The You Brands: When Loyalty is Personal

The brands that convey the most customer loyalty like Apple, Coke and Nike are the you brands. The brands that convey your personalized experience that empower you as part of a greater community. Customers buy these brands not only because they are great products but the brands themselves convey a value-of-association. How do they do this? By not attempting to sell you on product but on the experience.

What you get from Apple is the connection to more than a MacBook computer or an iPhone but devices that bring you cool media, social connections, access to your music and real-time video with others using FaceTime, all through devices that focus on you and  how you interact. Coke is not far from this. In all blind taste tests with Pepsi, Coke loses. But the visible brand choice is Coke. It’s the dominant and preferred carbonated soda globally because it conveys a historic brand experience and a brand personality that is consistent and connected to others like you.

Nike is about your experience not their product. Their product empowers you, your goals, your challenges, set by you. Just do it means exactly that. Experience the brand through what you choose to do. Your level of commitment is measured by your choices with the Nike brand.

So connecting to loyalty brands is about connecting to the customer’s control, choice and personalization of experience. The customer is not only being “sold”  what they want, they are being enrolled and empowered to have what they want the most – a brand crafted around their world, their community and their experience.