Columns

The Dangers of the Human Brand

Brand history and the concept of “brandness” has taught us how impermanent the bonds with Human Brands can be.

Posted 2024-11-12

Facts Related to 2025 Brand & Marketing Trends

Opinions are not facts. They’re not predictive and they have very short “use-by” dates. Facts are true whether you believe them or not. As New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

Posted 2024-10-29

The Brands / Votes Conundrum

Individual brand efforts are not only aimed at increased voter turnout but also to align brands with social responsibility positions, appealing to consumers who value both civic and brand engagement – to one degree or another, depending where you fall on the political spectrum. Brands capitalize on elections all the time because voting is a fundamental aspect of a democratic society. And, as it turns out, something that allows brands to promote themselves while capitalizing upon a fundamental aspect of a democratic society.

Posted 2024-10-15

Brands & Brand Folly

I’ve been thinking about brands a lot this week. In this instance, one brand in particular, and specifically the aspect of naming a brand.

Posted 2024-09-24

You’re Not Just Competing with Your Competitors

The 2024 Loyalty Leaders List is Brand Keys' annual cross-category brand analysis (this is our 16th year). It is important for several reasons. By analyzing brands across different categories, companies can gain a holistic view of market trends, consumer behavior, and competitive dynamics. This broader perspective can help identify patterns and insights that might not be apparent within a single category.

Posted 2024-09-10

Vacations, Brands & Bears

It’s a big world out there with lots to do on vacation. Happily, consumers have the time to avail themselves of all those vacation-related options. When it comes to vacation timing, here’s some advice that seems to make a lot of sense: A vacation should be just long enough that your boss misses you, and not long enough for him or her to discover how well he or she can get along without you! Oh, and yeah, avoid the bears!

Posted 2024-07-22

The Great (Brand) Pyramid

Today I want to call to your attention to the Fashion Pyramid.

Posted 2024-07-08

Holiday Brand “Wieners”

Having a national day in our extraordinarily socially networked brand ecosystem is something brands and categories and causes do to amplify who they are and what they stand for. It calls attention to a brand or a category or a cause. If you'd like to honor the hot dog, National Hot Dog Day is July 17th.

Posted 2024-06-25

Patriotic Brands Matter (and Win)

Brand Keys released their annual Most Patriotic Brands survey. It identifies which brands best embody the value of “patriotism”. Brands that consumers feel are patriotic, always have a strategic edge when it comes to winning consumers’ hearts, minds, and loyalty. And when brands do that, consumers don’t just stand up and salute, they stand up and buy!

Posted 2024-06-20

Meaningful Brands (Always) Win

We released our 23rd annual Most Patriotic Brands list last week, posted to coincide with the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Our annual Brand Keys survey honors patriotism for brands. Not with a medal, but with increased consumer engagement, loyalty, and profits.

Posted 2024-06-11

Is Your Brand on the Right List?

People love lists. If that statement seems intuitively obvious, good! Apparently, it should be. I've provided a list of the 10 reasons people love lists.

Posted 2024-05-28

Matchless Marketing – Jeans Edition

It’s time to play “Matchless Marketing or Brand Blunder?"

Posted 2024-05-13

Playing to Win for Fan Loyalty

Fan loyalty correlates very highly with game viewership and licensed merchandise purchase. Leagues need to understand what drives fan loyalty, so that they can strategically manage them to better meet their fans’ expectations.

Posted 2024-04-29

Brand Color Wars

Using color to provide secondary meaning moves brands into the realm of the “psychology of color.” How color impacts emotions and the role it plays in consumer behavior. It’s estimated a color can influence up to 80% of brand recognition and up to 90% of a consumer’s initial opinion.

Posted 2024-03-18

Brand Loyalty Kicks High

There was a great marketer who said the secret of his success was, “Don’t give people what they want – give ’em something better.”

Posted 2024-02-13

Attack of the Loyalty Juggernauts

Consumers – you and me – make 35,000 choices a day. One every 2.5 seconds. Depending on category and age cohort, 17% to 30% relate directly to brands. You might think extraordinarily high brand awareness would be enough to win your favor and loyalty. You might. But you’d be mistaken.

Posted 2024-01-15

Will the Real Black Friday Please Stand Up?

Black Friday is coming. It’s this week. That’s the real Black Friday, I’m talking about. I want to be clear since these days “Black Friday” could be referring to, well, almost any day, ever since marketers have come to use the phrase as a not-so-subtle message that things are “on sale.”

Posted 2023-11-17

On Great Brand Stories

Great stories make brands great. Or can. If properly told. Because storytelling is a great way to use narrative to connect your customers to your brand. Focus on linking what you stand for to the values you share with your customers.

Posted 2023-11-07

Smartphoning It In

Just to be clear, I did not ‘phone in’ this column. Considering the ubiquity of smartphones today, I probably couldn’t be faulted if I had phoned it in. I’m not sure there’s a stronger word to use than “ubiquity” when it comes to smartphones. Maybe “omnipresence,” because 86% of the world’s population owns one, a number that increases to 91% in the United States. And we’re not shy about using them.

Posted 2023-10-24

10 Rules for Brand Performance

There are basic strategies, tactics, and best practices that can help you rehearse for the marketing part you have to play. Here are ten acts (with links to some “line notes”) which – if performed well – will significantly increase your chances of a boffo brand performance.

Posted 2023-10-10

The Path to Brand Enlightenment

If you want customers to connect with you, and be loyal to you, and connect to the experience that is (or what you hope is) your brand, you have to “know.” Absolutely, positively know. Know who you are. Know what drives consumers. And know what consumers expect. Only then will you truly know your brand.

Posted 2023-09-26

Loyalty is boffo!

Our 2023 Top 100 Loyalty Leaders list consistently proves brands that make loyalty, engagement, and expectations their top priorities not only place high on the list, but more importantly, they rank high on consumers’ shopping lists. That’s the really boffo part! Brands that can do that always perform better.

Posted 2023-09-11

What Happens When Brands Chase the Wrong Numbers

While the consumer-brand relationship paradigm has shifted over time, brand – what it is and what it stands for – is still critical. But, more and more, “brand” has gotten left behind.

Posted 2023-07-21

Meeting Customer Expectations = First Identifying Them

You need to FIRST identify Customer Expectations and THEN align your brand and engagement activities to meet and exceed them.

Posted 2023-07-11

Patriotic Brands Matter (and Win)

Brand Keys released their annual Most Patriotic Brands survey. It identifies which brands best embody the value of “patriotism”.

Posted 2023-06-20

The Rhythm of Customer Expectations

Because brands that better meet customer expectations always see better consumer behavior. And sales and profits.

Posted 2023-06-05

What’s So Good About Brand Innovation?

If you, like Steve Jobs, want to “put a ding in the universe,” think innovation. That’s the way to go – especially if you’re a brand. Innovation is brand-critical. It allows brands to stay competitive – to differentiate themselves, to create unique positions in consumers’ minds and allow them to meet consumers’ ever-changing needs.

Posted 2023-05-22

Winning at the Ultimate Measure of Loyalty

Getting consumers to behave better toward your brand involves loyalty, expectations, emotional engagement, and emotional value. Things that motivate people to choose your brand and remain loyal.

Posted 2023-05-09

Predicting Brand “Disappointment”

If you’re a brand, you disappoint when you don’t meet customers' expectations. But, as managing brands is a business, you also have to be concerned about expectations of the financial markets.

Posted 2023-04-25

Big Brand Blunders

“Likes” and “tweets” have become surrogates for real ROI and where, unfortunately, in the rush to rush to something new, the brand often gets left behind.

Posted 2023-04-11

The One Reason Why Disney Won

Brands better able to meet consumer expectations are six times more likely to have customers use the brand more and more often.

Posted 2023-03-28

What’s Behind Fan Loyalty

You have to know what fans really expect – because league (and team) loyalty correlate very highly with those fan expectations.

Posted 2023-03-14

Looking at Consumer’s Sustainability Expectations

In a survey of 8,000 U.S. adults, 85% said they don’t know how to identify environmentally-friendly, sustainable brands, or what companies do about being sustainable, so they could gauge how well they measure up to their expectations.

