Marketing Perspectives

Marketing has evolved from transactional to creating a relationship with consumers. Brands are now using engagement; loyalty and trust to create a relationship with consumers. Brands try to align with the consumers core values with community-building, personalization, and storytelling to form an emotional bond with consumers. Brands also create trust and creditability by practicing ethical and transparent behaviors. To further strengthen the bond with consumers, brands offer loyalty or rewards programs, personalized content and proactive customer support. Their targeted messages make interactions go smoothly, enhancing the consumer experience. The engaged audiences promote a sense of community, powering organic growth. If the brand focuses on making an authentic connection, the brand-consumer relationship will flourish, increasing their customer retention. Influencers and brands often collaborate to achieve their marketing objectives. create a social relationship between a brand and a consumer.
There are also downfalls in relationship marketing. A poorly executed ad may result in misleading advertising. Over personalized ads can come off as intrusive. Too much branded content can overwhelm consumers; this often pushes consumers away instead of drawing them in. If the brand uses an influencer and they have a fall from grace, this could lead the consumer to drop the brand as well. A prime example of this is Logan Paul, an influencer that had 15 million subscribers on YouTube in 2017 (Kubbernus, (2024). He posted a video of himself with a suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest, in the video Paul was shouting “Yo, are you alive” at the deceased (Kubbernus, (2024). This was met with public outrage, the video was pulled, and Paul lost all credibility as an influencer (Kubbernus, (2024). This could have had a very negative impact for any brand that was using Paul as an influencer. I myself do not follow any influencers.

References
Kubbernus, C. (2024, January 18). 28 Epic influencer marketing fails of all time | Kubbco. Kubbco. https://www.kubbco.com/blog/epic-influencer-marketing-fails-of-all-time