From Attraction to Commitment:
Creating Brand Loyalty That Endures
Building brand loyalty: Lessons from love
Valentine’s Day is a good reminder that the strongest relationships might have started with ‘stopping power’ but the real deal is built on understanding, trust and knowing how to keep things going.
The same is true for brands.
In healthcare, cracking concepts and incredible figures perform well, but long-term success comes from deep, sustained connection with customers over time across messages and channels, and from knowing the moments and media that matter.¹ At buzzback, our approach to concept evaluation and claims & message testing is designed to help brands move from good first impressions to building meaningful relationships with their audiences.
Concept Evaluation: Choosing the right partner
Before you can build loyalty, you need the right foundation. Concept evaluation is about more than picking a ‘winner’, it’s about choosing an idea with the emotional strength and clarity to endure.
The challenge:
It’s relatively easy to identify which concept performs best at a point in time. What’s harder is understanding whether it has the emotional intent, clarity and flexibility to survive execution, adaptation and rollout across channels.
Our approach:
We go beyond ‘which concept wins?’ to ask: Is this the right partner for the long term?
-
♥ Select
- We start with rational evaluation, using customised metrics and attributes to understand core performance fundamentals and comparative strength.
- ♥ Interpret
Respondents choose visual metaphors that best capture how the concept makes them feel and explain what it represents to them.
- ♥ Strengthen
Heat maps show exactly what works and what doesn’t, while qualitative insight explains why, guiding both strategic and creative refinement.
- ♥ Validate
We benchmark performance against current work, competitors and relevant normative databases.
The impact:
This ensures the creative idea and emotional intent carry through every execution. It guides refinement of visuals, headlines, taglines and body copy by uncovering what resonates and what doesn’t. Most importantly, it provides confidence that chosen concepts are distinctive, credible and market-ready.
In other words: not just a spark, but real staying power.
Concept screening: When you need to know fast
The challenge:
Sometimes you need answers quickly: which concepts should move forward and which should be left behind?
Our approach:
Our concept screening offering is designed for speed and clarity, without sacrificing insight. And yes, we use ‘Swipe’, deliberately (and only slightly terrifyingly) similar to a dating app.
- ♥ Fast and efficient: Lead times of 3-4 weeks.
- ♥ Accessible: Base pricing designed to work within tighter budgets.
- ♥ Robust metrics: Stopping power; likelihood to prescribe (HCPs) or request treatment (US patients); and identification of the most motivating concept.
- ♥ Diagnostic depth: Evaluation of ease of understanding, relevance, believability, uniqueness and perceived novelty.
- ♥ Qualitative richness: Unaided feedback reveals what respondents liked, disliked and how each concept resonated emotionally and cognitively.
- ♥ Strategic guidance: Our experienced researchers translate results into actionable next steps.
The impact:
Clear direction, quickly, with the confidence to invest in the right ideas and refine them with purpose.
Think of it as choosing who’s worth a first date.
Claims & message testing: From attraction to chemistry
Once the right concept is chosen, success now depends on how that idea is reflected in the right claims & messages.
The challenge:
Identifying which messages work best is just the starting point. We need to understand why they work and how messages should be combined and sequenced to maximise engagement and impact over time.
Our approach:
We treat claims and messaging like early relationship signals: what attracts attention, what creates emotional resonance and what keeps the conversation building.²,³ Using our blended research approach™, which combines qual richness with quant rigour, we uncover context, nuance and the ‘why’ behind the data to support clear, confident decision-making.
- ♥ Motivate: We assess individual messages using key performance metrics and max-diff exercises to tease apart what truly motivates behaviour.
- ♥ Connect: Visualisation and projective exercises reveal how messages make respondents feel and why those emotions matter.
- ♥ Optimise: We dissect each message to uncover both strategic and tactical refinements, from framing to language to emphasis.
- ♥ Amplify: Respondents build their own message stories, recommending flow and cadence. Our message simulator explores the reach and impact of different message bundles.
The impact:
This approach delivers more compelling and memorable sales narratives, grounded in both rational and emotional drivers. It enables structurally optimised sales aids, identifies which messages drive the strongest motivation and defines the optimal cadence and sequencing to maximise engagement across campaigns and sales calls.
In relationship terms: it’s not just about saying the right thing, it’s about knowing when and how to say it.
Read our thought leadership piece applying our approach to Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) messaging https://buzzback.com/topic/healthcare-messaging-cgm/
Why This Builds Better Brand Relationships
By using our blended approach™, integrating substantial qual, we focus not just on performance but on meaning. This helps you:
- ♥ Understand what motivates and connects with audiences
- ♥ Refine ideas with intention
- ♥ Develop concepts that work across channels and formats over time
- ♥ Create consistency and trust over time
That’s why many of our client relationships span years, not projects. This Valentine’s Day, that’s worth celebrating.
Karen Douglas
Commerical Director,
Healthcare Europe
If you're interested in building a longer-term relationship with your customer, we'd love to hear from you!
Healthcare Europe:
Karen Douglas, Commercial Director
kdouglas@buzzback.com
Healthcare US:
Jonathan Weiser,
Healthcare Practice Lead
jweiser@buzzback.com
Sources:
- 1. Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow. Oxford University Press.
- 2. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- 3. Heath, R. (2012). Seducing the Subconscious. Wiley.
We'd Love to Partner with You
Get in Touch
Europe: Karen Douglas, Commercial Director, Healthcare Europe (kdouglas@buzzback.com)
US: Jonathan Weiser, Healthcare Practice Lead, (jweiser@buzzback.com)
