How Target, Coca-Cola and Tide use ‘irrational love’ to win customer loyalty

While all brands strive to make an emotional connection, few achieve the Holy Grail—irrational love.

While “love” may sound fuzzy in the advertising world, it can be scientifically measured by four key components: strong familiarity, high regard, being personally meaningful and competitively unique. These components comprise their “brand love” score, a research tool developed by brand-tracking and measurement firm BERA that has been integrated into Innocean’s proprietary process.

Among the tool’s findings: Irrationally loved brands score higher than 95% of all the other brands across every category.

How is irrational love created?

Looking at three irrationally loved brands like Coca-Cola, Tide and Target can offer insight into a brand’s irrational-love creation. These brands created a narrative that focused on their category’s unmet needs and consistently advanced and evolved that same narrative over time.

• Launched in the 1930s, Tide was the first detergent to address stain removal. Over time, the brand has kept the narrative going in fresh new ways like 2018’s “It’s a Tide Ad” and 2021’s “Jason Alexander Hoodie” ads.
• Instead of focusing on its formula, Coke has always focused on enabling inclusive experiences that make life better, from “jollifying” Santa Claus in the 1930s to the more recent “Open Happiness” campaign.
• Target was the first retailer to make high-quality experiences accessible to discount shoppers. Over time, they’ve expanded their access and inclusivity-focused DNA to include a wide range initiatives, from barrier-free stores to prioritizing the affordability of beautifully designed products.

The benefits of irrational love

When a brand is irrationally loved, it has a special bond with its fan base. Irrational love gives new products instant credibility. It commands higher prices and higher loyalty. Irrationally loved brands are trusted beyond reproach—which makes it easier for them to weather a storm, as each of these brands have.

You’ll recall: Coke’s most famous brand blunder, New Coke, and its consequent backlash; Tide’s negative coverage following the “Tide Pod Challenge”; and Target’s more recent backpedaling on its Pride Collection. Each of these brands has rebounded quickly and completely in both brand love and business performance.

Can established brands create irrational love?

While existing brands don’t have the luxury of creating a new offering from the ground up, that doesn’t put irrational love out of reach. In fact, fertile white space is likely right in front of them.

Unlike irrationally loved brands, brands that are still outside of the love zone have perceptual deficiencies across audiences—but loyalists love them.

By understanding the drivers of customer brand affinity, and comparing them with competitors’ deficiencies, brands can carve out a unique, attractive and ownable space of their own. By consistently focusing on this space, they can grow from “core to more” until they, too, garner irrational love. 

Moving brands into that sweet spot of commanding irrational love is something companies (and we as agency partners) are always striving for. It’s something we’re deeply passionate about. 

Learn more about what goes into developing irrational brand love in our upcoming Webinar with brand and agency industry leaders on May 8, 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT). Register here.