Emotional connection and brand love serves as the foundation of a long term and fruitful customer relationship. Brand love aims to adopt brand-loyal customers and turn them into advocates or influencers for their brand. In an effort to achieve this culture, brands are increasingly following the approach to foster customer satisfaction, customer value and relationship marketing.

Speaking about brand-love, Harish Narayanan, CMO, Myntra says, “For me, brand love is an outcome of doing the right thing for the customer over and over again. Giving voices to people who never had it before because brand love is not something that is only driven by marketing. Doing what is right for the customer will finally result in brand love.”

The testimony of a good brand is when the customers speak on its behalf.  The larger the category is staggered along with the unstructured market places and retail, the higher energy marketers need to create brand love, as is the case with Lenskart. According to Hitesh Malhotra, CMO, Lenskart, “Brand love in our case has to be category driven, since we are the largest sellers of the category. The onus is on us to show that there is enough love for the category.

For Lenskart the primary customer might not be the end-user and this can be a challenge while measuring brand love. Comment space on social media, Instagram is a world of wonder for marketers. Repeat customers are also an ideal indicator of brand love.”

Ashish Mishra, Executive Vice President - Marketing, ACKO General Insurance also believes that brand love is derived from the collective efforts. He asserts, “Our focus is to consistently fulfil customer expectations. And eventually this will result in great brand love. We want to change the way people buy, renew or claim insurance.”

Today consumers have started to hold certain brands close to their hearts. Brands have also been successful to pull out all the stops when it comes to engagement. Being honest about the brand’s journey with customers is another quality which make them stand out.

For Lucky Saini, Head of Brand, Vedantu, brand love is not a stream of work rather it is a lens.

Saini adds, “We want to weave brand love in our thoughts, actions and communication as well. Education is a category that is built on trust and loyalty. Vedantu aims to work on retention and repeat customers in a very big way.”

Marketers need to have their own formula as there is no standard metric to brand love. Knowing the brand and staying true to it is very important before the customers are approached. Affinity and intimacy are important components for marketers when it comes to cultivating brand love. 

(The speakers' comments have been taken from a recent industry forum)