Beloved Brands Explained

WHITE
PAPER BELOVED BRANDS EXPLAINED

Graham Robertson | President of Beloved Brands Inc.

Table of Contents
Page

The Love for Brands 3

Stage 1: Indifferent 5

Stage 2: Like It 7

Stage 3: Love It 9

Stage 4: Beloved Brand 11

About Beloved Brands Inc. 14

The more loved the Brand, the More Valuable the Brand Visit the blog at beloved-brands.com

The more loved a Brand, then the more powerful
and valuable that Brand is.
In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a Brand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like
It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life.At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire,
needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s
thisconnection that helps drivepower for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus
suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more
power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin
figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

With each stage of the Brand Love Curve, the consumer will see your brand differently.The worst case
is when consumers have ―no opinion‖ of your brand. They just don’t care. It’s like those restaurants you stop
at in the middle of no-where that are called ―restaurant‖. In those cases, there is no other choice so you may
as well just name it restaurant. But in highly competitive markets, you survive by being liked, but you thrive by
being loved. Be honest with yourself as to what stage you are at, and try to figure out how to be more loved,
with a vision of getting to the Beloved Brand stage.


As a rule, everything starts and ends with the consumer in mind.Put yourself in the shoes of your
customer. And then find a way to match up your brand’s natural strengths to what your consumer is looking
for, to develop a competitive advantage that you can satisfy better than anyone else. Talk in terms of
benefits, a balance of rational and emotional. If you keep talking features, you’ll never truly capture the
consumer. They don’t care about what you do, until they get something from it. You have to intimately know
your consumer and build a relationship with consumers. It’s that relationship at that Love It stage that
becomes a source of power, which can be leveraged to gain share, drive sales, increase price or extend
usage, all of which helps to drive growth and profits which then has an impact on the overall value for their
brand.Execution matters as much as strategy. There’s a certain magic in the way a brand strategies can be
executed to connect with the consumer. The more you love your work, the more they’ll love your brand.


Stage 1: Indifferent
Having a brand at the Indifferent stage for too long is a recipe for disaster. If you’re new, you want to get to
the Like It stage fast. If your brand is falling from grace, it could soon face obsolete. Shrinking share, falling
sales, squeezed margins. And the spiral continues.

How the consumer sees an Indifferent Brand:
Consumers have no real opinion of your brand at
all. They don’t care or they are completely bored with
your brand. They are not aware; they could be confused
your concept or just not interested in what you are
saying. They will stick to their current brand of if they do
buy your brand they see it as a commodity.

Why is your Brand Indifferent?
You have let yourself be a product commodity and
you’ve not yet created a brand surrounding that product.
There are four reasons why you are at the Indifferent
Stage:
1. You sell but you don’t market: You are not doing a
good job creating any difference between you and any
other brand option. You might be ―selling‖ your product, I always love restaurants in the middle of nowhere that use the
but it’s likely as a commodity, and you are only Name "Restaurant". But only when you are in the middle of
nowhere can you survive without a brand.
commanding a price that the market will bear. There’s
no price premium. There’s no loyalty. The only repeat
business you get is from the effort you exert, and there’s a very low return on effort. Out of sight and out of
mind for most of your consumers. This means you’re in a spin cycle of continuously pushing your product
on the market. It becomes a very supply side driven brand with no pull from the consumer.
2. You are a new product: You’ll automatically be at the indifferent stage, because the consumer has no
clue who you are or what you do. Everywhere you turn, people are hesitant and reluctant to back you up.
It makes gaining distribution very hard or any support from key influencers. If you can’t captivate the
consumer or you are not solving something that they can’t get from their current brand, then you’ll get stuck
at the indifferent stage and your brand will likely die.
3. You have fallen from grace: You became stagnant and even complacent in the market place. You act
like you don’t really care, so guess what, the consumer won’t either. No new products in a while, and
you’ve been passed in the marketplace. You’ve cut back on marketing activity. The momentum is not
there, and little by little you’re starting to erode. A shrinking consumer base, cut back on the distribution
combine for a squeeze on share. With a shrinking sales base, costs creep up, margins get squeezed. The
spiral continues until some type of turnaround re-ignites the brand or you go out of business.
4. You are a hated Brand: While you can argue that hate is an emotion, it’s not a good space to be in.
Many utilities, insurance companies, airlines or financial institutions fall into this zone. These companies
exert positional power over the consumer–never really trying to cultivate a relationship–choosing to maintain
the power instead. But one day, things change and the positional power is gone, and so to is the brand.

