I think that those of us who work in marketing often over-estimate the degree of affection that people have toward brands. Much of the evidence suggests that people really do not think about brands all that often or care about them that deeply. Instead, the importance of many brands to their consumers is derived from a series of inconsequential experiences. Those brands may be more valuable as a result.

Kevin Roberts, has famously promoted the idea that brands should aspire to become Lovemarks. Its Web site describes Lovemarks as follows:

Lovemarks are the future beyond brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.

Powerful stuff, and yes, brands should deliver a great experience, one people love, but is there really a brand you “just can’t live without?” Readers of this blog know I love my car, but that does not prevent me from wondering if there is something better out there. Particularly when most brands are pretty incidental to our lives, just how realistic is it that people care that much about all of them?

Besides, I think there is a benefit for brands that fly under our conscious radar. The ones that rely on cues and circumstance to trigger instinctive positive reactions and habits stimulate behavioral loyalty. I suspect that there are many brands that thrive because people have become habituated to them. They buy them time after time, without thinking about the price they pay or the alternatives. Loyalty is built up over time through repeated good experiences and repeated purchasing behavior.

Bill Moggridge, one of the co-founders of design company, IDEO, is quoted in the Objectified documentary as saying:

I like the concept of wearing in rather than wearing out. You’d like to create something where the emotional relationship is more satisfying over time.

He continues:

(People) don’t have to have a strong love relationship with their things but they should grow sort of a little more fond of them perhaps over time.

What does it really mean to be a truly “brand-driven” enterprise in the new economy? Many persist in defining brand as the external image of a company, product or service. In reality, brand-driven companies know intuitively it is first an internal activity that comes from the heart of the enterprise straight to the heart of the customer. It is always an honest, open, two-way conversation that creates enormous value for both participants. As products and services become more and more functionally similar, and the noise of marketing and message clutter becomes increasingly hard to navigate through, customers will have more difficulty differentiating and perceiving innovation from common, good from great. Design is essential to brand-driven companies.

Brand design in the new economy is more about meaning than marketing. That being said, the whole notion of the science of branding as a means for determining quantitative metrics seems to be an over-sold idea. Metrics are important and useful, but how do you quantify a person’s feelings, aspirations, passions, beliefs and devotion? Yet the rewards for connecting these “soft” emotional attributes add billions of dollars of hard market value (think brand equity) to those who employ a greater conscious awareness of the power of break away brand design. Branding is no longer marketing shtick. And it should never be a process owned solely within the disciplines of product development and marketing. A brand belongs to every discipline within the enterprise. All coming together to craft unified and honest answers to a few tough introspective questions:

• why are we here?
• how are we unique?
• how do we make a difference to our customer?
• who cares and why?