The exceptions in the chain store category would be Starbucks, dunkin donuts, and to some extent Hard Rock Cafe.

In the SKU/ retail products, you have your soft drinks and your beers. But solid foods? Nope.

Okay… maybe SPAM, but only out of irony.

A good litmus test (at least for me) for what makes a brand a lifestyle brand (some might call them ‘love brands’) is whether or not people want to wear their logo or use their products as status indicators around other people. I have yet to see anyone feel the urge to flaunt a foodservice logo the way they would a Nike, VW, Harley Davidson, Clemson University, Disney or Livestrong logo.

Starbucks is different because it carries an extremely cool and sophisticated image. Dunkin Donuts is kind of ironic and geeky-cool, so it implies a too-cool-for-you-to-get-it subculture. Hard Rock is more about showing off that you’ve traveled to Dublin or Paris or Moscow than it is to show off the fact that you’ve had a burger at Bruce Willis’ chain of restaurants.

Coke, Mountain Dew, Budweiser, Corona and Guinness are a bit different, but they purposely seed shelves and clothing racks with t-shirts, hats, jackets and other accessories and do indicate a certain type of lifestyle one might feel like flaunting and sharing.

But that’s it. Nobody wants to show off that they eat at McDonald’s five times a week, I suppose. Or that they hang out at Sticky fingers after work. Or at restaurant ‘O’, for that matter. Or that they eat at The Slanted Door whenever they travel to San Francisco. Or that they shop at Whole Foods.

I don’t have an explanation as to why that is… Even Ice Cream and candy can’t cross the love-brand barrier, even though they clearly should. (Godiva Chocolate? Come on! Surely we’re missing something here.)

We all love food, and most of us are probably very attached to certain food products and brands… yet there is a difference between how we incorporate these brands into our little “this is who I am” outwardly drama, compared to the way we incorporate just about every other brand that we count on to help define us.

If there’s a question here that needs answering, I think it’s “why is that?” What makes foodservice brands different in that regard from brands in every other industry?

I don’t know.

PS: As i sit here thinking about this, hotels and airlines might also be left almost completely out of the lifestyle brand game. (Exceptions: Virgin Airlines and the Standard Hotel.)

I’m kind of stumped.

I completely agree that, despite all the talk about building relationships, most companies still market on a transactional level. Unless they have a clear purpose that elevates what they do beyond making money, and strong leadership to support it, it seems to be too easy to fall into the dynamic of doing whatever it takes to deliver against next quarter’s #s… unfortunately often at the expense of really connecting with me the consumer.

I’m curious why you called out food service brands though. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Sincerely,
The girl who will drive 10 miles off the highway to get a Chick-fil-a!

The questions all marketers should be asking themselves is “what does our brand carry for people? What is our brand a vessel for? What is being projected back and forth between us and our fans/users/customers?”

What most business execs still don’t understand is that “Value Proposition” only drives the purchasing decision. Desire for a product, affinity with a brand, sense of kinship with a community of users… those come from a different place altogether. Companies that take the time to inject the lifestyle gene into a brand’s DNA are still the exception rather than the rule.

Fantastic post, Justine. BoF are lucky to have you. Welcome to Greenville.