Love for a brand has a great impact on customer loyalty and recommendations, with people who love a brand being more likely to recommend it to others and accept its mistakes. A research identifies that the key ingredients to create a love for a brand are trust and how brand makes a consumer feel.

The Brand Love report by Energy PR shows that trust and feeling two out-perform even practical considerations like customer support and value for money. Contrary to popular opinions, being original isn’t that important when it comes to be loved as a brand as the latter involves a greater level of intimacy. Over half of the respondents suggest a loved brand is aligned to customer’s values and must be part of their life.

“A key take away from our research is that the best brands aren’t necessarily great innovators, but, if you read between the lines, they are all great communicators. Without communications you will struggle to demonstrate your values or become part of someone’s life and identity,” says Louise Findlay-Wilson, managing director of Energy PR. “Communications are an effective way to show customers you ‘get them’, you care and to make them feel good.”

The Brand Love report also identifies quirks of consumer behaviour which brand owners must consider, like mistaking apathy for loyalty. On average consumers are incredibly apathetic, willing to tolerate an average of two mistakes from even an ordinary brand before being compelled to shop around, which could enable a lot of inferior customer service to go unpunished.  

When it comes to the most common mistakes brands make on the path to greatness and love, these centre around neglecting the feelings of customers by focussing solely on new customers, forgetting current customers, being inconsistent with messaging, failing to understand customers properly and not being authentic.

The three brands the 100 top marketers love the most are Apple, Nike and Adidas.