I learned something new today. My teacher was Tara Hunt who runs online marketing for my client Ojos and I'm supposed to be mentoring. But today I was the student. Tara had request a meeting on branding strategy and she taught me about Lovemarks, a concept served up by the Saatchi, one of the world's most prominent ad agencies who has a static site and a book dedicated to it. While I was sleeping, the blogosphere was heatedly debating the concept over at Hugh's Gaping Void.
As Tara so articulately explained to me today, Lovemarks are an extension beyond the concept of brand as how people feel about your company. It incorporates into that trust-building more human attributes. Lovemarks use mystery and story-telling. They create a mythology and can be downright inspirational. They also appeal to our sensual aspects, trying to pique our five senses, create a sense of intimacy between customer and company, a sense of empathy a Revelation of empathy.
Tara believes that Ojos should be love-marked and should use a blog-based word of mouth strategy in which the company and its soon-to-be users will be Lovemarked together. This seems to me to be an exceptional strategy. Ojos is about photos, not spreadsheets. People are passionate about their photos for all sorts of reasons: artistic expression; a personal history capsule, the way we were; our parents when they were young as Dan Briklin recently showed or our children who grow relentlessly and all too fast.
Tara is right for this company at this time. I'm glad to be part of the team, and as any good consultant can attest, I look forward to that day somewhere in the future, I can take credit for being part of the team that decided to take this route to market.
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