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As new generations shop smarter and big-name brands are undermined by cut-price imitators,  marketers must dig deeper to seek out the emotional truth that makes their brand truly unique.

Brand loyalty. It’s a great thing. You buy something and you like it so much that you keep on buying more of the same, time after time, even if it costs a little more than the alternatives. Everyone’s happy with that. You’re happy. The manufacturer’s happy. And, of course, the accountants are happy, what with the margins and the repeat income, and what with the way loyal customers recommend their chosen brands to their friends. This is despite the fact that loyalty is often built on shifting sands. In very many categories, especially those where innovation is the norm, the product your loyalty was originally based on will be completely different to the ones on sale today.

To take an example from the world of automotive. This year, in the USA, the long-running Chevrolet Suburban celebrated its 90th year of continuous production. Nearly a century on, it remains a best-selling and much-loved car, with one of the most loyal customer bases in the industry. More than 75% of buyers will go on to choose another one. Many of them love their Suburban to the extent that they even give it a name. That’s something they’d never do for their smartphone, for example. And yet, at the same time, a 12th generation 2025 Suburban is not the same car as the older models, and it has not one single component in common with the original 1930s version.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, iconic British motorcycle brand Norton are about to start production again, five years after going into administration. Or, if you’re sceptical about that, you might say that Indian automotive group TVS are building a factory in Solihull to manufacture four brand-new bikes which they’re going to badge as Nortons, having bought the branding rights from administrators as part of a £200 million deal. So why not simply brand them as TVS and save the money?

It’s all about tapping into deep-rooted brand loyalty. We form emotional attachments to the names and the symbols of our chosen brands, even as the physical products change.

Or at least we did. Because right now there are signs that all this is may be changing, with study after study  reporting worldwide declines in reported brand loyalty.

The steepest drop is being led by the younger generations, who will form the new cultural majority once all the brand-loyal oldies die off. According to recent US research, an astonishing 77% of Gen Z adults are willing to try new brands. This, says a report by Forbes, is much higher than all other age groups. “It tells us that not only are Gen Z adults no longer committed to a specific brand, but they will actively look for alternative brands in order to receive the level of service and quality that they are searching for.”

The reasons for this are many and varied. The cost-of-living crisis. The growing ease with which it is possible to compare features and prices online. The money-saving influencers on TikTok and Instagram. The rise of Chinese-manufactured ‘dupes’ of famous brands for a fraction of the price, from Amazon’s £20 copies of £64 lululemon yoga pants, all the way up to Jaecoo’s £30,000 lookalikes of £80,000 Range Rovers.

But there’s a twist in the tale of declining brand loyalty. Because when people become price-driven rationalists in much of their shopping behaviour, it seems that the emotions that used to surround brand loyalty and brand heritage don’t simply vanish away.

Instead, they get transferred to other things.

Looking at Gen Z in particular, their apparent hard-headed smart-shopping increasingly goes hand-in-hand with a growing interest in seeking out ‘authentic’ products from the ‘historic’ 1980s and 90s that, on the face of it, defies all logic. They have access to all the music in the world via streaming services, but they buy vinyl. They can buy clothes of any style instantly, online, but they seek out vintage clothing shops. And those things are just the tip of the iceberg. Today, manufacturers are reporting unexpected Gen-Z-led surges in sales of a whole range of other ‘obsolete’ products and categories many of us thought were long dead and buried.

In the first three months of this year, worldwide sales of compact cameras – those fat little silver boxes we used to use for holiday snaps before we had smartphones – grew by 115% year on year. Not only that, but the average price paid for those cameras grew by 135%. A year ago you, could hardly give the things away.

Meanwhile, London bars are reporting a surge in demand for retro 90s alcopop drinks like the Bacardi Breezer.

There’s even been a big rush on big, boxy cathode ray TVs, driven by Gen-Z nostalgia for the look and feel of classic console games.

So, despite the clear statistical decline in recorded brand loyalty, the desire for authenticity, and authentic products, remains as strong as ever. Perhaps even stronger.

Marketers talk a lot about how to navigate a ‘post-loyalty’ world. But it’s truer to say that the emotions that once drove brand loyalty never went away. Instead, they’ve just been directed elsewhere.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, will be how to speak to those emotions, and how to bring them back.

First published in WARC 14 November  2025