This document discusses how brands can build intimacy and long-term relationships with customers. It argues that most brands focus only on the initial attraction phase rather than ongoing engagement. To truly know and serve customers, brands must understand customers' intimate needs and desires. This means designing products and services that encourage meaningful relationships over time without relying solely on follow-up marketing. If brands want loyal customers for life, they must reimagine how to establish and maintain intimacy with people, not just target them.

1. Brands that believe
in sex after marriage
Noel Franus
VP/Experience Director
@nfranus

2. Sex is awesome.

3. Intimacy builds relationships.

4. Six different different types of love.
1. Eros: erotic desire.
2. Ludus: playful love, entertainment, excitement.
3. Storge: slowly brewing sense of attachment.
4. Mania: obsessive love.
5. Agape: altruistic, compassion, selfless.
6. Pragma: practical love, social qualities, tradition.

5. ...but with one overarching factor:
Intimacy.
It’s why we do what we do when
we’re in a committed relationship.
(Robert Sternberg 1984)

6. You and I are in the business of
creating long-term relationships.

7. Yet most of us are focused on one
aspect of that relationship: the beginning.
THINK FEEL THINK FEEL BUY!

8. Some of us see and work toward the
bigger re-engagement opportunity.

9. (And it’s a lifelong opportunity.)

10. Do our brands, products or services
behave in a way that encourages
meaningful long-term relationships?

11. Well...
• Products designed with planned obsolescence
• Marketing that strikes an emotional chord but misleads
on product/service benefits
• Emails high on frequency but low on intelligence
• Loyalty programs = impersonal bribes
• Coupons: cue, routine, reward. Is this enough?

12. “Retention” is a dirty word
because it has no visbily
humane outputs.

13. If we want customers for life, we
must re-imagine how we’ll establish
and maintain intimacy with them—
as people, not as targets.

14. It’s not enough to put customers at
the center of what you do. You need
to understand them—intimately.

15. Thought exercise: how would you design
your next product or service if there were
no follow-up emails or coupons to bring
people back? What if you had to bake
intimacy into the thing itself from the start?

16. DATA UBIQUITY LOCATION AWARENESS INVISIBLE INTERFACES
NETWORKED PEOPLE ADAPTIVE ENVIRONMENTS
The good news? We’ve never had
an opportunity like this before.

17. This opportunity is a value exchange.
So, people will have demands.
Here’s a top-four list of what
they’ll want to know from anyone
who wants to get intimate with them.

18. 4. What will you know about me?

19. 3. Will you apply that knowledge
in useful or inspiring ways?

21. 2. Will you surprise me?

22. 3. Where are the surprises?

24. 1. What would life be like without you?

25. 1. What would life be like without you?
2. Will you surprise me?
3. Will you apply that knowledge in useful
or inspiring ways?
4. What will you know about me?
Conveniently applies to
personal relationships, too.

26. “Of course I deal with the obvious.
I present, reiterate, and glorify the obvious
—because the obvious is what people
need to be told. The greatest need of
people is to know how to deal with other
people. This should come naturally to
them, but it doesn’t.”
(The first and last time I’ll ever quote Dale Carnegie)

27. Intimacy builds relationships.

28. Strong relationships = more fireworks.

29. Thank you.
Noel Franus
VP/Experience Director
@nfranus