Keeping the Spark Alive with Consumers

We interact with brands every day. In fact, I'm sure you're doing exactly that even as you are reading this! While some fall short in creating an emotional connection with us, others make a greater impact. These brands help us with our daily lives. They entertain us. They make our lives better. They do it so well that we can't help but fall in love. Which brands have this power? And how have they successfully forged an emotional bond? We wanted to know, so for the second year we ran the Most Loved Brands study in British Columbia and Alberta.

First, a bit of background on the study. To measure the degree to which consumers love brands, we went to our repertoire of brand measurement tools, leveraging Brand Value Creator. How does it work? In a nutshell, we define the strength of the relationship that consumers have with a brand as Attitudinal Equity. But there's more to the equation than that - consumers can't always act on their feelings toward a brand due to the presence of barriers. So if we combine Attitudinal Equity, plus or minus the presence of any market effects, we arrive at Effective Equity. The correlation between Effective Equity and actual market share is quite dramatic. This brand model has the highest number of validations in the research industry, having been conducted in over 30 categories, across 27 countries for over 900 brands.

Using this framework, we went to 1,349 British Columbians between November 3 and November 16, 2014 to ask a series of questions about 65 consumer-facing brands. In Alberta we conducted the study with 1,127 adult residents who were asked the same series of question about 55 Alberta consumer-facing brands.

The Most Loved Brands Countdown

I'm sure you're curious to know who made the cut, so now for the countdown. We have a great mix of brands in British Columbia, and from retailers to a chocolatier to an airport, the list truly reflects that diversity. From number ten to number one, BC's Most Loved Brands for 2015 are:

10. Telus
9. Sun-Rype
8. Future Shop
7. White Spot
6. BC Hydro
5. YVR (*New in 2015)
4. Purdy's (*New in 2015)
3. BCAA
2. London Drugs
1. Save-On-Foods

The Most Loved Brands in Alberta featured a few new additions also:

10. City of Edmonton (*New in 2015)
9. City of Calgary (*New in 2015)
8. Calgary Zoo
7. Alberta Blue Cross
6. Shaw
5. Mark's
4. Telus
3. Alberta Motor Association
2. Canada Safeway
1. Westjet

Ten Important Takeaways

What is it that makes these brands so loveable? In sifting through the data, we saw ten key trends that will prove invaluable to your marketing and brand strategy efforts. These apply not only to brands in British Columbia, but also reflect our analysis from the 195 brands that we measured in Alberta, Washington and Oregon.

It takes a lot of effort to move the needle on your brand, so be sure to devote the time and resources to better understand your customer and improve your products and services. We know this because even the most significant shifts in Brand Love from 2015 to 2014 were minor in the scheme of things.

Physical presence is a big driver. A common trait that we see among all of the brands in our list is that they share excellent penetration and reach within British Columbia. Make sure your customers are using, shopping and visiting your brand - the more touchpoints and interactions consumers have with your brand, the more likely they are to fall in love with it.

Don't underestimate the power of TV. Our research this year not only measured Brand Love, it measured the impact of all marketing touchpoints on brand familiarity. Our data conclusively shows that TV is not dead as a marketing touchpoint (in fact, it ranks second most important behind the customer experience on driving brand familiarity). If you have the budget, investing your marketing dollars in this medium is not a waste of time, despite what so called digital marketing pundits may say.

Quality product and/or customer experience is #1. These aspects drive brand familiarity and are therefore extremely important. On top of this, our data conclusively shows that a positive experience is instrumental in driving buzz and social badging (which is defined as the desire for people to publicly proclaim their brand loyalty with any given brand to people they know).

Social media is useful. Our study this year has shown that social media can be useful at driving brand familiarity and brand salience, but not in the way you would think. Most brands are focused on finding brand followers in social media. But our data suggests that the largest impact on brand familiarity seems to come from using social media as another marketing touchpoint, not by merely attracting new followers. In other words, marketers need to think of social as another marketing touchpoint, because `engagement' by finding followers does not seem to have as much impact on increasing brand familiarity.

Innovation isn't everything. The overall impact of innovation remains relatively minor. Innovation continues to be important, but only when it's combined with other attributes such as brand relevance, trust or the customer/product experience.

Loved brands always start with the consumer. So when you come across a great insight, jump in with two feet and own it. The brands that tug at consumers' heart strings are those that really understand and deliver on their needs and desires.

Trust is a cost of entry. Every one of the Moved Loved Brands performed better than average in terms of being trustworthy. Two ways to increase your trustworthiness are to invest in your community and be socially responsible.

Leverage trends that solve real consumer problems. A loved brand is all about creating products and services that make consumers' lives easier. Our data shows that brands that do a poor job of solving real consumer problems rank lower on relevance and other important measures. Some people talk about this as `removing friction'. If you remove friction, you will naturally address consumer needs and grow your Brand Love score.

Research, learn, iterate and repeat. At Ipsos, we have the benefit of working with many of the Most Loved Brands in our province, and all stress the importance of intimately knowing their consumers.

While this is not an exclusive list, it should provide an excellent starting point for developing solid relationships with your customers. As people want to do business with brands they love, I have no doubt that you'll find the outcome to be powerful.

To discover the entire Top 20 list of the Most Loved Brands in British Columbia, check out this article in BCBusiness.