Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

The post-match analysis of Super Bowl advertising inevitably featured large this week, although the importance of both emotional engagement and brand experience also attracted a good deal of attention.

It's only a game...
What the Super Bowl had to say or not say about the state of marketing today fuelled many a post.

Super Bowl Eyeballs Up A Bit, Super Bowl Chatter Up A Lot observed how the TV ratings hardly moved, but social chatter exploded for the second year running.
Twitter and GoDaddy Won the Super Bowl - Chrysler Did Not argued that the 9 word Oreo tweet when the lights went out will have more payback than any of the adverts, and was a sign of how the world had changed (but too many advertisers had not).
Twitter, You Won the Super Bowl was a love poem to the platform, and how perfectly it's suited to such events, in contrast to Facebook.
While Tide Tops 2013 Kellogg School Advertising Review indulged in what seemed the slightly anachronistic sport of assessing the TV ads only, for their potential to build brands.

I cherish your emotion...
Several posts addressed the necessity for brands to create emotional engagement, in a world that offers ever more choice.

Emotional Engagement: Where Brands Strike Gold. And Make Money highlighted the reduction in the number of brands appearing in an annual customer loyalty, because they didn't have any emotional engagement with consumers.
Building A Brand Is No Longer Enough - You Must Create A Movement argued for the need to evoke passion among customers through engaging experiences, a unique narrative, and living what you preach.
Feeling Better showed how understanding emotional benefits is today vital to successful innovation.
While Turn Customers Into Your Best Salespeople highlighted how engaged customers can do your marketing and selling for you, and offered some tips on how to encourage them.

Experience matters...
Today's connected world is enabling customers to experience brands like never before. A number of posts explored different aspects of this.

The diffusion of brand, ownership, and experience argued that today every brand is in the experience business, as the web and social means that consumers can experience the reality of a brand without having to own it.
The Push-Me Pull-You Of Retailing showed how the behaviors of a retail brand are exposed when customers shop a store, and how this requires a focus on aligning those behaviors with the offer - which is now true for every brand.
While Think Inside, Outside and About the Box urged brands to focus on the function as well as the form of packaging, since it is the one physical manifestation of the brand that 100% of purchasers interact with, even if they purchased online.

Finally, The Future of The Retail Store offered some interesting crystal-ball gazing, for the weekend.

Enjoy.