Based on Neuroscience, Psychology and Today’s Market Dynamics, MBLM Announces a New Marketing Paradigm: Brand Intimacy

Brand agency MBLM announces the release of the “MBLM Brand Intimacy Study,” based on global research with consumers and marketing executives as well as an extensive review of the psychology of intimacy and neuroscientific breakthroughs in understanding decision-making. Partnering with BrainJuicer on the research component, MBLM engaged consumers from three continents, who contributed more than 20,000 stories that have informed a new marketing paradigm.

The “MBLM Brand Intimacy Study” explores the ways attitudes and behaviors have been fundamentally changed due to marketplace and particularly technological advancements. This has given way to a more advanced marketing paradigm—when a person and a brand achieve a fused identity, creating fulfillment, driving performance and lasting value.

According to Mario Natarelli, managing partner of MBLM in New York and a firm believer in brand intimacy, “Most current marketing approaches do not reflect today’s reality and the opportunities available to create powerful connections that endure. Factoring for brand intimacy allows companies to maximize the impact of their brands. Though striving for brand intimacy may require more integration across disciplines, enhanced technological activation and longer commitment, it produces far stronger results and returns.”

Key study findings include:

• Brand Intimacy Mirrors Human Intimacy: Brand intimate relationships appear to closely parallel human relationships.
• Brand Intimacy Happens in Stages: As with human relationships, brand intimacy occurs in distinct phases of sharing, bonding and fusing.
• The Opposite of Brand Intimacy Is Indifference: At every stage of advancing toward brand intimacy, a person can regress into indifference.
• Brand Intimacy Is Rare: Less than 25 percent of consumers screened could associate being truly intimate with any brands.
• Brand Intimacy Is Extremely Important, But Hard to Create: 87 percent of senior marketing executives feel that customer intimacy is important or extremely important, but only 18 percent feel they are doing a good job at creating it.

To learn more about brand intimacy, explore or download the study, go to mblm.com/lab/brandintimacy-study/.