Can't Buy Me Like

“CAN’T BUY ME LIKE” is focused on building authentic consumer connections and catalogues the shift to relationship marketing and what they term ‘The Relationship Era’ from ‘The Consumer Era’.

The book stresses the importance of transparency and honesty in building brand relationships with consumers, and refreshingly recognizes that consumers are human beings too. In Garfield and Levy’s view, brands will achieve their objectives of building long term brand advocates by behaving as human beings and using the qualities that human beings in real life use when building lasting friendships.

Purposeful marketing is also at the core of this book, in what they term the three Cs Credibility, Care and Congruence, the Why / How and What of the purpose proposition. Purpose, they argue represents the brand’s inner self and ‘Brand Stand’ is the outward projection, of the intrinsic attributes of a brand with its emotional appeal and the values it shares with stakeholders.

In short this is a readable, witty and provocative guide to the new era of relationship marketing, peppered with many examples and quotes from successful and established companies. The authors are American and the examples given are primarily American but this recognizes that America is where the technology was harnessed to apply to brand building and where examples of how trust can be destroyed are most dramatic.

The examples of Bank of America, and its decision to levy a monthly fee for use of debit cards and the reaction on social media from its customers; the exposure of Apple’s manufacturing partners in China and the previous example of NIKE in 1997, all demonstrate the speed of social media in transmitting the message and the damage it can do to reputations.

The relationship era is not confined to e relationships : it applies to all conversations and conversation is what counts. The use of a Venn diagram to show that relationship era principles apply to all connections between brands and human beings, uses a fictional company Neetfreek to make the point. This is done in an amusing way (the Neetfreek product is a kitchen sponge made of recycled plastic bags) but the illustration is clear.

Seven steps are catalogued to demonstrate how to build a relationship and lead the conversation with examples from President Obama to Isaiah Mustafa of Old Spice fame. The writers claim that in the consumer era we focused on demographics, psychographics and media use.

In the relationship era you first determine your essence, your values and purpose to overlap with many sets of consumers. In the consumer era the writers conclude, the result is advertising in the traditional sense, and in the relationship era, it is conversation. And to make the conversation meaningful and productive, never forget that you are talking to human beings…

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