The Social Life Of Brands

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A marketing strategy informed by neuroscience can help build better consumer relationships — and make better use of tools like social media.
by Matthew Egol, Mary Beth McEuen, and Emily Falk

The Social Life of Brands

t was love at first sight for Nathan Aaron. The North Carolina graphic artist, illustrator, and social media proprietor first saw Method Inc.’s high-style,environmentally conscious household cleaning products on display in his local Target store. He was smitten. “What caught my attention immediately was mint dish soap.… Now, I’m a mint fanatic! Crazy about the stuff.… Plus the gorgeous Karim Rashid packaging didn’t hurt things one bit. And that was the beginning of my, should I say, lust affair, with Method.” Aaron wrote that in 2008, in the first post on hisnew blog, methodlust.com. Since then, he and a community of like-minded consumers have posted more than 1,000 paeans and gripes there, all devoted to the Method company and its brand proposition (fashionably designed, beautifully scented, nontoxic cleaning products). Methodlust.com is nothing more or less than a fan site, similar to one you might see for a hit movie or television show. It containsreviews of the company’s products, commentary on its marketing strategy, interviews with employees at all levels, and reader polls — plus fierce critiques when Aaron (or a reader) thinks that the company has made a misstep. Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, the cofounders and chief executives of Method, are not put off by Aaron’s familiarity or independent-mindedness. On the contrary, they think he’s adream consumer, and their marketing strategy is built around people like him. “To

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succeed in a world of earned and social media requires you to shift your mind-set from talking to customers to inspiring advocates,” they wrote in The Method Method: 7 Obsessions That Helped Our Scrappy Start-Up Turn an Industry Upside Down (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011). “Not only doadvocates make good business sense by buying more of our products more often, but also they engage us — online, in writing, on the phone, and in person — teaching us all sorts of stuff we wouldn’t have figured out on our own.” Would your company consider Nathan Aaron a dream consumer or a loose cannon? Would you encourage his public affair with your brand and listen to his ideas, or demand that hestop? Would you even know he was out there? Your answer says a lot about your approach to social marketing and customer relationships. Nathan’s devotion and Method’s response to it are becoming more and more typical. Some might attribute this trend — the increasing use of social engagement by marketers — to the rise of online social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, fan sites, and social marketingwebsites (also known as private-label media) created by companies themselves. But the trend represents a more fundamental change in marketing practice, linked to insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience and brain research. Every form of interaction between companies

Matthew Egol matthew.egol@booz.com is a partner in Booz & Company’s communications, media, andtechnology practice. Based in New York, he focuses on marketing strategy and capability development related to digitization, social media, and shopper marketing.

Mary Beth McEuen marybeth.mceuen@maritz.com is vice president and executive director of the Maritz Institute in St. Louis, Mo. The institute is an independent network of thought leaders working to create next-generation business practicesbased on human science research.

Emily Falk ebfalk@umich.edu is an assistant professor of communication studies and psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab. She is also a research associate at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research.

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and consumers —...