• by Tanya Gazdik , March 11, 2016

Women connect with a broad and more mature staple of brands that involve more aspects of their daily lives than men, according to MBLM, the brand intimacy agency.

Apple is the most intimate brand for women, according to the agency’s Brand Intimacy 2015 Report. The top five brands for women also include Disney, Amazon, Whole Foods and Toyota. Comparatively, the top five brands for men are Harley-Davidson, Apple, Toyota, Nintendo and Lexus.

MBLM focuses on strategy, design, creative and technology. Brand intimacy describes an essential relationship between a person and brand that transcends usage, purchase and loyalty. According to the report, intimate brands create enhanced business performance.

Brand intimacy is very similar for both men and women, says Rina Plapler, MBLM partner. How people form bonds with brands transcends gender. But it is important to see the types of brands that women tend to connect with and how age and income influence brand choices, she says. This information can help marketers better promote their products and services and form deep brand attachments, she adds.

“Marketers should try harder to leverage emotional connections to build strong bonds with women (and with men),” Plapler tells Marketing Daily. “We suggest connecting to one or several of six archetypes which frequently appear in intimate brand relationships.”

Those are fulfillment, enhancement, identity, nostalgia, ritual and indulgence. Ritual is when a brand is ingrained into daily actions and is an important part of someone’s daily life, and plays a bigger role with women for brands in the financial services, technology, and automotive categories.

“In other words, using a brand repeatedly so that it becomes essential is a more significant indicator of intimacy for women than for men,” Plapler says. “This may tie into the idea that relevant, practical brands do better with women.  Surprising was that in a category like technology, which is seen as male-dominated, women form stronger bonds across the category. In our study, women ranked Apple with a Brand Intimacy Quotient score of 77, while with men, Apple averaged 71.”

Age also determines women’s brand preference and bonds. For Millennials -- women ages 18-34 -- retail is the dominant brand, while women 35-54 years old have connections with a more diverse list, with only one retail brand.

Income also plays a role; women making $34K-49K are most intimate with health and beauty brands, with the top five being Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Walmart, Revlon and Dove ; those with incomes of $50K-75K have a diverse list, including Apple Starbucks, Olay, Coca-Cola and Netflix; and for women making 75K-150K, it is Apple, Sephora, Amazon, Target and Clinique.