Indicators of Indifference


 Very skinny brand funnel. The starting point to a healthy brand funnel is to create enough awareness
and consideration at the top of the funnel. Without that, the
efficiency of the funnel is never realized and you’ll see
extremely low purchase intent and zero repeat sales. A
skinny funnel is the death nail for new brands.
 No Effort means No Sales: You brand is completely reliant
on selling. You’ll notice that when you take time off selling
or you aren’t on promotion, the sales completely dip down.
In the spirit of return on effort, this means your brand is
100% reliant on effort. If you’ve got a great new brand
you’re trying to gain traction in the marketplace, the effort is
worth it. But if you’re just another commodity, then the
selling becomes a constant drain.
 Low margins and profits: With a small sales base, you
can’t hit the volumes need to drive economies of scale.
Also, since you’re constantly selling, price and distribution
become your only levers you can use. You’ll be much more
susceptible to price cuts in order to stay competitive—which
could be in the form of discounts or promotional spending.
While advertising might seem expensive, it’s actually much
more efficient than the labour costs of a selling effort.
 Share squeeze: There is always a constant stream of new
entrants into categories. As consumers are indifferent about
your brand, with each new successful competitive entrant,
there’s a constant share squeeze and your brand bears the
biggest brunt. Shrinking consumer base deserts you for what’s new. Retailers delist your skus first, to
make room for the new and better brands.

How to get beyond and get a bit more Liked
 Win over a key niche: It would be advantageous to win over a small base of those who will love your
brand. This gives you a loyalty that helps drive efficiency in
how you run your brand. It also allows some word of mouth to
spread, which grows the base slowly over time. However,
never forget this niche and always reward your most loyal
consumers. Going for a mass play while neglecting the niche
will backfire on you.
 Capture the Mind first: In general, people think before they
feel. To get to the Like It stage, you need to drive Awareness of
your brand and communicate the difference that it offers. Keep
in mind, brand awareness without a leaning towards
consideration and purchase is useless marketing, because you
need to drive awareness of what your brand is all about and why
they should buy it. And while consumers are the end in mind Not long ago, Aveeno was a small bath bead brand
that no one cared about. Aveeno re-invented
target, you might also need to capture the minds of the themselves, able to leverage a strength around
distribution channel to back your brand as well as any other key natural oats to become a powerful beloved brand
influencers on the purchase decision. among women.


 Mind Shift: This is where you need a turnaround and change the consumer’s view of your brand. You
need to re-invent yourself almost like a new brand. Maybe pick a niche or find new news that can help re-
enforce that a change has taken place. This is not easy, as people love to put labels on everything in life.
 New News: For a new product, it’s all about driving awareness and consideration. It requires a clear
communication of a compelling concept with a product that can back it up. If the concept is better than or
equal to the product, then drive awareness with advertising. If the product is better than the concept, then
focus on driving direct trial for winning over new consumers. For an innovative new product, focus on a
niche of early adopters, who become the heart of the new brand—and will be the ambassadors that spread
the news to the masses.
 Listen: The brands stuck in the hated space likely need to do a better job listening and reacting to the
consumers. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and fix some of the leaks to the system. If we can
convince these powerful institutions they will be even more powerful by having a relationship with the
consumer, they will be on the way to create a brand instead of a monopoly.