Posted 2023-02-28

Expectations Are The Key

A consumer makes about 35,000 choices a day. One every 2.5 seconds. Depending on the category and age cohort, 17 to 29 percent of those choices (so 5,950 to 10,150 of them) relate directly to consumer marketing. Of those marketing-related decisions, 100% are based on expectations. Success, loyalty, profits, are ultimately all about meeting expectations. Every brand and marketer wants to exceed those expectations. Or say they do. So, how are they doing?

Posted 2023-02-15

What’s Really Driving Brand Loyalty?

It comes down to the consumer-to-brand bond – the emotional engagement that ensures loyalty and future purchases. From a measurement perspective it’s defined as the degree to which a brand meets expectations that consumers hold for the Ideal product or service in its category.

Posted 2023-02-14

Big Brand Faux Pas

A brand logo refresh that has confused the heck out of potential customers.

Posted 2023-01-31

The Little Black Dress of Loyalty

You don’t really need to be a researcher to understand that, without saying a word, clothes do a lot of talking for us.

Posted 2023-01-17

Winning at REAL Loyalty

Very soon, we'll be releasing our 26th annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. How brands in different categories rank when it comes to loyalty. It’s a lot bigger than when the survey was first released in 1997. It’s bigger and there’s some even bigger news this year!

Posted 2023-01-03

Email Marketing for Fun and Profit. And Loyalty.

Too many emails can be bad for a brand’s engagement health.

Posted 2022-12-13

Bad Research = Bad Predictions. Again.

Making predictions about 21st century consumers (or voters) using mid-20th century research techniques generally results in misleading forecasts.

Posted 2022-11-29

Brand Lessons from a Few Good Men

From a brand perspective, four taglines isn’t a bad record for a 247 year old brand. Particularly when you consider that Coca Cola and McDonalds have each had about 40 tag lines this century alone!

Posted 2022-11-16

The Celebrity Made Me Do It

Brands think that kind of co-branding (products/service + celebrity) is synergistic, but it’s also dangerous.

Posted 2022-10-18

Logos on Fire

We looked to our 2022 Loyalty Leaders List and drilled down to examine the percent-contribution the graphic IDs that 20 brands consistently use in their marketing.

Posted 2022-10-04

Magic (Brand) Numbers

Consumers in the post-pandemic marketplace are doing some significant sorting-out of brands when it comes to their loyalties.

Posted 2022-09-06

On Cheesy Customer Expectations

To create engagement, to build loyalty, to not go bankrupt, you absolutely need to understand what consumers really expect. Then try to meet – or even exceed – those customer expectations.

Posted 2022-08-23

How to Grow Wallet-Share in a Recession

If you want to see increases for your brand, it means continuing to promote your brand during recessionary times.

Posted 2022-07-26

2022’s Most Innovative Brands: Apple, Dove, Beyond Meat, Pfizer, Hyundai, TikTok, Hulu Lead

Consumer expectations are today’s gateway to innovation. These top 50 brands are today's innovation leaders.

Posted 2022-07-19

Innovation in Today’s New Normal

We had the normal, the new normal, the pandemic, and, as we move toward the next normal, brands will need to focus on innovation and innovating.

Posted 2022-07-12

How Patriotic are your Favorite Brands?

Slapping an American flag on something and having an authentic foundation to be able to slap an American flag on something aren’t the same thing. Consumers know that too.

Posted 2022-06-28

Maybe Your USP Could Use Some Caffeine

If you can engage consumers in a meaningful way, it’ll jolt something in them and have them behaving more positively toward your brand.

Posted 2022-06-14

Top 10 ‘healthier’ fast food chains, as chosen by consumers

Brand Keys president and founder Robert Passikoff unpacks the reasons behind consumers' picks, fast food’s health-focused evolution — and one candidate that should have made the list.

Posted 2022-06-10

The Cocktail Culture Driving Changes in Alcohol Brands

Loyalty – for virtually every alcoholic beverage category – is driven primarily by things like appearance of versatility (the critical word being “appearance”).

Posted 2022-05-31

The Dangers of Celebrity-Sell

Are celebrities to blame for the crypto crash? No, but they certainly didn’t help. Here’s what consumers, and brands, need to be really thinking about when it comes to celebrity endorsements.

Posted 2022-05-25

Cannabis Brands are More Than Smoke

Cannabis and its cultural swirl remain a heady and potential goldmine for those who can brand weed right.

