People say they love your brand. But do they really want it?
We tell ourselves a comforting story in marketing: if we make people love our brand, everything else will follow. They’ll choose us, pay more, stay loyal, and tell their friends.
It sounds right. It feels right. It also happens to be wrong. Very wrong!
Neuroscience shows that wanting and liking are distinct brain mechanisms. Wanting is driven by anticipatory reward and pursuit. Liking, on the other hand, reflects sensory pleasure and satisfaction. Crucially, one does not always lead to the other.
You can want something you don’t particularly enjoy, and you can enjoy something you never think to seek out. Once you see that distinction, brand “love” looks less like the spark and more like the smoke.
Consider everyday life. People smoke cigarettes for habit and relief, not pleasure. We want to be fit but don’t enjoy the sweat or the 6 a.m. alarm. We want a bigger tax refund, but don’t enjoy digging through receipts. Kids want to stay healthy but grimace at broccoli. Desire is about value and outcome, not just enjoyment.
The reverse is equally true. You might enjoy flipping through a magazine in a dentist's waiting room, yet never buy it. You happily eat ice cream in the summer, but feel no pull toward it in January. Enjoyment does not automatically produce pursuit. That gap between liking and wanting is where many brands quietly fail.
Habits are formed. Brand love comes after. (Photo Credit: Laura Chouette)
Liking without wanting is a polite rejection dressed as praise.
Years ago, we worked on a better-for-you snack brand. The internal team, me included, adored the product. Research participants took a bite and enthusiastically said, “I really like this.” That felt like validation... until nothing moved in the market!
People liked it. They just didn’t reach for it. And liking without wanting, I realized, is a polite rejection disguised as praise.
So we changed the client's brief. Instead of asking, “How do we make people love this brand?” we asked, “How do we make people reach for it?” That subtle shift unlocked a practical one.
We stopped obsessing about emotional language and started engineering behavior. We redesigned packaging to be harder to ignore. We placed the product in the right moments. We gave it small rituals and distinctive memory cues.
Sales followed. Eventually, habits formed.
Then, only then, emotional language started to appear in consumer feedback. We didn’t manufacture love. We earned usage, and love showed up afterward.
Amazon didn’t become a love brand overnight. Its unmatched selection, prices, and excellent customer service built a habit first. And love followed naturally. (Photo Credit: Abid Shah)
The inconvenient truth many marketers resist.
This pattern shows up everywhere. No one loves their morning coffee shop on the first visit; affection builds after countless mornings. Runners don’t pledge loyalty after one jog; it happens after they’ve logged miles together. Users don’t call a messaging app “part of life” after one chat; it happens after thousands of interactions. Brands are not loved into relevance. They are used in relevance.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth: the ‘emotional-first’ narrative often sends brands chasing the wrong prize. The right question isn’t, “How do we make people feel more love?” It’s, “How do we make choosing us feel natural, inevitable, and almost automatic?” When you design for habit, convenience, ritual, and mental availability, emotional attachment becomes a consequence, not a goal.
So the next time someone says, “We need to be a lovebrand,” pause. Ask whether love is the engine or the outcome.
Instead, focus first on the mechanics of reach and repeat. Here are a few questions worth sitting with:
What predictable moment in someone’s day should we own?
What cue reliably nudges our brand to the front of the brain?
What friction prevents someone from choosing us twice?
Because if you build the conditions for use, affection will accumulate quietly and reliably, not unlike trust. Skip those foundations, and you’ll end up with poetic campaigns and forgettable brands.
Love is not how brands begin. It’s what remains after they’ve earned their place in someone’s life.
Written by Günter Soydanbay
(in collaboration with Ozan Karakoc Design Studio)
