Takeaways:
Brands people return to must offer consistent quality, benefit from being affordable, and require repeat usage. Being ‘ethical’ remains a secondary concern.
Only one non-physical brand makes the people’s top 5. We still feel far more of an emotional connection to physical goods than digital services.
The ‘Loops’ that Growth teams obsess over do work, but they don’t create affinity. Without quality and value, high engagement quickly sows distrust rather than loyalty.
It was refreshing recently to come across an online discussion involving real people discussing what brands they’re actually loyal to in their day to day lives. While we were away from the bay area all the Crypto billboards on the 101 blessedly went away, but a deluge of AI and cloud storage media has overtaken them, so we've been missing a bit of the connection to 'normal' advertising that we had while we were in London; on the Underground and around town.
The discussion has 5,000+ comments and very strong signal - building loyalty is about respecting the holy trifecta of quality, value and frequency, and abiding by it over time.
Of the top 5 brands on the thread, three are daily consumable goods, and only one is a digital service:
Scrub Daddy / Dawn dish soap
Q-Tips
Costco
Osprey
Wikipedia
Taken in turn they tell a great story about why we stay loyal to brands in a world of rising prices. The brands are US-centric, but the lessons definitely aren’t.
“Scrub Daddy makes one hell of a sponge”
Scrub Daddy is the most successful product to ever come out of the TV show Shark Tank. It hasn’t been around that long (2012), but nevertheless has an adoring fanbase:
It’s the perfect example of how ‘Value’ doesn’t mean cheap - within its category it’s a pretty expensive scrubber, but its durability day-in-day out means that even with inflation and increasing costs consumers don’t see value in switching to a cheaper alternative. Cute seasonal marketing like the spooky scrubbers in the picture help to keep Scrub Daddy top of mind, but the quality is the star of the show, and customers experience that quality every time they put their hands in the sink.
Dawn dish soap is just below Scrub Daddy on the list. Although less of a 'cute' brand, it is beloved for the same reasons - quality and value, used every day. And it’s been around since 1973, long enough to build up loyalty.
We don’t talk about Q-tips
It was thrilling to see Q-tips as the next highest voted product on the thread, because I honestly think that whoever is the head of marketing for Q-tips has the most absurd job in the world.
We buy Q-tips because we LOVE TO PUT THEM IN OUR EARS, but the first rule of Q-tips marketing is that the legal department says you absolutely, positively cannot talk about customers putting Q-Tips in their ears.
Again, a quality product, good value, used every day. People just love them, so much so that despite the company not even being allowed to mention their primary use-case they are a household name.
Costco - "Only place where I don't even bother checking reviews"
Costco is the first brand on the list that isn’t a ‘thing’ you can buy, but is beloved for all of the same reasons, with the important addition of inflation-bustingly cheap hot dogs.
Customers recognize that Costco makes a conscious decision to focus on quality over selection, appreciate the focus on low prices (even if things have crept up since the Pandemic), and again see the quality repeated over time through frequent, regular trips to the store.
Costco is also noteworthy because over time it has invested in being seen as a (comparatively) benevolent employer in the US:
This is part of why customers respect the brand, although as with almost all other companies how ‘ethical’ they are is a secondary benefit, rather than the primary reason for loyalty.
Osprey "I beat the shit out of mine and it's in perfect shape"
Osprey a great example of how much more important ‘value’ is than ‘price’ - I have an Osprey backpack and I can tell you it did not feel ‘cheap’ when I bought it. The company has built loyalty on having a ‘buy it for life’ product that stands up to gruelling repeat use over extended periods of time in harsh conditions. A highly generous and reliable repairs service also helps to reinforce brand loyalty over time.
Just like dish soap and Costco: Quality + Value x Frequency = loyalty
Wikipedia - "Modern day wonder of the world"
One single ‘non-physical’ brand did manage to squeak into the top 5 - beloved Wikipedia.
When the annual list of America’s ‘most popular brands’ is published, Google and Netflix and co always seem to make it to the top. But their presence has always seemed a bit suspect to me. Do most people really feel affinity and loyalty to the world’s largest Tech megalopolies?
I think it’s telling that the only ‘digital’ brand anywhere near the top of this democratically vote list is Wikipedia. Vehemently non-profit and focused on information rather than ‘products’, Wikipedia engenders comments like ‘Modern day wonder of the world’.
Wikipedia is high quality. Wikipedia is great value (because it’s free). And for most of us Wikipedia is a daily helper.
Additionally, its customers (or really users and donors given Wikipedia is free) are well aware that the company has eschewed profit, and explicitly contrast that with ‘ad-driven’ companies like Google or Facebook.
The general sentiment towards other well-known digital brands is that they are exploitative, expensive, and, well, increasingly crappy. Consumers see the quality of Google search results declining (‘ad-driven clickbait’), feel gouged by subscription business models like Netflix (low value), and this antipathy is reinforced by the frequency with which they engage with these services across their devices. Repeated good engagements grow loyalty, and just a few bad ones sow distrust.
So next time you’re in a brainstorm and trying to think of ways to grow retention, try to think of loyalty as an emotional state rather than a series of ‘loops’. Without high quality, good value and ideally a tangible sense of the product, marketing and growth hacks will accelerate your customers’ journey to hating you, rather than always wanting you within arm’s reach.
Comments