Posted 2022-05-17

How Authentic is Your Brand Authenticity?

It turns out that there’s an enormous difference between a brand saying something, a brand doing something, and a brand saying and doing something believably.

Posted 2022-05-03

Why Disney, and every other brand, should always stay out of politics

Here’s why brands should stick to business excellence and avoid unwinnable political fights.

Posted 2022-04-28

Finding JC Penney’s Retail Raison d’Etre

Selling to existing customers is not a new idea. It’s called “customer loyalty,” and it’s kind of a brand prime-directive.

Posted 2022-04-19

And Your Marketing Mantra is …

If you’re a marketer or researcher, here’s a mantra that can add a little magic to your efforts: You need to know what people think, not what they say they think, and you really need to know what they expect.

Posted 2022-04-05

The Least Engaging Brands in the World

Nobody on a “Least Engaging List” makes the kind of money or profits shareholders expect.

Posted 2022-03-22

Survey Finds: 84% of American Consumers Look to Boycott Russian Brands

Boycotting Russian brands available in the U.S. may not bring down the Russian economy, but it is symbolic.

Posted 2022-03-15

The Difference Between CSR and CSR Lite

It was Mother Teresa who said, “Give, but give till it hurts.” But nobody ever said you couldn’t make sure you helped your brand do better while doing it.

Posted 2022-03-08

Brand Engagement is Actually Pretty Straightforward

Defining your category’s Ideal is where it gets tricky.

Posted 2022-02-22

Genuine Consumer Insights or Just “Duh”

People should be able to share their consumer insights and teach and pass on knowledge to a new generation of marketers and researchers. But not duh-worthy stuff.

Posted 2022-02-08

Chasing Customer Expectations

Real customer expectations – the ones brands want to exceed – move at the speed of the consumer, faster than brands can keep up, no matter how many times brands tell you they want to exceed your expectations.

Posted 2022-01-25

Identifying Consumer Trends Before They’re Trends

Brands that want to dominate and “own” categories and consumers will have to also own an emotional value.

Posted 2022-01-04

Anniversaries, Trends, and Brand Loyalty

While we can’t offer you a drink, we can offer you access to the largest, most accurate, correlated-to-consumer behavior, continuous brand loyalty database ever created.

Posted 2021-12-14

Passikoff: The Meta of Brands

How much does the fact we recognize a logo – even like a logo – change our behavior toward the brand and the experience the logo is supposed to represent?

Posted 2021-11-30

Black Friday Is Looking A Little Gray

Black Friday and Christmas shopping are becoming more like going to see Santa or the Thanksgiving Day parade. Nice to do, but not necessary to do.

Posted 2021-11-16

Passikoff: Spotting Crappy Market Research

I recently received an email from one of the largest social networks in the world asking for my participation in a survey they were conducting. Here’s a precise quote of what they sent. To me and a gabillion other members: “We’re doing a survey about XYZ. We’d like to hear your opinion, even if you might not be familiar with the category.” Are you kidding me? You want information from someone not familiar with the category? What the use is data from someone not familiar with the category?

Posted 2021-11-02

Passikoff: Brand Slogan Hits … and Misses

Great brand slogans are unforgettable – etched in our memories and in our hearts. Which is what emotional engagement is all about.

Posted 2021-10-19

Passikoff: Peloton Isn’t Pedaling Fast Enough

The perfect storm blew the Peloton brand out of the luxury category into a sector some consumers thought of as a “necessity,” and that was good.

Posted 2021-10-06

Passikoff: The 2021 Loyalty Leaders List

Brands that make loyalty and emotional engagement a priority show up on our Loyalty Leaders List. More importantly, they show up on consumers’ shopping lists.

Posted 2021-09-21

Passikoff: The Donut Theory of Branding

Marketers that miss value-shifts and are unprepared when they finally have to acknowledge the shift, usually they end up with the sticky end of the balance sheet. You can end up with the sticky end if you ignore values too.

Posted 2021-09-08

Passikoff: Predicting the Galaxy

Technology is, indeed, driven by corporate innovation, but it’s mostly driven by consumer expectations.

Posted 2021-08-24

Market research has to earn its place at the table—here’s how to do it

Market research is at the very root of all intelligent, directed action—or so we believe. What sensible person or organization acts without understanding context, alternatives, and probable consequences?

