Brand Intimacy 

New brands emerge daily, platforms multiply by the minute, and consumers have become brand critics, curators, and co-creators. Brand Intimacy is the emotional science behind the bonds we form with the brands we use and love. It uncovers the best way for brands to outperform: powerful emotional relationships. Quantitative research guides our model, which identifies the components of intimate brand relationships and enables us to calculate a quotient score indicating performance for any brand.

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Emotion drives decisions

Built on neuroscience and behavioral paradigms established by Nobel-winning scientists, revealing that emotion is at the core of decisions

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Intimacy outperforms

Top-performing emotional brands outperform major indices and have customers who are more loyal and willing to pay a premium

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Relationships are measurable

We can quantify the strength and character of the emotional levers that help intimate brands create stronger bonds with consumers

The 2025 Brand Intimacy Study

Our 10th and largest study of brands decodes how emotional connections are made in an algorithm-driven world. Analyzing billions of social conversation datapoints, we quantify performance for 450+ brands across 22 industries. Identify fast risers and how they create emotional bonds. Compare relative performance across brands and industries with head-to-heads. Discover how the sociopolitical climate and our post-pandemic landscape have affected brand relationships.

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Decode social brand consensus

Captures how consumer relationships are influenced by the socially co-created brand consensus that happens on today’s online platforms

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Compare performance metrics

Tracks emotional traits behind consumer-brand relationships, with holistic measures that can be compared across brands and industries

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Discover brand insights

Identify which brands are succeeding, how they do it, and who’s falling behind as brands become emotionally-charged cultural artifacts

The pulse of how people really feel about brands

Explore the Study

Highlights from 10 years of unpacking emotional brand relationships

White text on a light gray background reads: "95% of decisions are emotional" with a citation about studies in psychology, neuroscience, and consumer behavior.
Text graphic stating: "95% of decisions are emotional." Additional text cites research in psychology, neuroscience, and consumer behavior by notable scholars.
A graphic with the text: "Multicountry research. Our 2012 cocreation qualitative study uncovered and identified how consumers talk about intimacy through a multicountry research panel.
White slide with large text "6,000 consumer voices" and a line icon of people. Smaller text explains a quantitative study involving 6,000 consumers.
White graphic with text: "15 large-scale quantitative studies. Since 2015, we have published 15 large-scale quantitative studies analyzing the world’s top performing brands.
A graphic stating "15 large-scale quantitative studies" with text explaining the publication of 15 studies on top-performing intimate brands and emotional connection since 2015.
White graphic with text stating "#1 Amazon bestseller" and describing "Brand Intimacy: A New Marketing Paradigm" as an award-winning, top-selling marketing book.
White graphic with text: “600+ media features. Brand Intimacy is regularly cited in prominent outlets, driving global conversation and understanding of the power of emotion.”.
White text on a light gray background reads: "Machine-learning powered. Our latest study taps into billions of social conversations filtered through AI and ML analysis to uncover emotions behind brands.
Text on a light gray background reads: "#1 Amazon bestseller. Our book, Brand Intimacy: A New Marketing Paradigm, is an award-winning #1 Amazon bestseller.
Gray graphic with text stating "600+ media features" and mentioning brand intimacy's influence in global brand performance discussions. Target icon is shown in the top right corner.
White text on a light grey background reads: “Machine-learning powered. Our latest study taps into billions of social conversations filtered through AI and ML analysis to uncover collective brand emotions.”.

Brand Intimacy is fundamental to how we create success for our clients

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