Polar Attributes
On Kitchen Tables

Tensity — Y&R’s famous “perceptual paradox that combines ‘polar’ brand attributes” — has a fabulous track record of ‘making brands interesting’. A little bird tells us, however, that digital is weakening the long trusted link between brand loyalty and brands being interesting.

“Brands need a narrative arc to be effective storytellers,” our Global Planning Director Sandy Thompson will be pleased to confirm. “At Y&R we call this Brand TensityTM.”

Interesting

If the late Marilyn Monroe still has over 220,000 loyal Twitter followers, that’s an obvious sign her innocent, yet seductive demeanour is garnering interest to this day. Likewise it makes sense to ‘backlink’ The Doors’ debut album exceeding 17 million units sold worldwide in 2014, to the sensitive side bad boy rock legend Jim Morrison had to him that made him shy behind the microphone.

“Brands need depth of character.”
‘Sexy yet shy’ still seems to sell.

“Tensity is a perceptual paradox that combines elements that typically don’t fit together. These contradictory components create conflict and garner — or even deepen — interest,” Y&R’s President of BAV® Worldwide, Michael Sussman, recently repeated at SXSWi 2015.

And rightly so, of course. Brands need depth of character. Tensity is sine qua non when it comes to making a brand interesting. ‘Sexy yet shy’, moreover, still seems to sell.

Useful

When it comes to brand loyalty, however, ‘interesting’ just might no longer be good enough. There’s been EY, among others, signalling “a highly significant decrease in the number of consumers who say brand loyalty is something that impacts their buying behavior.” In the US, self-declared brand loyalists make up a meager quarter of the total consumer audience.

“Digital has fundamentally redefined the very meaning of brand loyalty,” a recent Razorfish report explains. And tensity alone, it seems, no longer does the trick. “Brands need to focus more on being useful than on being interesting,” that same survey goes on to conclude. “Consumers are more likely to stick with a brand that’s useful.” For every ten consumers worldwide, at least eight prefer useful brands to interesting ones.”

“8 out of 10 people prefer useful brands
to interesting ones”

“Useful can take several forms, whether making life easier or offering some sort of value exchange. (…) People are going out of their way to avoid advertising — more than half of consumers “would do anything they can to avoid seeing ads” — and, instead, are looking to brands to make their lives better, particularly via digital solutions.”

“78% of consumers believe that organizations providing useful content,” Kapost recently posted, “are interested in building good relationships with them.”

Meaningful

Havas’ latest Meaningful Brands® survey, for its part, endeavours to quantify the business return of that usefulness: “With every 10% improvement in meaningfulness performance, individual brand KPIs grow a.o. by 3.2% for repurchase intent and 4.8% for advocacy. (…) Meaningful brands can expect 46% more share of wallet.” Stats Havas traces back to “consumers expecting brands to be making tangible improvements to their personal well-being by making daily routines easier, helping them to stay healthy, connecting them to loved ones and being there for them when they need advice.”

“Digital has fundamentally redefined
the very meaning of brand loyalty”

“People want brands to improve their lives and the lives of the people they care about,” in brief. A message more brands apparently begin to understand, by the way. Digital studio 383 at least finds enough “brands who are doing useful things” to fill an entire Tumblr.