Posted 2021-08-23

Passikoff: Market Research Has to Earn Its Place at the Table

Run-of-the-mill mid-20th Century market research is a superb rear view mirror, but a crummy windshield.

Posted 2021-08-03

Passikoff: Leading with Brand Values

Be a real brand. Defend your heritage. Build your brand values. Create emotionally engaging advertising to reinforce brand differentiation, consumer gratification, and customer loyalty. You know, brand stuff.

Posted 2021-07-27

Passikoff: Is Your Brand Really a Brand?

Where you fall on the Commodity-to-Human Brand Continuum determines the answer to the ultimate question, "Are you really a brand?"

Posted 2021-07-13

The Ultimate Question: Are You Really A Brand?

Not everything is a brand. People and things may be known, but that doesn’t make them brands. And calling yourself a “brand” doesn’t make you one. Doing that is problematic and simplistic. Real branding is never simplistic. Why would anyone think it was? Commentary column in MediaPost's The Marketing Insider.

Posted 2021-07-07

Passikoff: Victoria’s Secret is a Study in Market Tone-Deafness

Victoria’s Secret brand loyalty is down. The brand needs a new flight path for the evolving retail atmosphere, or it will continue to pay the price.

Posted 2021-06-29

Passikoff: This is Your Loyalty on Caffeine

In tough times – have there been tougher times than the recent pandemic? – customers are six times more likely to stick with products they’ve been loyal to in the past and snub the new entry, even if Coca-Cola is part of its name.

Posted 2021-06-15

Passikoff: Investing Along Loyalty Lines

Loyalty is not only a leading-indicator of consumer behavior, it’s also axiomatic. As loyalty increases, emotional engagement drives positive consumer behavior.

Posted 2021-06-01

Passikoff: The Winning Strategies of the Streaming Wars

Almost two-thirds (63%) of American households have an Netflix account. And probably a lot more watch if you factor in the ones using someone else’s login.

Posted 2021-05-18

Trump’s Consumer and Political Brand Favorability Decreases: Consumer Marketplace -5%, Political Arena -8%

Consumer & Political Values Don't Mix: 100-Days Out-of-Office Brings Big Changes For Trump Brand: Both Consumer & Political Favorability Down Significantly.

Posted 2021-05-04

Passikoff: Customer Expectations – Smartphone Edition

You need to be a brand that meets customer expectations and emotionally engages. That's different from being technologically-advanced.

Posted 2021-05-04

The role of brand: COVID-19 vaccines

What role will brand name play in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines?

Posted 2021-04-27

Passikoff: Sports Fan Loyalty had a Rough Year

Our percentages indicate the contribution each loyalty driver makes in today’s pandemically-modified arena where leagues currently vie for fan loyalty.

Posted 2021-04-20

Passikoff: Does this make me look Fatuous?

These days it seems a lot of “fatuous” stuff gets crammed into surveys. Digital surveys seem to have made that easier.

Posted 2021-04-06

Passikoff – What Your Hot Dog Says About Your Loyalty

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how brand loyalty is disappearing. I don't think that’s true. I believe lots of things in the 21st century and over the past 30 years have morphed.

Posted 2021-03-23

Brand Loyalty Here To Stay -- But Now It's 'Emotional Engagement'

A recent spate of articles have declared that brand loyalty is in jeopardy, or even -- as suggested recently in a commentary in this publication -- “on its way out.” The reality is, brand loyalty not only exists, but is a measurable, leading indicator of consumer behavior and brand profitability, and is not going away anytime soon.

Posted 2021-03-22

Pandemic Creates Ultimate Stress Test for Retail Brands

Our 25th annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index survey found rigors created by the 2020 marketplace produced two loyalty challenges for retailers.

Posted 2021-03-22

Passikoff: Brand Loyalty Bragging Rights

I was getting ready to brag. Not about myself, but about predictive metrics. Ones that identify consumer values and expectations describing how consumers will view, compare, and buy in categories. “Buying” being critical, given branding and marketing are businesses and not hobbies. Predictive values and expectations describe what consumers truly desire, then serve as a yardstick of how well they see your brand delivering. OK, enough evangelizing. Time to brag.

Posted 2021-03-09

2020: The Ultimate "Stress Test" For Brands

COVID-19, the economy, sheltering-in and working-from-home, some things open, others closed, not to mention the politicization of, well, everything, has put extra stress on all brands. What should a brand do?

Posted 2021-03-05

Passikoff: Consumer Expectations are the North Star

Metaphorically speaking, your North Star should lead you to activities that cause your brand to better meet – even exceed – expectations consumers hold for the drivers of engagement and loyalty in the category in which you compete.

Posted 2021-02-23

Passikoff: How Netflix Got You Glued to Your Screens

Netflix was #1 in the Streaming Video category, so we’d pretty much presume Netflix was going to do pretty well in their category. And they did. Most recently they added more than 200 million subscribers.

Posted 2021-02-09

Passikoff – What Does Customer Loyalty Look Like in 2021?

Loyalty has changed but it has not vanished. It has been transmuted through changes by consumers born hotwired to the internet.

Posted 2021-01-26

Passikoff: The Bare Naked Truth about Your New Year’s Resolutions

It’s that time of year when people make New Year’s resolutions. You know, those promises that go in one year and out the other.

Posted 2021-01-05

For Retail Brands, Loyalty is Stronger Than the Pandemic

Whether a brand survives uncertain circumstances like the pandemic comes down to how much loyalty the brand engenders with its customers.

Posted 2020-12-22

Passikoff: Brand Trends You Can Bank On In 2021

As marketing lore has proven, an ounce of insight ultimately turns out to be a real treasure.

Posted 2020-12-22

Brand & Marketing Trends For 2021

For the past 35 years, Brand Keys, has conducted a year-end examination of our independently-validated loyalty and engagement metrics from 100,000+ consumers who participated in our surveys.

Posted 2020-12-15

Passikoff: Brand Innovation is a Really Big Deal

When new brands do show up in our innovation survey it’s a big deal. A really big deal. Consumers’ views of innovation have become bigger deals these days because innovation has a very definite half-life.

Posted 2020-12-08

Passikoff: Black Friday is Getting a Little Grey

Tracking indicates Black Friday shopping has decreased over the past 10 years, replaced the rest of the year, pre-pandemic, with one in three consumers reporting shopping online at least daily.

Posted 2020-11-23

Passikoff: The Brand Engagement Silver Bullet

Today – market research-wise – the term “silver bullet” stands for a simple, immediate, seemingly miraculous triumph over a complicated problem – a kind of one-solution-fits-all-and-satisfies-everyone resolution. In the real world, in the real marketplace, among real consumers it rarely exists, because consumer complexity and category specificity usually impede a silver bullet’s velocity.

Posted 2020-11-10

Electoral Engagement Vote Is In: Biden 88%, Trump 74%

The Truth About How Voters See The “Ideal” President.

Posted 2020-10-26

Passikoff: DIY Presidential Prognostication

In this column I’m going to talk to you through D-I-Y Presidential Prognostication. Why? Because there’s a U.S. presidential election coming up. No, really. It’s been on all the news.

Posted 2020-10-13

Unobtrusive Measures: Passikoff on What Consumers Aren’t Telling You

No one should approach the temple of marketing research with the soul of an accountant.

Posted 2020-09-29

Loyalty Deniers: Passikoff on Winning Real Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty not only exists, but is a measurable, leading-indicator of brand profitability -- my response to recent article that expressed the opinion that, aside from fixated fans, there's no such thing as brand loyalty.

Posted 2020-09-15

Dying is Easy: Passikoff on Brand Differentiation

Do enough advertising and consumers will eventually become aware of your brand - but awareness alone is the longest route to profitability.

Posted 2020-08-31

Look down the Road: Passikoff on Consumer Values

Consumers are pretty much unable, and often unwilling, to articulate the kind of meaningful consumer values that allow you to get a good look down the road.

Posted 2020-08-17

Goya-Gate: Passikoff on Brands and Politics

Research has shown consumer brands are – or should be – apolitical. I’m talking politics, not Corporate Social Responsibility. There’s a difference. The minute your brand takes a political stand, one group of consumers or another is going to hate you. Not sometimes. Not often. Always!

Posted 2020-08-03