Holmes Report: ICCO Summit

ICCO Summit: “A New Brand Loyalty For The Purpose Age”

WE founder Melissa Waggener Zorkin said communications had a key role to play in the changing relationship between brands and consumers.

Maja Pawinska Sims, Holmes Report, October 14 2019

LISBON — To thrive in the “consumer revolution”, brands need to accept that loyalty is now driven by more than products or customer service, according to WE Communications global CEO and founder Melissa Waggener Zorkin.

Opening the ICCO Global Summit in Lisbon last week, Waggener Zorkin said consumer expectations about how brands behave in the world and express their purpose were steadily rising, and this was resulting in a “perfect storm” for brands and “the most seismic time ever for communicators.”

“Consumers now have so much power, one day they can be asking brands for anything and everything, and the next day they might not deal with the brand at all. It’s a continuous curve of demand that will only increase: consumers are not just demanding a product or a great service, they are demanding you meet them in their values. It’s a relationship that is very different from even five years ago.”

Waggener Zorkin said the “stakes were higher than ever” in terms of how businesses approached that relationship: “There is a new brand loyalty emerging, built not on what companies say but the actions they take every day. Consumers are demanding that brands are not just human around the edges, but human to the core.”