Food for Thought: Branding Fanaticism
Posted by: Zak Stawski
on Sep 03, 2010 
Each weekend, I saddle up on my mountain bike and ride 24 miles round-trip to Trader Joe’s. I’m sure I look silly in my bike shorts and giant backpack, but what can I say?—I live far away, don’t have a car, and love the store.
It’s often hard for brands to secure this kind of cultish loyalty. So how did a brand—and not just any brand, but a grocery store—that only advertises through its Fearless Flyer direct mail campaign hypnotize me into doing such a ridiculous task? Surprisingly, it wasn’t with the Fearless Flyer, because I only picked that up after I started shopping there. The truth is that Trader Joes made grocery shopping fun. The healthy products, the incredibly cordial service, the Hawaiian t-shirts, the obvious chemistry between staff members—it all made the tedious activity enjoyable.
Since brands have to earn this kind of loyalty, an important question arises: how can newer brands with lower budgets get this kind of reaction? And more importantly, how can they do it online? The answer is truer now than ever, and Bernbach said it well: “You’ve got to say [the right thing about a product] in such a way that people feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.”
But this remains true today. In fact, I read a great quote just this morning: “as information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place more value on the one human ability that cannot be automated: emotion.”
Accomplishing this takes time, but an agency that understands how to motivate people from the gut knows that it’s worth the energy. That is, if you want your brand to have a long life cycle. In contrast, setting up your brand as a go-to for the lowest price on the product you offer can shorten your brand’s life span because it trains customers to seek out the lowest price.
If I wanted to get the lowest prices on groceries, I could bike 4 miles to Aldi. But why on earth would I do that when I could ride triple the distance to Trader Joe’s?
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Subscribe to this comment's feedwritten by wow gold , December 01, 2010
how can newer brands with lower budgets get this kind of reaction? And more importantly, how can they do it online?
