We "love" you You should LOVE us!!

The concept of creating a relationship between a brand name and the consumer has been a technique of marketers for many years. In recent years, the concept of organizing events surrounded around the experiences and the status of affiliation with a select product has proven affective as a marketing technique. With Mcalexander and Schouten’s analysis of Camp Jeep we can see the theme of entertainment play a dominant role in the advertisment of their brand and product itself. Similar to the idea of the UEC that we have previously studied, the incorporation of a relationship based on an atypical experience (outside the daily routine) can provide an opportunity for loyalty and trust between the consumer and producer. It can also provided an added incentive to return, or in the case of a retail chain, the incentive to spend more time in and around the products. As stated by the authors, “Reicheld and Sasser report that reducing customer defections by 5 percent can boost profits by 85 percent.” Numbers of return such as these can not be overlooked and the successfulness of incorporating entertainment into the sales of a brand name can not be denied. Brandfests do not limit themselves to the specific location in which they are held. They subsequently “leak” into our lives through nearly all forms of media such as television, movies and magazines. These, more normative forms of marketing, have become the primary vehicles for building the elitist status that is associated with many brandfest events. The bragging rights and sense of personal growth that seems to come from the involvement of these events are subconsciously engraved in our minds by constant media attention and the ties that are made with Hollywood excitement.