Love and money

Until this week we had gone along with the notion that you can’t buy friendship. This concept was challenged momentarily by this slice of horse-free spam which today made the compelling offer:

“Buy GUARANTEED Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers and YourTube (sic) Views at the cheapest prices and become more popular!”
Furthermore, these new friends will be “safely delivered” with “absolutely no risk” although it’s not clear whose risk being taken care off in this transaction of human kinship.

Perhaps it’s a special offer for Valentine’s. Or just another example of how some marketers have become fixated with the wrong indicators. Brands are not built on the number of Facebook likes or the volume of pithy and often cryptic one liners in the Twittersphere.

It’s boring but still self-evidently true that sustainable brands are built on trust and performance. Brands can earn loyalty but they can’t buy it. It’s that customer loyalty that will carry Tesco through its cases of mistaken ingredients and at least some of the banks through their cases of mistaken selling.

We won’t take up the offer of instant popularity and will stick to our belief that Spike Milligan had it about right when he observed: "money can't buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy."