Thanks to Kevin Robert at Saatchi & Saatchi, us in the marketing world have become obsessed with making brands become “lovemarks”. In his words:

” Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect – but there the similarities end.

Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.

Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. Lovemarks are a relationship, not a mere transaction. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately. That’s why you never want to let go.”

Put simply, Lovemarks inspire

Saatchi & Saatchi have created a site where you can go and nominate your lovemarks to become a part of the Lovemark List. I love browsing this list to see why people love certain brands and its great to read the impact lovemarks can have on peoples lives. Some of the top 10 might surprise you… everything from Bollywood dancers to Apple…

What are your lovemarks?

How many tribes are you a member of?

I am currently reading Seth Godin’s book on Tribes and its got me thinking.

I have joined many tribes without knowing and some tribes with knowing. I am a member of….the apple tribe, the gen Y tribe, the Geneva ex-pat tribe, the 2 many DJs band tribe & the thesis tribe….to name but a few.

Seth describes the difference between a crowd and a tribe as the ability to communicate up, down, with each other and with the outside. Social Media makes it easier for us all to be tribe leaders and some people like Penelope Trunk, Jamie Varon & Matt Chevy have done it very well.

But what makes a tribe last? If you asked Seth he would probably say – the leader and the dialogue – which links to the point that Kevin Roberts made on the role of social media in building lovemarks.One of the best examples of such a tribe is Apple- where the Leader, Jobs, communicated directly with the tribe to announce new products – result – record sales and lovemark status.

To build the tribe and the lovemark, the leader needs to maintain the dialogue – in the social media world, through blogging, tweeting, commenting and encouraging comments on their blogs -  and I am interested to see where some of these social media tribal leaders go, will the tribes grow or move to the next leader? Jamie Varon has tweeted about losing her blog motivation (0.2 posts a day) and twitter followers…is this a sign that she is losing her tribe? Carlos Miceli and the CookieMonster on the other hand are posting once a day and racking up tweets and comments by the hour….how will their tribes grow and grow?

Which tribes are you are member of? Do you lead a tribe? Did you know you did? Do you want to?

Kevin Roberts – CEO Saatchi & Saatchi and Mr. Lovemark. As an ex-P&G employee he often comes to speak to us at events and I always find his presentations insightful and eye opening. The last one I saw he was locked in a cage talking about cause marketing and advertising.

Here is a 4 min video (you have to go to the actual post on my site) that he posted on Friday on his of the moment thoughts on Winning Ugly, Lovemarks, Social Media, Retail and Sustainability.

Most interesting point for me is the re-enforcement of the strength of social media in building lovemarks in a recession.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.