"People are all about likes and dislikes, needs and aspirations, dreams and hopes, passions and interests. When a brand identifies with these same factors, that person is more likely to treat that brand as one of the family."

 

"Passion branding" is just what it sounds like: marketing that seeks to link a consumer's passions with commercial brands. Its spirit is expressed by the likes of the laundry detergent ad that says, in effect: You can count on kids to get dirty. That's a normal part of life. You can count on this detergent to clean your kids' dirty clothes. That's a normal part of your life.

 

This personal kind of soap pitch emerged for the international suds giant Unilever in Brazil and spread worldwide, notes Michael Brockbank, the company's Vice President of Brand Communication, in Passion Branding: Harnessing the Power of Emotion to Build Strong Brands, by Neil Duffy, with Jo Hooper.

 

In the book, Brockbank explains that in general there a not many of “our brands which consumers feel passionate about. So, we look for areas of activity, relevant to our consumers, that they do feel passionate about and try to share their passion in a relevant way." Put simply, people will buy a product from a company that shares their interests and, as the opening quote suggests, adopt a brand as a family fixture, thus ensuring reliable repeat customers.

 

So far, so familiar. What's new, Duffy writes, is the growing use of sponsorship, a distinctly visible and tangible form of passion branding. As companies pay to sponsor sporting and other events, sponsorship currently accounts for an average 10% to 12% of marketing budgets, according to Duffy, who heads the South African office of the sizeable international sports marketer, Octagon. In Duffy’s view, this is only the beginning; he predicts current levels of sponsorship will more than double over the next decade.

 

One reason for sponsorship’s gain in popularity is its success in penetrating "switched-off and disenchanted consumers [who] are becoming resistant to certain forms of traditional communication and as a result are increasingly more difficult to reach …" claims Duffy. Amid this shift, marketing may not be having a crisis of conscience exactly, but it "is facing … a crisis of authenticity," with many marketing pitches sounding "vanilla," explains Ravi Naidoo, managing director, Interactive Africa. Naidoo and Brockbank are among 13 marketers whose observations are featured in "Leading Thought" boxes throughout the book.

 

Duffy believes passion branding can be one promising way to reach the skeptical consumer, gaining "share of person" with an "experience offering." The appeal is more about consumer values than a materialistic need for products and services.

 

Throughout the book, Duffy works to give the passion branding concept firmer grounding in business mores. He does this by outlining campaign elements and managing expectations about what passion branding can and should do for the company and the consumer. Components he identifies include:

 

• "Passion platforms" of marketing in five areas: sports and entertainment, cause-related, social responsibility, public/private sector partnerships and public domain (such as New Year's Eve);

• A series of strategic questions to help position passion branding within a company's marketing objectives;

• Tools to implement the campaign, such as advertising, media coverage, hospitality, direct marketing and more; and

• Types of specialist agencies for hiring related expertise.

 

Along with theoretical outlines, the book includes more than a dozen case studies of passion branding campaigns, most for corporations and a number of those Octagon clients. Among those featured are MasterCard's "Memorable Moments" promotion tied to Major League Baseball in 2002, featuring the slogan "Our past time – Priceless." Fans were encouraged to vote on significant moments in baseball and win a trip to the World Series. Also mentioned is Guinness' sponsorship of the 1999 Rugby World Cup, which featured elements selected with the theme "Only Guinness could do that.”

 

But passion branding is more than a party. Duffy emphasizes that feel-good, do-good marketing also has to be a bottom-line business decision, not based on "the whim of the Chairman."

 

"You should ask yourself over and over during the implementation phase this one simple question, 'What effect is this going to have on my brand and/or my business?'" The real bottom line with passion branding, Duffy says, is a sound pairing of company and cause. "The best passion branding campaigns are those that demonstrate the greatest relevance, or fit, between the passion platform's fans and those of the sponsoring brand."

 

Duffy also cautions that it can be a challenge to tangibly measure a campaign’s success. One reason is that passion branding campaigns target intangible benefits just as much as tangible ones. "Measurements of the benefits of passion branding will never be a science," Duffy concludes. And the "wad of press cuttings" or amount of news articles generated don't count.

 

What needs to be measured, Duffy stresses, is not output, but effect – that is, does the customer who experienced the passion branding campaign buy the product? He says detractors contend that passion branding's direct cause and effect is impossible to measure. But he disagrees, and points to a measurement tool that his office at Octagon, working with an outside media agency, developed to track elements such as consumer awareness, response, perceptions, loyalty and "propensity to purchase."

 

Finally, Duffy claims there's another intangible issue that's inseparable from passion branding's future: the marketing field has thus far failed to recognize that passion branding is a player. Senior-level marketers, he asserts, traditionally have ignored sponsorship, and he maintains this must change for passion branding to reach its potential. However, if the use of sponsorship does grow as he predicts, marketers at all levels can be expected to follow the money.