Love Marketing

Love is not yet a word commonly used in business, but then neither was “authentic” a few years ago.

Going forward I believe that love will come to be recognised as THE key influencer and therefore vital to business thinking.

Think about it from your own perspective.  Out of all of the things you own, experiences you have, or people you work with there are a few that stand out.  

There are a few whose value is transcendent, a few you will happily lavish time and attention on.   

In terms of things, for me, it would be my bike and my Mac.  For others it might be cars, clothes, music, gardens or whatever.

What these products have in common is that we love them.  Now - can you imagine loving a service, like a bank, a phone company or a rail service?

Think of the opportunity of taking the products of your organisation from “tolerated”, or “convenient” to “loved”.

The “bar” in many market sectors is set quite low, so while the overall challenge is significant, there are likely to be benefits just by being more popular than the rest.

A few years ago ANZ bank in Australia found that they were one of the least popular employers in the country.  This lead them to initiate a “values lead” transformation, over the course of the project ANZ became one of the most popular employers and trebled their share price.

What we are all looking to do as individuals or businesses is to attract more energy.  We want some of that energy to be in the form of human energy: creativity, care, time, recommendations and so on.  We also want some to be in the form of money.

Again think about it from your own perspective - where do you direct your energy?  

On the whole we direct our energy towards a mixture of what we love and what we fear.  We buy food partly for the love of eating and partly because we fear hunger.  We direct time and money to our favourite hobby for the love of it.  Most of us pay our taxes for the fear of the consequences of not doing so.

In this way we can see that there are two ways in which we can attract more energy to ourselves or our business, either through fear or love.  We can frighten people into sharing their energy with us or we can be lovable and attract energy that way.

The “fear” strategy has two issues, the obvious one is that for most of us it is uncomfortable, beyond that my observation is that it is not a long term strategy because much of the energy that is attracted is negative and ultimately destructive.

So, I prefer to focus on the “love” strategy - how do we get to be more lovable?

Again think of your own experience.  Who and what do you love?  Do you love the bland, the equivocal and the anodyne or do you love the clear, full flavour, full value, full strength?

I have asked a lot of people this question and the response is always the the second.

So  - the way to attract more energy into your life or your business is to be more lovable and the way to be more lovable is to be more clear, more full flavour - more authentic.  Not everyone will love you or your business, but enough will and those who do will really love you and shower you with positive energy.

It is time to get over the playground lesson that the best way to get along is to avoid being noticed.  It is time to stand up and stand out, to attract love and energy into our lives, our businesses and our societies.