Being Indifferent for too long is the death nail for a brand.Unless you are a commodity or have no
competitors, you cannot survive when your consumers have no opinion of you. The drain on profits is a recipe
for bankruptcy.

Stage 2: Like It
Don’t feel bad about being at the Like It stage, because that’s where most brands are.You have been
able to carve out a niche and be a chosen brand against a proliferation of brands in the category. And you
have good shares, moderate profits and most brand indicators are reasonably healthy. It’s just that no one
loves you

How the consumer sees your brand:
Consumers see your brand as
a functional and rational choice they make. They Start with the
tried it and it makes sense so they buy it, use it and consumer insights;
they do enjoy it. It meets a basic need they have. match them up against
They likely prefer it versus another brand, but they your features to
think it is better, cheaper or easier to use. Or your determine the benefits
of your brand.
mom told you to use it. But, consumers don’t have
much of an emotional connection or feeling about the
brand. Where Indifferent is really bad, you’re
ordinary, which is just a little bit better. Overall,
consumers see you brand in the “it will do” space.

Why is your brand at the Like It stage?
There are seven reasons why you are at the Like It
Stage:
1. Protective Brand Leaders means Caution:
While many of these brands at the Like It are very
successful brands, they get stuck because of
overly conservative and fearful Brand Managers, who pick middle of the road strategies and execute ―ok‖


ideas. On top of this, Brand Managers who convince themselves that ―we stay conservative because it’s a
low interest category‖ should be removed. Low interest category means you need even more to captivate
the consumer.
2. We are rational thinking Marketers: Those marketers that believe they are strictly rational are inhibiting
their brands. The brand managers get all jazzed on claims, comparatives, product demonstration and
doctor recommended that they forget about the emotional side of the purchase decision. Claims need to
be twisted into benefits—both rational and emotional benefits. Consumers don’t care about you do until
you care about what they need. Great marketers find that balance of the science and art of the brand.
Ordinary marketers get stuck with the rational only.
3. New Brand with Momentum: Stage 2 of a new brand innovation is ready to expand from the early
adopters to the masses. The new brand begins to differentiate itself in a logical way to separate
themselves from the proliferation of copycat competitors. Consumers start to go separate ways as well.
Retailers might even back one brand over another. Throughout the battle, the brand carves out a base of
consumers.
4. There’s a Major Leak: If you look at the brand buying system, you’ll start to see a major leak at some point
where you keep losing customers. Most brands have some natural flaw—whether it’s the concept, the
product, taste profile ease of use or customer service. Without analyzing and addressing leaks, the brand
gets stuck. People like it, but refuse to love it.
5. Brand changes their Mind every year: Brands really exist because of the consistency of the
promise. When the promise and the delivery of the promise changes every
year it’s hard to really connect with what the brand is all about. A brand
like Wendy’s has changed their advertising message every year over the
past 10 years. The only consumers remaining are those who like their
burgers, not the brand.
6. Positional Power–who needs Love: there are brands that have captured a
strong positional power, whether it`s a unique technology or distribution
channel or even value pricing advantage. Brands like Microsoft or Wal-Mart
or even many of the pharmaceuticals products don`t see value in the idea of
being loved. The problem is when you lose the positional power, you lose
your customer base completely.
7. Brands who capture Love, but no Life Ritual: There are brands that
quickly capture the imagination but somehow fail to capture a routine Even with a great product,
embedded in the consumers’ life, usually due to some flaw. Whether it’s Wendy's can't seem to create an
Krispy Kreme, Pringles or even Cold Stone, there’s something inherent in the emotional connection.
brand’s format or weakness that holds it back and it stays stuck at Loved but
just not often enough. So, you forget you love them.

