Lifestyle Brand Done Right: Examining the Success Stories of 7 Brands
Last update: 12 September 2023 at 02:53 pm
5.00/5Today’s consumers are shifting from buying standalone products to brands representing values. Creating a lifestyle brand is key to succeeding in this new era of branding.
Think about one of the biggest brands, Apple. Do consumers buy their products because they are the best? The answer is no. Consumers prefer brands whose message goes beyond their product offering.
In this article, discover the most successful lifestyle brands and learn how to create an emotional connection with your target market.
What is a lifestyle brand?
A lifestyle brand is a brand that is associated with a particular lifestyle or culture. It often goes beyond just selling a product or service and creates a whole lifestyle or community around its brand.
It is not just about the product or service it sells but also the values, beliefs, and behaviors associated with that lifestyle or culture. For example, a lifestyle brand may sell outdoor gear, but it’s not just about the gear itself.
The brand may also promote an active, adventurous lifestyle and create content and events encouraging its customers to participate in outdoor activities. By doing this, the brand creates a community around its products and establishes an emotional connection with its audience.
Image from Rock Content
Lifestyle branding can be a powerful way to differentiate a brand from its competitors and create a strong emotional bond with its audience.
Going beyond just selling a product or service and creating a lifestyle or community around the brand can attract customers who share the same values and beliefs as the brand and create a sense of belonging and identity. This can lead to increased brand loyalty, engagement, and revenue.
How do you create a lifestyle brand?
To create a lifestyle brand, you need to identify your target audience, develop a brand identity, and create a lifestyle around your brand. This can be achieved through consistent branding, targeted marketing, and content that resonates with your audience.
Identify your target audience
To create a lifestyle brand, you need to understand your audience and what values, beliefs, and behaviors they associate with your brand’s lifestyle or culture. Conducting market research and analyzing customer data can help you identify your target audience and their needs and preferences.
Develop a brand identity
Your brand identity is the visual and verbal representation of your brand. It includes elements like your logo, color scheme, typography, tone of voice, and messaging.
Developing a strong brand identity that reflects the lifestyle or culture that your brand represents is crucial for creating a recognizable and memorable brand.
Create a lifestyle around your brand
A lifestyle brand is about selling products or services and creating a lifestyle or community around your brand. This can be achieved through creating content, hosting events, and building a community on social media. The goal is to create a sense of belonging and identity among your audience beyond just the products or services you offer.
Consistent branding
Consistency is key when it comes to creating a lifestyle brand. You must ensure that your branding is consistent across all channels, including your website, social media, and marketing materials.
Image from empower Corporation
This helps to create a strong and recognizable brand identity.
Targeted marketing
To reach your target audience, you must develop a targeted marketing strategy that meets their needs and preferences. This may include influencer marketing, content marketing, and social media advertising.
Content that resonates with your audience
Creating content that resonates with your audience is essential for building a lifestyle brand. Your content should reflect the lifestyle or culture that your brand represents and provide value to your audience. This can include blog posts, videos, social media posts, and other types of content.
VISA Image from Adweek
A lifestyle brand can benefit a business by creating a strong emotional connection with its audience, increasing brand loyalty and engagement, and driving revenue by selling related products or services. It can also differentiate the brand from competitors and attract a broader audience.
Elements of a Lifestyle Brand
We have analyzed 7 of the best lifestyle brands in the market. In this issue, we can spot some similar elements among them. So, what makes them stand out from other brands are:
- Values and aspirations aligned with a target audience
- An emotional connection
- A strong claim on your brand essence
- Unique brand image
- Experience-focused
- Honest branding
Examples of Succesful Lifestyle Brands
Marketing strategies play a fundamental role in developing successful lifestyle brands. These strategies’ main focus is selling a desired lifestyle.
In this manner, lifestyle brands understand their customer and connect with them through their brand’s values and providing a distinctive way of life to which customers feel they belong.
Then, stop focusing your efforts on traditional advertising and pushy sales tactics that will only generate short-term revenue. Instead, prepare your marketing team for lifestyle branding.
