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CRAFTING THE BRAND POSITIONING | CHAPTER 10 291

Brand consultant Marc Gobé believes emotional brands share three specific traits:
(1) strong people-focused corporate culture, (2) a distinctive communication style and philos-
ophy, and (3) a compelling emotional hook. 34 Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts advocates
that brands strive to become lovemarks. Brands that are lovemarks, according to Roberts, com-
mand both respect and love and result from a brand’s ability to achieve mystery, sensuality,
and intimacy: 35
1. Mystery draws together stories, metaphors, dreams, and symbols. Mystery adds to the com-
plexity of relationships and experiences because people are naturally drawn to what they don’t
know.
2. Sensuality keeps the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste on constant alert for
new textures, intriguing scents and tastes, wonderful music, and other sensory stimuli.
3. Intimacy means empathy, commitment, and passion. The close connections that win intense
loyalty as well as the small perfect gesture.
By successfully differentiating themselves, emotional brands can also provide financial pay-
offs. As part of its IPO, the UK mobile phone operator O2 was rebranded from British
Telecom’s struggling BT Cellnet, based on a powerful emotional campaign about freedom and
enablement. When customer acquisition, loyalty, and average revenue soared, the business was
acquired by Spanish multinational Telefonica after only five years for more than three times its
IPO price. 36
In general, the firm should monitor three variables when analyzing potential threats posed
by competitors:

1. Share of market—The competitor’s share of the target market.
2. Share of mind—The percentage of customers who named the competitor in responding to the
statement,“Name the first company that comes to mind in this industry.”
3. Share of heart—The percentage of customers who named the competitor in responding to the
statement,“Name the company from which you would prefer to buy the product.”

There’s an interesting relationship among these three measures. Table 10.3 shows them as
recorded for three hypothetical competitors. Competitor A enjoys the highest market share but is
slipping. Its mind share and heart share are also slipping, probably because it’s not providing good
product availability and technical assistance. Competitor B is steadily gaining market share, probably
due to strategies that are increasing its mind share and heart share. Competitor C seems to be stuck
at a low level of market, mind, and heart share, probably because of its poor product and marketing
attributes. We could generalize as follows: Companies that make steady gains in mind share and heart
share will inevitably make gains in market share and profitability. Firms such as CarMax, Timberland,
Jordan’s Furniture,Wegmans, and Toyota are all reaping the benefits of providing emotional, experi-
ential, social, and financial value to satisfy customers and all their constituents. 37

Alternative Approaches to Positioning
The competitive brand positioning model we’ve reviewed in this chapter is a structured way to ap-
proach positioning based on in-depth consumer, company, and competitive analysis. Some mar-
keters have proposed other, less-structured approaches in recent years that offer provocative ideas
on how to position a brand. We highlight a few of those here.

TABLE 10.3 Market Share, Mind Share, and Heart Share
Market Share Mind Share Heart Share

2011 2012 2013 2011 2012 2013 2011 2012 2013
Competitor A 50% 47% 44% 60% 58% 54% 45% 42% 39%
Competitor B 30 34 37 30 31 35 44 47 53
Competitor C 20 19 19 10 11 11 11 11 8