Indicators at the Like It stage
 Low Conversion to Sales. While the brand looks healthy in terms of awareness and equity scores, the
brand is successful in becoming part of the consumer’s consideration set, but it keeps losing out to the
competition as the consumer goes to the purchase stage. It usually requires a higher trade spend to close
that sale which cuts price and margins.
 Brand Doesn’t Feel Different: A great advertising tracking score to watch is ―made the brand seem
different‖ which helps to separate itself from the pack, many times speaking to the emotional part of the
messaging.
 Stagnant Shares: Your brand team is happy when they hold share, content to grow with the category.


 High Private Label Sales: If you only focus on the ingredients and the rational features of the product,
the consumer will start to figure out they get the same thing with the private label and the share starts to
creep up to 20% and higher.

How to get to the Love It stage
 Focus on action and drive Consideration and Purchase: stake out certain spaces in the market creating
a brand story that separates your brand from the
clutter. Begin to sell the solution, not just the
product. Build a Bigger Following: Invest in
building a brand story that helps to drive for
increased popularity and get new consumers to use
the brand.
 Begin to Leverage those that already Love:
Focus on the most loyal consumers and drive a
deeper connection by driving the routine which
should increase usage frequency. On top of that,
begin cross selling to capture a broader type of
usage.
 Love the Work: It is time to dial up the passion
that goes into the marketing execution. Beloved
Brands have a certain magic to them. But ―Like It’
brands tend to settle for ok, rather than push for
great. With better work, you’ll be able to better
captivate and delight the consumers. If you don’t
love the work, how do you expect the consumer to
love your brand?
 Fix the Leak: Brands that are stuck have something At the Like It stage, brands should focus on closing the
embedded in the brand or the experience that is sale to keep the momentum going and gain a following.
holding back the brand. It frustrates consumers and
restricts them from fully committing to making the brand a favourite. Be proactive and get the company
focused on fixing this leak.
 Build a Big Idea: Consumers want consistency from the brand—constant changes to the advertising,
packaging or delivery can be frustrating. Leverage a Brand Story and a Big Idea that balances rational
and emotional benefits helps to establish a consistency for the brand and help build a much tighter
relationship.

Brands at the Like It stage get complacent. You need to drive the Love into the work, and find the balance
between rational and emotional benefits. And you can never be satisfied with ―ok‖ work.

Stage 3: Love It
Reaching the Love It stage is a status few brands achieve. Congratulations. But don’t get complacent
or you’ll fall back. The Love It stage is where it starts to connect with the consumer’s life, whether it
becomes a routine, a favourite or a ritual for the consumer. It usually takes years to achieve this
status, but not always. With technology brands like IPods, they have reached Love It stage very fast.


Not everyone stays at the Love It stage, many falling backwards because they stop innovating and
being creative.

How the consumer sees your Brand:
Consumers start to become loyal to their brand, possessive and evenoutspoken. There is an emotional
connection layered on
top of any rational
reason they already
had. The brands they
love become part of
their life—usually
expressed as a
routine. They will
switch stores before
they switch brands and
they will go out of their
way to get to their
favourite brands. It is
tough to displace that
consumers love.

Why is your
Brand at the
Love It stage?
There are three
reasons why you are
at the Love It Stage:
1. Emotional Connection: The emotional benefits and the connection become more important. The rational
benefits almost shift towards the reasons to believe, backing up that emotional connection. That emotional
bond with consumers becomes a source of power that can be used against retailers, competitors, suppliers
and even the consumers themselves. It’s this source of power that helps drive the efficiency into the P&L.
2. Consistently Positive Experience: It becomes all about the experience at this stage. Brands need to
drive home the consistency not just in the message but in the experience. Brand needs to become a
beacon for all employees to deliver an experience that puts the consumer first and delivers an experience
that matches the promise of the brand.
3. Magical ways to Surprise and Delight: Execution matters. If you don’t love the work, how do you expect
the consumer to love your brand? To ensure total passion, loving the work becomes the standard for which
the work gets approved. Anything less is rejected. Brands that reach the Love It stage build in great
marketing programs to delight the consumer.

