its importance, intensity, and universal relevance: Not every woman has a daughter, but every woman is a daughter. Working on the account, we hosted mother-daughter workshops, gave away journals for Mother’s Day, talked to women at health expos. We created an aspirational icon – “Live Well, Snack Well” – to remind women of their personal experience with SnackWell’s. We wrapped all communications around the icon to link every brand activity.

In this new marketing approach, the consumer-brand relationship becomes the focus. Like any good relationship, it begins by defining who you are, what you stand for, and how you will act. We put this in a “brand mission and core values statement” that guides all brand activities and helps set go-to-market strategy (along with business and sales goals). The campaign is guaranteed to look different because it first and foremost connects to consumers’ lives.

Marketers can strengthen brand enthusiasm by striking a new balance between the science and art of marketing. Start with solid data; we consult “Colleen,” our agency’s proprietary knowledge base on women. Colleen is part news archive, part trend tracker, and part consumer research library. We then consult our Articulate Consumer Panels and Consumer Archeologist to see what motivates purchase behavior, what women value in the brand today, and what roles the brand could play in their lives. To this fertile foundation we bring art – empathy and imagination – and shape the brand’s personality.

Does it work? Ask Nabisco: Six months into SnackWell’s relaunch, sales were up three percent versus a 25 percent decline the prior year. Lifetime TV aired a 30-minute special on SnackWell’s mother-daughter workshops, and consumers praised Nabisco. Ask us: We won two World PRO Awards of Excellence in 1999 for our SnackWell’s work.

The future is clear. Competition will intensify, competitors will require less time to copy new products, and consumers will have more choices and less time and energy to select among them. We believe brand enthusiasm is the killer app in marketing today. Those who achieve it will join the ranks of brands that thrive.