Following, we present to you a list of 7 successful lifestyle brand examples:
Example 1 – Harley Davidson: a sense of Community
Harley Davidson is known for its distinctive and exclusive motorbikes. However, the decisive factor behind the purchasing decision of a Harley Davidson motorbike involves more than just the quality.
People who buy them do so because they want to become part of the group that Harley Davidson has created. The brand speaks to people who love riding with their mates and wearing their rock star leather jackets.
“Ride together into that wild world.”
Harley Davidson
Harley Davidson’s target audience is strong, independent, confident, and lives a life without rules by making its own choices freely. Belonging to this group means you represent these values.
Example 2 – Coca Cola: taste the feeling
An important factor in Coca-Cola’s success is its strong marketing. It is highly effective because Coca-Cola focuses on lifestyle brand marketing. In other words, provoking feelings instead of selling just the product.
Marketing efforts are centered in the idea of sharing a cheerful moment with loved ones. But Coca-Cola’s efforts do not end there. The company also incorporates human-centric marketing, where they first listen to customers and then create a product offering to solve their needs.
For example, a healthy lifestyle trend has been growing in the last recent years. As expected, soda habits were affected and considered unhealthy for consumers. Coca-Cola responded to the growing concern for a healthy life by introducing Coke Zero.
This move made the brand re-gained ground and made people keep sharing moments, and now in a healthier way.
Another memorable action from the brand was its personalized packaging campaign. Customers could buy a Coke with names on it. In this way, the campaign’s main message was to share a coke with someone written on the bottle or can.
Then, we can learn from Coca-Cola that promoting feelings and values rather than the product itself is an effective way to increase sales and make customers loyal to your brand.
Example 3 – Apple: think different
As no surprise, Apple is another great example of a lifestyle brand. It is considered one of the most valuable brands in the world. To analyze its success, let’s start with how Apple speaks to its customers.
Used as an example by Simon Sinek in his theory of “The Golden Circle”, Apple is one of those few companies that understand the “Why.” In other words, Apple has a clear vision of why they exist, its purpose, and its beliefs.
Challenging the status quo and thinking differently have always been at the core of Apple’s business. Like-minded people follow the brand’s ideals and will remain loyal because they feel identified and emotionally connected.
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Find an agencyExample 4 – Tesla: built for the future
Elon Musk is considered one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the 21st century. The reason? He creates and builds with a purpose in mind. We are not talking about money but a shared vision of a better future.
Being one of the pioneers of electrical mobility, trying to disrupt traditional vehicles and improve the overall quality of life is what people follow him for. Tesla’s cars begin a new era of safe technology and clean mobility.
In this same manner, Elon Musk has financed other projects to build a better future.
Example 5 – The North Face: making the outdoors part of your life
The North Face’s products are designed for enjoying outdoor activities. The superior quality and design are undoubtedly the brand’s best assets. However, the success of this company goes beyond its products only.
The brand’s mission is to connect people with the outdoors. They have managed to do so by building outdoor experiences while staying inside. In this way, the emotional link is built, and customers feel engaged with the brand’s mission and values.
A remarkable example is the launch of their McMurdo jacket. In South Korea, The North Face redecorated one of its stores to create a similar atmosphere to the South Pole. The launch campaign included virtual reality, where customers felt they were at the South Pole.
But, the campaign’s best part was the transition from virtual reality to real life. If you feel curious, here’s the video of the innovative branding campaign:
Example 6 – Red Bull: chasing adrenaline junkies
Red Bull’s slogan, “gives you wings,” is the core of every brand marketing action. Marketing efforts are as energetic as these energy drinks.
For instance, the brand sponsors many extreme sports. The message is clear here. Red Bull wants to let people know that drinking their energy drinks is similar to the adrenaline caused by these extreme sports.
Are you ready to live life to its fullest? Make sure to re-stock your fridge with some Red Bull energy drinks.