Indicators that your Brand is Loved
 Robust Brand Funnel: Brand funnel has strength throughout, and specifically it beats the competition at
the purchase, repeat and loyalty.
 Tracking Scores: Starting to see a broader user base and a strengthening usage frequency as it
becomes part of the brand routine. Highly responsive advertising tracking means you can lower the GRPs.
High net promoter scores help spread the word of mouth. Quick adoption of new messaging or skus.


 Share Gains: Even in a competitive market, a brand at the Love It stage should be gaining share and
widening the leadership stance. Strong relationships with retailers and influencers.
 Healthy P&L: Should start to see a robust P&L driven by a strong topline growth number, a premium price
position that helps increase Gross Margin. The spending also becomes more efficient; with lower spend to
sales ratios for both consumer and trade spend.

How to get beyond and go the next stage
 Emphasize the Experience: In order to establish leadership or challenge for leadership, brands begin to
talk about the experience consumers will have with their
product. It becomes no longer about the brand or product but
about the consumer and how your brand fits into their life.
 Tug at the Heart to Drive a Deeper Connection: Build a
brand story that’s balanced with both rational and emotional
benefits. Speak in the voice of the consumer. Brands look to
use positioning strategies to separate themselves, focusing on
key targets, with unique benefits–a balance of emotional and
rational benefits. Advertising brings the consumer front and
centre, trying to establish a routine with your brand in it.
 Love the Work and Find Your Brand’s Magic: Most brands at
the Love It stage find a certain magic in their execution that
helps to surprise and delight the consumer. Executional
Excellent matters. It gives you a chance to layer on More Reasons to Love: Find new product solutions,
services or the closing of leaks that all help to re-enforce the connection with the consumer.

To move to Beloved Brand status, is going from great to amazing. Take all the love and create magic for
your brand. Focus on the Experience with the Consumer Front and Centre. Fit your brand into their Life.

Stage 4: Beloved
At the Beloved Brand stage, you’ve become an iconic brand, either an all-time favourite brand or a
brand of a generation. These are brands are not only part of the lives of consumers; people identify
themselves through these brands. People have conversations about these brands. Not only are people
proactively outspoken, they would defend it as it’s their own brand. Just trying telling a Mac user that Windows
7 is better and you’ll experience just how embedded the brand is in their life. At this stage, you have to live
and breathe as though you are the consumer. You should feel the constant pressure that you cannot let them
down.

How the consumer sees you:
The emotional connection becomes so strong, that the consumer becomes blind to logic. For these
iconic brands, it’s no longer about actual quality, it becomes about perceived quality. And these
brands are more than just part of their life; they are a favourite part of their day. They see these
brands as a badge of who they are, proudly displaying for all to see.

Why are you here?
There are four main reasons why you are at the Beloved Brand Stage:


1. Iconic Self-Expression: Strategy shifts to brand personality where tone and manner in the
execution are paramount so that Consumers connect with the brand and begin to see themselves
in the brand. The consumers become fans of the brand, almost like a sports fan. You are
constantly delighting the consumer whether it’s innovative products, added services or just the
creativity in marketing. Things that you do make the news or the lunch time conversations.
2. You’ve Managed the Perceptions: Demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking
is replaced with feelings. You’ve managed to capture how the consumer feels as a result of their
connection with the brand.
3. All about the Experience: You constantly look at your brand through the eyes of your consumer.
Your voice of
customer or
customer
experience tracking
enables you to
attack your
potential
weakness, even
before the
consumer notices.
4. Wielding Your
Power: You start
to wield the power
that comes from
the tight consumer
connection. You
use that power to
create favourable
distribution, you
challenge suppliers
to lower their costs
to serve you, you
pressure
competitors until
they are squeezed out of the market and you even use the power against the very consumers that
love you. You’re able to command a price premium and new launches are an automatic success.
Your marketing is so iconic that the marketing-spend-to-sales-ratio is much more efficient than
your competitors. Using the power gives you even more power.

