Relationships & Brand Interactions – Are They Different?

I have to agree with the Harvard Business Review article “To Keep Your Customers, Keep it Simple” that consumers don’t want relationships with brands. I personally don’t think we were created to have relationships with our laundry detergent, phone carrier, and/ or favorite clothing company. We are meant to have meaningful relationships with people not things. We are meant to be in relationships with those around us, to love and be loved.  Brands can’t give us love, although some may claim, and have claimed they can.  That said, I do believe relationships share some strong similarities with the way consumers interact with brands. Below are my top 3 similarities. 

1) They always occupy our time and space. Whatever time and place, relationships are always occupying our time. We all have families, co-workers, organization members, and class-mates that we do life with everyday. Brands are the same way. We are constantly spending time with brands. From the time we get up to the time we go to sleep. Whether it be brushing our teeth with either Colgate or Crest or lying down on Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein sheets, we are constantly surrounded by them.
2) The simpler the better. I tend to have the best relationships with people who are easy-going, fun, trust-worthy, consistent, and simple. I am normally attracted to people who have these qualities. In the other hand, my hardest relationships are with people who are complicated, hard to understand, and difficult to get along with. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the complicated people in my life, I just don’t have the closest relationships with them. Similarly, I tend to be attracted to those brands that make it easy for me to interact with them. I also tend to interact more with brands that have clear messaging, great customer support, and offer a consistent product value.
3) We build relationships, one interaction at a time. We often meet people for the first time through a close friend, or through a class project, or at a new job. We then start talking to them and start interacting with them more and more.  As the interactions increase, the relationship starts to build, getting stronger and stronger. The same is true with how we build our loyalty with a brand. For example, I first purchased the Apple iPhone, and I really liked the product, and the experience with the brand, so when it came to buying a tablet I chose to buy the Apple Ipad. The more positive interactions I have with a brand, the more I am likely to buy the brand again.