I picked up an interesting book over the past weekend, Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts. Super book. Reminds me a lot of the Medium is the Massage by Mc Luhan, not only in concept by also in design. In Lovemarks, Roberts talks about products and services that go beyond the loyalty level of brands, or trademarks, and become lovemarks.
The book makes many sterling points, but one that sticks out in my mind this morning as I blog is this. On page 179 he says, “I’m looking for research that counts the beats of your heart rather than the fingers of your hand. Research that connects with the inner life of the consumer.” What this says to me is the qualitative research of the consumer soul is superior to the quantitative research of the mind.
This is the kind of information that’s available in social media: the unguarded soul, the truthful writing, the honest outpour of emotion, absent reason, that occurs when people blog about or discuss in social networks product and services.
There’s a wealth of heartbeats out there. We just have to count them.
