Love isn’t made from a recipe

When writers of marketing blogs break down branding into listicles and heuristics, I often fear something important may be getting lost.

A blog post caught my eye today. The focus of the piece was about brand affinity — specifically, how to create it for your brand.

Brand affinity is something I know about. Affinity, or love, is not a phenomenon that magically materializes by following the steps in a recipe.

Contrary to how some marketers may define it, brand affinity is better understood as culture. It is a halo of goodwill that surrounds a brand or organisation. It is an informal network of relationships connected by shared values.

While not easy, there is much a brand team can do to enrich and strengthen affinity, but the challenge needs to be addressed from a cultural and relational perspective.

For this reason, attempts at creating brand affinity often elude marketers because the discipline tends to parse the world in quantitative or transactional terms.

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I am principal of Aegis, a relational design firm. We help create emotionally-intelligent brands and organisations.