Indicators in the Market
 Dominant Share Position: You take a dominant stance in the marketplace. Small brands get squeezed
out by your presence.
 Net Promoter Scores: Very high net promoter scores among the most loyal consumers. Even non-users
see the brand as powerful.


 Preferential Treatment: Retailers give you preferential shelf space and promotions to use your brand to
drive traffic to their stores. Suppliers cut their costs in order to sign you as a customer. Even government
might offer special benefits. Employer of choice for talent.
Earned and Influential Media goes up.
 Brand Value: With such a strong profitability, able to see
measurable Brand Value that goes beyond the P&L.

How to stay a Beloved Brand
 Keep it about the Experience: For those who love the
brand, it’s no longer just about the product, it becomes
about the experience. Keep finding new ways to surprise
and delight your consumers. Coke’s latest Coca Cola Free
Style is a great example of how to take the brand to the
next level.
 Broaden the Audience: To ensure you are a brand that
goes beyond the current generation of consumers, begin
thinking about how to spread your brand to other age
groups. A lot of fashion brands and restaurant brands have been trapped into the current generation and
lose the status as styles change.
 Broaden the Offering: Take advantage of your brand’s loyal following to launch peripheral products that
build on the routine. Capture more share of wallet of your most loyal consumers.
 Listen to Your Consumer: Give them a voice and be as responsive as you can. Beloved Brands that set
up a dialogue, speaking the truth, with nothing to hide will win.
 Don’t become complacent: Constantly challenge the status quo to find weakness and attack it before
your competitors have a chance to do it. Don’t let your arrogance get the in the way. Gap Clothing,
Cadillac, IBM computers, Levis, Sony or Kodak who have each reached the Beloved Brand Stage only to be
replaced by new products and brands and moved back down the love curve towards Indifferent. Most
recently, Blackberry. Only 18 months ago, people jokingly used the term ―crackberry‖ to describe their
addictions.

Beloved Brands have reached iconic status, where they are
cherished and desired. This love provides a source of power
to drive profit and value for the brand.


About Beloved Brands Inc.
I started Beloved Brands Inc. to help your brand realize its full potential value
by generating more love for your brand.

The biggest difference that I offer is that I will challenge your team to come up with new ideas
that will drive real growth. I have walked a mile in your shoes. I am a former business leader with
a reputation for finding growth where others could not, whether it’s a turnaround, re-positioning,
new product launch or sustaining success. With my experience, I’ll be able to get you and your
team to a strategic action plan that will set your brand up to win in the market.

I bring a unique
perspective: I believe
the more loved the
brand, the more valuable
is the brand. Brands
move along a Brand
Love Curve, going from Indifferent to Like It to
Love It and finally to the Beloved Brand status. It
is the tight bond created between a brand and its
consumers that can be used as a source of
power to drive further growth and profits.

Brands can find themselves stuck at a point on
the curve, uncertain how to get more from their
brand. I will help unleash the power of your brand
by finding aUnique Selling Proposition that
best matches the needs of your consumers with
your brand’s assets. Together, we’ll develop
strategies that will make your brand become a
more beloved brand and in turn a
more powerful and more profitable brand.

The areas where I can help you the most are:
 Strategic Planning: I will help your team to develop a Brand Plan with vision, mission, objectives, strategies and
tactics. I will help you to discover a Unique Selling Proposition that matches up the needs of your consumers against
your brand assets. The plan and new positioning will separate you from your competitors and set you up to win in
the market.
 Marketing Training: I know I can make your team better, because I have done it my entire career. You can get a
training program customized for your team, which will meet specific needs or adjusted to any level of your team. I
also provide coaching at the brand team level or personalized one-on-ones for key individuals. The Marketing
Training program includes:
1. Strategic Thinking
2. Brand Plans
3. Developing Creative Briefs
4. Driving Profits through your Brand
5. P&L and Forecasting Management
6. Judging Advertising Creative
7. Media Planning
8. Marketing Careers


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