Lovemarks: Kevin Roberts on making a brand loved, not just respected, applied to social media in Muscat

Ask people in Muscat which local café, shop or restaurant they would defend in an argument, and most will name one instantly. They will not mention price lists or features. They will talk about how the place makes them feel. That feeling is the subject of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands (2004) by Kevin Roberts, who led the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide when he wrote it.

Roberts argued that brands had become too similar and too focused on respect: quality, reliability, performance. Those things still matter, but customers now expect them. What creates lasting loyalty, he wrote, is love. A Lovemark is a brand people feel loyalty to beyond reason.

That is a big claim, but the framework behind it is practical, and it maps neatly onto social media content.

The love/respect grid

The best-known idea in the book is a simple chart with two axes: love on one, respect on the other.

• Low respect, low love: basic products and commodities, bought on price.
• High love, low respect: fads, exciting for a moment, then forgotten.
• High respect, low love: most brands, trusted but replaceable.
• High respect, high love: Lovemarks.

Try placing your own brand honestly on this grid. A Muscat clinic with excellent reviews but a cold, corporate Instagram is probably high respect, low love. A trendy dessert shop with viral Reels but inconsistent service may be the reverse. Your content plan should work on the weaker axis.

Respect comes mostly from the business itself: product, service, delivery. Content can show it (behind-the-scenes quality checks, certifications, real results), but it cannot fake it. Love is where content has the most room to help, and Roberts names three ingredients for it.

Ingredient 1: Mystery

Roberts uses mystery to mean everything that gives a brand depth: great stories, a sense of past, present and future, dreams, myths and icons, and inspiration. Brands that explain everything leave nothing to discover.

For content, mystery can look like:

• Origin stories. Why the founder started, the first shop, the first customer. Told in short episodes, not one long video.
• Past, present, future. An old photo next to today’s version, and a hint of what is coming next.
• Icons. A signature product, colour, sound or place that appears again and again until people associate it with you.
• Teasers. Show a detail before the reveal. Curiosity makes people come back.

Ingredient 2: Sensuality

Roberts gave great weight to the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. He argued that people remember experiences through the senses far more than through facts.

Social media is a sight-and-sound medium, but good content can suggest the others too:

• Sound: the crunch, the pour, the click of a door, real ambient sound instead of the same trending track.
• Touch: macro close-ups of fabric, wood grain, a smooth surface, a hand testing a texture.
• Smell and taste: slow shots of steam, fresh ingredients, a first bite; reactions that make viewers imagine the sensation.

A short Reel that makes someone almost smell a fresh perfume or a hot dish does more for love than a caption listing its notes or ingredients.

Ingredient 3: Intimacy

The third ingredient is closeness. Roberts describes intimacy through commitment, empathy and passion: showing customers you are in it for the long term, that you understand them, and that you genuinely care about what you do.

On social media in Oman, intimacy is often the easiest ingredient to start with:

• Faces and names. Introduce the team members customers actually meet.
• Replies as content. Answer real comments and DMs in short videos.
• Customer moments. With permission, share how real customers use your product.
• Visible care. Show the extra step: the handwritten note, the careful packing, the follow-up call.

A Lovemarks content check

Before you publish, ask four quick questions:

1. Respect: does this post show quality or reliability in a believable way?
2. Mystery: does it tell a story or leave something to discover?
3. Sensuality: would someone feel this with the sound off, or remember it with their eyes closed?
4. Intimacy: is there a real person, a real customer or a real response in it?

A post does not need all four. But a month of content should cover all of them, and Meta ads built on proven love-driven posts feel much less like ads.

Roberts’ core message for any brand in Muscat is that being good is no longer enough to be chosen. Be good, then give people reasons to care.

Summary and commentary by the NoOr team, based on Kevin Roberts’ book Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands (2004). Ideas are paraphrased, not quoted.