Crazy Little Thing Called (Brand) Love

February 14, 2025 | Shari Walczak, Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, The Garden | 4 minute read

Photo Credit: Wyron A on Unsplash

I have to admit, when it comes to celebratory holidays, Valentine’s Day is not at the top of my list. I believe that love needs to be nurtured and cultivated every day of the year, not just on the one day where it will cost you a mint to make that “heartfelt” connection.

Which segues nicely with the belief we hold at The Garden (a Humanise Collective company) about growing brand love: it is the emotional outcome of consistent actions and behaviours that a brand shows its customers day in and day out. It can’t just be a moment-in-time gesture or, worse, a single piece of communication that tries to convince people you love them. That’s like sending a loved one a card with a cliché sentiment like “you complete me”, while offering up little affection over the other 364 days of the year.

The Garden truly believes in the power of brand love, and we have made delivering it our mission. While it is fashionable to say that brand love is an empty concept (“nobody actually loves a brand or a company”), or it’s just an overpromise (“the ultimate goal of a company should be building shareholder wealth and nothing else”), or that brand love has no relationship to concrete business results – this is simply not true.

But I won’t ask you to take our word for it. There are countless studies that show brand love translates into economic value for a business.

·  The Marketing Science Institute found that loved brands are able to command a price premium of more than 25%.

·  Pepsico and The Advertising Research Foundation demonstrated that media ROI is almost 1.5x higher for loved brands.

·  Kantar, one of the world’s leading research firms, reports that loved brands tend to recover from economic crises at least 3 times faster.

As in real life, love is fickle and requires constant attention to detail, thoughtfulness, and a commitment to honest and authentic interactions. Sprinkle in a few noteworthy surprise and delights and you have a formula for lifelong happiness. So, how do you go about cultivating brand love all year round?

  1. 1. Articulate your “why” above and beyond your functional role as a business. Focusing solely on function means that you will ultimately become commoditized – particularly as your success starts attracting copycats. To be clear, your why doesn’t have to live at the righteous height of facilitating world peace. In fact, having a why that feels both believable within your category, yet inspiring and relatable is far more useful than something that feels disconnected and disingenuous. A clear why will inform your roadmap for delivering unique and differentiated experiences that matter to customers and increase overall affinity.

  1. 2. Brand love must start inside your organization and radiate outwards. When every employee is aligned behind a common brand purpose, it will be felt throughout head office, retail locations, call centres, in manufacturing facilities, in the innovation lab, even parties & team celebrations. And all of your customers, partners and stakeholders will feel it with every brand interaction.

  1. 3. Your brand should be the thread that knits together your entire customer journey. While the impressions you buy to reach customers – from brand campaigns that drive awareness and interest to lower funnel conversion ads – the impression you make as a brand is infinitely more powerful over the long-term. This extends from customer service design to email notifications, packaging, product extensions, online self-help applications, sponsorship initiatives, loyalty programs, even instruction manuals and monthly billing statements. And as you look to drive innovation across the customer journey, your brand is a valuable filter for uncovering fresh and compelling ways to connect with prospects and create meaningful connections that drive value.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s the perfect opportunity for a brand review. Take a hard look at your existing brand footprint and evaluate whether every touchpoint – internal and external – is delivering an experience that feels unique, ownable, and meaningful to your customers as well as your employees. If the answer is no, you may be missing out on building an emotional connection that cultivates brand love. And that means you won’t be a brand that anyone really commits to.

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