Example 7 – Nike: motivating athletes
Nike has become a lifestyle brand by fully understanding and supporting athletes. One of the most successful product lines is the collaboration with elite athlete Michael Jordan.
The fashion-forward design of these sneakers not only represents a status in the sports industry, but they have also become part of a lifestyle. With the popularity of the athleisure trend, consumers are starting to see sports brands as a way of life.
“It doesn’t just live in the court. We bring it to everything we do.”
Michael Jordan
In addition, it is no secret that Nike sponsors multiple sports teams and events. And not only in the major leagues but also in lower ranks. Nike helps an average person feel like an elite athlete simply by supporting them in becoming one.
The Key Takeaways
Feeling inspired already? In this section, we share our learnings from the lifestyle brands above:
Step 1 – Decide what kind of lifestyle you want to achieve
The first point is to define the lifestyle you want to represent. This step is the most important one as this decision will set your brand’s personality and values.
There are many types of lifestyles you can adopt. There is no right or wrong style. The best way to decide which one you want to achieve is to think about the long term. What is the goal of your brand? What do you aspire to be?
Having these questions in mind will guide you in making the best decision. Following up, here’s a list of the different types of a lifestyle brands:
Values
The goal is to connect people that share the same values as your brand. For example, freedom, sustainability, diversity, fun, etc.
Interests
Brands that appeal to people with similar interests in hobbies, music, etc. For example, surfers, motorcycling, tech-savvy, football fans, etc.
Ambitions
Customers can have different goals in life: career-driven, family-oriented, etc. Brands serve as a key to making them achieve these ambitions.
Life stages
We can group customers by stages in their life: university students, retirees, new parents, etc.
Generations
Not quite similar to the last generation’s group of people by the year they were born. The most famous generations are baby boomers, Gen X, millennials & Gen Z.
Economic situation
Customers are looking for affordable options or who enjoy the luxury lifestyle.
Style
Brands appeal to a particular style, such as simple, modern, classical, bold, etc.
Profession
Brands are based on a certain profession or industry. For example, marketing, real estate, finance, etc.
Culture
Targeting people with the same culture. For example, American culture, Asian culture, European culture, etc.
Living preferences
Brands can create a desired lifestyle based on living preferences. Some customers might prefer to live in cities, some others in the countryside. Similarly, some prefer beach life to mountain life.
Step 2 – Tell your brand’s story
Transmit a clear message of what is behind your brand. Corporate storytelling is a powerful tool to communicate with customers and appeals to their feelings.
Customers tend to become more loyal to brands that are transparent with what they do and why they do them. However, communicating your values and aspirations is just the beginning. You must consistently show that your brand is strong in those ideals.
When telling your brand’s story, highlight past events, current situations, and how the future looks.
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Step 3 – Be personal
Connect with customers at an individual level. In other words, try to make things as personalized as possible. You can achieve this by:
- Remembering your customers’ birthdays and sending them a message
- Reminding them of certain goals they have shared with you to achieve
- Be accessible to your customers
- Allow your customers to become part of the creation process
- Ask for their feedback to make improvements
- Encourage user-generated content
Step 4 – Create experiences
The best way to show a customer what is the lifestyle you are selling is to make them experience it. Let’s take a look back at some of the examples previously mentioned.
How Red Bull sponsors extreme sports to make fans experience the adrenaline is a clever way to link experienceand product.
Step 5 – Build your community
Lastly, you can build your brand community once you have successfully bonded with customers. The task is not done by just gathering people together. Yet, you must dedicate time and effort to maintaining the community together.
This can be done by creating forums, events, or groups where your brand and the lifestyle you represent are the main interest. People will feel happy spending time with others with the same interests.
Creating Your Lifestyle Brand Strategy
Overall, becoming a lifestyle brand has many benefits for your business. The most relevant one is to build loyalty and customer retention. Make sure to communicate the purpose of your brand and the values you live for.
If you need help in creating your branding tactics, we can put you in contact with the top branding agencies. Start building your army today.
