Mario Natarelli - Brand Intimacy: A New Paradigm in Marketing

To Daniel Kahneman, who changed
the way we think about thinking.

INTRODUCTION

WHY THIS BOOK AND WHY NOW?

After more than two decades branding companies, countries and people around the globe, we have realized that growth, in some shape or form, is at the core of all our clients needs, and that brand could be an extremely effective and powerful tool to facilitate demand. While desire for growth remains constant in todays increasingly interconnected world, the challenges vary. Take political disruption, which can birth populism and an anti-establishment ethos. This creates a polarized population with highly charged views that can affect trade, supply chain optimization and globalization. Theres also organic growth: for the past decade, countless companies have optimized costs and stripped down any and all aspects of their businesses to the extreme in order to save costs and maximize profits. But whats next for them? How can they find new growth? We see technology transforming everything we do in our work, at home and at play. Companies face fast-paced cycles of innovation with steep opportunity costs and profound risks that can render them extinctquickly. Last, demographics are shifting and with them, the familiar associations and behaviors of now-aging boomers are changing. A new demographic is emergingmillennials, an entirely different generation who require new understanding to effectively reach.

What can businesses do to advance? And what role does brand play?

Brand can be a key asset in framing opportunities; however, it requires thinking about brand in a different way than traditional marketers or business schools suggest. It requires a new paradigm designed for todays times.

How did we arrive at this new way of thinking? We spent nearly a decade conducting qualitative and quantitative research with more than 12,000 consumers in the U.S., Germany, Japan, Mexico and the UAE. We fielded and interpreted over 20,000 qualitative brand stories that comprised 2,000 pages of verbatim responses explaining how individuals form relationships with brands. We turned to quantitative research and, over the course of several years, analyzed 100,000 brand evaluations. Through factor analysis and structural equation modeling, we were able to better understand which levers need to be pulled to build bonds between brand and consumers. We built a data engine to compute, compare and dynamically render rankings, head to head comparisons and detailed brand scores. We have applied our new paradigm to create brands and to reignite established ones. Each year, since 2015, we publish an annual study on intimate brands and their impact.

But lets take a step back.

We are all shaped by brands, whether we realize it or not.

The process starts in life with toy trucks and princesses and only continues as we age. The cars we drive; the household items we prefer; the food we eat; the clothes we wear; the places we travel; the sports teams we follow; the celebrities we admire; the companies we trust; the politicians we electwhile the average person may not think about these as brand choices, marketers have spent decades working hard to create perceptions and the associations that make us want to try or purchase one brand over another.

Whenever we ask people to share with us the brands they are intimate with, many times they will initially respond with, None. But then you start asking them about their car, their camera, their phone, their sneakers, their favorite drink ... and all of a sudden, they discover themselves to in fact be passionate advocates for brands they favor.

In other words, we are more attached to brands than we realize.

That is because brands are much more than a name, a logo, or a jingle. Yes, they are business assets that create value for the companies that represent them; and yes, they can be products, services, people, and places; and yes , they can drive demand, command price premiums and increase loyalty. But theyre more than that; or at least they have the potential to be more than that.