Relationships can be built out of convenience, love, or hate.
Ideally, a relationship comes from a level of mutual love. More often, it comes from convenience, which can be anything from proximity, necessity, familiarity, to a dislike or hatred for the alternative. As the Arabian proverb says, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." We all have relationships that fall into one of these three buckets.
A consumer's interaction with a brand is analogous to a relationship. A good brand is convenient. A great brand is loved. Likewise, a bad brand is hated. Unlike personal relationships where love can be hard work, great brands are also convenient. The type of relationship a consumer shares with a brand is subjective, but the principle remains universal.
Brands use a variety of tactics to make "friends" with consumers. They craft mission or positioning statements about what their message is, how they will deliver it, and the principles surrounding their organization. Advertisements are created to promote their messages and products. Websites are constructed to act as digital storefronts or company libraries open to the public.
Marketing increases a brand's visibility and means more friends in the short term. A good experience with a brand increases the perceived value and means more friends in the long term. Actions speak louder than words (and increase the bottomline).
Numerous other variables weigh on a consumer's decision to purchase including cost, quality, loyalty, and external recommendations. For a staple item like diapers, one week we'll buy Pampers and the next time, we'll buy Huggies. Because our experience with both brands have been about the same from a performance standpoint, cost is the decision point. They are both good brands.
For a durable good like running shoes, I loyally purchase New Balance because they last, have a simple numbered model system which allows for easier determination of which shoe is an update (of a shoe that worked for me), are reasonably priced, and are made locally. NB is a great brand (for me).
In both of my personable example, I did not mention any marketing campaign as a deciding variable, because they it didn't factor into my choice. All brands mentioned have multi-million dollar advertising running. If I bought shoes based only on advertising, I might buy Nike. If I bought diapers by the character on the front, Pampers (with Sesame Street).
Meanwhile, the internet has changed the way we research brands. We check out their own sites, look at all they have to offer, but we also check third-party vendors, like Amazon, and read hundreds of reviews from consumers just like us. Some were scorned and others found that the brand fit them like a glove. We no longer rely on our own opinion or the facts, but on the assessment of others which we can determine value from. Even further, a brand's website, which may have nothing remotely to do with its actual product better make it easy for you to find the information that you (and thousands of others) are looking for, be it a customer service number or better yet, a way to email customer service. And someone had better reply!
As we will see in 2008, the online world will have further implications in the real world and marketers need to begin thinking beyond the :30 spot to what happens next. They need to do it without botching anything else up either, cause the last thing any of us wants is a drunk friend who comes into the party yelling all about himself and ruins it.
