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Passion can be detected and monitored, and that paves the way for how it can be managed. The metric for assessing brand Passion consists, as with the other three components of brand attachment, of two related rating scales:

• [Brand] is the perfect [company/product/brand/store] for people like me.
• I can’t imagine a world without [Brand].

Copyright 2000 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.

Time after time, customers show they can readily rate the brands they use on these two scales. That doesn’t mean customers are passionate about lots of brands. They’re not. It means only that their ratings are clear and consistent indicators of the extent to which their brand marriages are marked by a deep commitment — a sense of brand Passion — and not merely by convenience or habit.

Studies show that there are vast differences between competing brands:

• In a survey in India, almost a third (31%) of the buyers of one packaged food product had Passion for that brand. Their competitor generated Passion among only 22%.
• In a grocery shopper survey in the United States, one chain built brand Passion among just one in six (16%) of its customers but was attempting to compete with a chain that had achieved this same level of customer Passion with almost half (45%) of its customers.
• A leading U.S. insurance company had created Passion among one in five (22%) of its current customers, while attempting to compete with other companies whose levels of Passion ranged from 31% to 53%.

Insurance might not seem like a category that would be marked by much Passion. That’s why many financial services products have been marketed like commodities. However, just because companies treat their products like commodities does not mean that consumers view them that way.

Consumers are passionate about the brands they feel are perfect for them — brands they feel they absolutely couldn’t do without. The second component rating illustrates how consumers feel about this relationship: “I can’t imagine a world without [Brand].” It sounds extreme, and it is. That’s intentional, because we’re searching for truly great brand marriages. This measure separates world-class performers from merely good ones; it distinguishes the passionate from the perfunctory.

We’ve found Passion in almost every product category. We’ve found it among rich customers and poor ones, among the old and the young, and among men and women. Business customers express Passion, as do individual end-users. We’ve found it in Thailand and Brazil, as well as in Germany, Japan, and the United States. In short: Passion is there, even if it seems invisible, and even if nobody has noticed until now.

Chapter Eleven
The Emotional Pinnacle: Brand Marriage

Confidence, Integrity, and Pride constitute a brand edifice of which any CEO should be justifiably proud. Yet, as with every building, there are the finishing touches that separate the temporary from the permanent, and that represent the difference between a functional dwelling and a greatly cherished dream home. The difference between “like” and “love” in a customer relationship is Brand Passion.Consumers who are passionate about a brand are convinced that it’s absolutely perfect for them. Moreover, they’ve come to believe that their world would be somehow incomplete if that brand were no longer available.

There are products that seem irreplaceable. These include essentials, like refrigeration or antibiotics and other wonder drugs. They also include more mundane products and services that have carved out unrivaled niches in the everyday lives of consumers: The television remote, cell phones, microwaves, and e-mail fall into this category. We can’t live without them.

However, brands also inspire Passion:

“I couldn’t live without … Shredded Wheat. I have it every day. It’s part of my daily routine, and without it my day isn’t complete. It sounds silly, but when my husband went to eat the last bowl yesterday, I bit his head off.”

“Without that brand? I would feel as if I’d lost a good friend.”

“For me, it’s Casual Corner. When I go there, they know who I am. I have a sense of comfort there, and I’m always happy to pick up the phone (when they call).”

“Singapore Airlines. They have great customer service. Once, when I was sick, they took care of me. I felt really taken care of. They went the extra mile.”

Even business-to-business customers express their passion for some brands:

“Frankly, I just don’t know what we’d do without them. They’ve always been there for us. They don’t just react to our emergencies, and we have plenty of those. They keep coming to us with ideas. I think they care as much about our success as we do.”

Passion is at the apex of the brand attachment pyramid. It’s the ultimate emotional bond for any brand, one manifested in the customer’s dedication to supporting and even evangelizing its merits.

While hardly widespread, brand Passion is evident in some surprising places. We’ve found it not only in the land of luxury vehicles and resort hotels, but also in the presumably dispassionate world of mortgages, gas stations, and packaged cheese. It’s there, waiting to be stoked — and to be understood.

Wherever there is brand Passion, there are also rival brands that fall short of their competitors — and some that don’t even come close. These latter brands suffer as a result; they have weaker emotional links with customers, and they’re also vulnerable to the negative business consequences that follow from a flimsy customer relationship.

Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond With Some Brands for Life
by William J. McEwen
Gallup Press – November 2005
210 Pages – 1595620052

William J. McEwen explains brand Passion and why some consumers crave the brand name and others don’t. Here are a few excerpts from McEwen’s book about the passion that encourages consumers to pay the extra 1000′s of dollars for a BMW or shell out the money for the new Apple Nano.