I don’t know what I can add to the other reviews posted this week. I liked Lovemarks. There are things you can get out of it.

Kevin Roberts talks about at length the importance of respect and considers it a founding principle of Lovemarks. The thought starts like this: No Respect, No Love. Then consider all the things you need to do to show respect to your customers – do what you said you where going to do, help them, tell the truth, accept responsibility, and never fail the reliability test. Most companies won’t get past the respect test. Roberts quotes Frank Byrne who said. “Respect is love in plain clothes.”

Lovemarks is really a continuation of the discussion about the importance of an emotional message. The three success factors Roberts lays for Lovemarks are mystery, sensuality, and intimacy. Under mystery, it is about telling stories and tapping into people’s dreams. It is also about icons and aspirations.

Under sensuality, it is about creating experiences that appeal the senses. Roberts says the magic going to come from people who think with “and” in mind (i.e. taste and texture, sight and sound, small and taste). Just think about Crayolas just for a minute. How many senses do they appeal to?

Under intimacy, there are two great quotes from the book. Roberts first talks about how much people talk on their cellphones. He says it is about empathy and intimacy:
“Initimate talking has become a 24/7 activity. Forget grammar and argument. We’re talking haphazard, incomplete, and emotional. This is not about communicating information as we have known it. This is a constant sensing of where you are, where I am, and how we are both feeling.”

Two pages later, he talks about commitment:

Steve Jobs made his triumphal return to Apple in 1994. Back on track, the company went to the leading edge and stayed there. And all those committed consumers felt vindicated. More loyal than ever. What sustained the Mac lovers over the tough beige period?

I call it “Love in the bank.”

With Loyalty Beyond Reason, Apple could make mistakes and still be forgiven…Only Love will get customers through the bad times when common sense tells them they should change.

It is those kind of love analogies that I like from the book.

You will find a lot of Saatchi and Saatchi self-congratulating along with many kudos to Roberts’ former employer P&G. If you can look past that and think about the amazing Lovemarks of IKEA, Barbie, Birkenstocks, and Breyers, there is something for you in this book.

Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts

This book is fun to read. Remember when you were a kid and took out a library book that had lots of pictures? Its like that. Lovemarks uses colors, energy and stories to bring the reader right into the story. This pulling us into the story models the main message of the book, customer intimacy. (Remember Marshall McLuhann, The Medium is the Message? Well, some of us do the same ones who remember getting books at the library.)

Dont let the cool pictures, changing colors, changing fonts, and illuminating stories fool you, the real power of this book is a clean direct message about how to bring marketing and brands into the age of the individual mass consumer. The world that Tim Sanders describes in Love is a Killer App, a world based on abundance, collaboration and win-win requires a different relationship between customer and company than the days of scarcity and competition. Lovemarks talks about connecting, company to customer, in that kind of world.

Lovemarks brings conscious competence to customer / company connecting that is beyond branding. It stresses the importance of listening, no, not waiting to talk, listening to your customers. There is a Benjamin Disraeli quote, I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? Thats what Lovemarks is talking about. Where are the people who love us, who follow us going? That is where we should be leading.

As I read the book I was a little confused about the audience for this book. As an independent consultant, my relationship with my customers is my Lovemark. I dont need anything fancy. I guess the message of the book could be heard by anyone who runs a company and has direct control over the marketing and customer relationship style of that company, any one who has some power and clout in the area of marketing, anyone who wishes to choose their own style of direct customer contact, or anyone who wants to read something that is both business and fun.

The one problem I had with the book is a problem Ive had with a number of books in the last several years. Kevin Roberts talks as if this type of customer relationship / marketing never existed before he brilliantly discovered/invented it. Kevin Roberts does do a good job of outlining the steps and relating it to todays world, however, claiming discovery/invention is a bit high-flying.