Tech & Brand Love: Driving Emotional Connections in 2025

Welcome to ThenWhat 3x5! This month, we're tackling brand love and how it can be used to capture the hearts of audiences.

Can AR Fuel Brand Love? Lessons From NRF and CES 2025

February is the month of love, and what relationship is more paramount than that between a brand and its fans? Maintaining that relationship can be difficult, especially in an ever-evolving retail landscape. At the National Retail Federation conference 2025 it was highlighted that almost half of shoppers (48%) used brand apps during the 2024 holiday season, underscoring the growing importance of digital tools in the marketplace. With this shift to the digital realm, brands must contemplate how to continue ensuring interactivity with products and brand agents through immersive technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), which retailers are already leveraging to transform customer experiences.

In January, the Consumer Electronics Show projected the importance of AR technologies in the coming years.

The Reality of Brand Love in 2025

In globally saturated markets, brands must connect with consumers and form brand love to drive sales and build customer loyalty.

Brand love is crucial to consumer relations, whether recognized as positive advocacy or direct engagement. Brand love is a joyous devotion to a brand that hits on an emotional level. This feeling manifests through purchases, direct brand engagement, and word-of-mouth actions. There is a crucial emotional aspect to the relationship between a brand and a consumer that is the key to building trust - another essential element of long-term success.?

It should also go without saying that brand love isn’t a one-size-fits-all. It can manifest differently for brands depending on the industry and format of their products.?

In certain circumstances, brand love can lead to stronger brands. Still, it's essential to consider that in today’s polarized socio-economic climate; brand love often falls secondary to price, availability, and value alignment. These other factors might be more important for consumers when making purchasing decisions. In other words, brand love isn’t an absolute tool for success, at least not on its own.?

Tech Tools: Can AR Build Brand Love?

NRF and CES 2025 highlighted the up-and-coming importance of tech tools like AR in creating memorable retail experiences.?

The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to devise innovative ways to engage with customers from the comfort of their homes. Now, in a post-pandemic world, brands are navigating a space where tech-driven and online experiences are in high demand; all the while, consumers crave the ability to sense and test - features associated with in-person shopping. Implementing digital technologies powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence) can significantly impact streamlining in-person shopping and transforming e-commerce to strengthen purchasing confidence.?

During the recent National Retail Federation conference, Jonathan Aitken, VP of Global On Product Technology at PVH Corporation, highlighted how AR can streamline retail experiences through virtual try-ons and product visualization, while Vijay Alagarasan, VP of Digital and Customer Facing Engineering at Tractor Supply Company, discussed AR’s potential to bridge online and offline retail through omnichannel experiences.?

Meanwhile, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Delta Air Lines hosted the first-ever keynote in the Las Vegas Sphere, where over 18,000 guests heard Jacob Abel, Head of Marketing Operations, Strategy, and Media at Delta Air Lines, highlight AR’s effectiveness in creating interactive and informative experiences.?

It’s clear that augmented reality is generally viewed as a tool for creating innovative brand activations, but beyond that, can it build brand love? The simple answer is no. AR cannot build brand love, but it can strengthen it. AR activations can trigger emotional responses and create memorable experiences but are rooted in the short term. Projects powered by augmented reality often can’t build long-term brand trust as they are ineffective in sustaining emotional bonds between a brand and its fans.?

Over a decade ago, ahead of the current AR trend, Sephora’s Milan store trialed augmented reality makeup mirrors that allowed customers to virtually try various eyeshadow shades in real-time without utilizing any physical product. The activation enhanced the shopping experience by enabling quick and hygienic try-ons. Sephora used AR in a way that made sense for their brand, aligning goals in efficiency and hygiene for an improved makeup try-on process.

Suppose your brand is considering implementing AR. In that case, it’s imperative to contemplate how to do so authentically to your strategy, if applicable—failing to do so risks having the activation come across as a gimmick. With that said, it’s worth noting that AR is not yet a mainstream tool, at least not one available to small businesses, as there are significant barriers to entry for such tailored activations.??

Analog Experiences Versus Tech: What Builds Brand Love?

Using characters that people can relate to, or perhaps even hate, drives them to have an emotional stake in a brand. Gen Z and Alpha are reshaping this storytelling aspect through engagement on social media with influencer talent. Think, for example, of the way TikTokers capture their audiences through entertaining videos. This type of brand love projected by younger generations appears more frequently and in the short term.?

Brands also exist beyond the business world– take entertainment, for example. Much like with TikTokers, audiences become fans of movie franchises, TV shows, and more. Fan favorite show Severance returned for season 2 in January after a shocking season 1 cliffhanger and a three-year-long wait. Beyond standard promotion practices, Apple was committed to immersing fans into the world of Severance.?

Crowds gathered around when a glass cubicle appeared in Grand Central station with Severance cast members “working” their corporate jobs inside. Additionally, a website called severanceballoon.com allowed fans to insert an image of their face onto a balloon, a callback to a moment from the show. As fans would tell you, this was all very deserving promotion. Why? Because the show's story is second to none– a trait that also makes its brand one of the most compelling.

Many fail to realize that to tell a compelling story, you must bring your audience into your world with you. That doesn’t mean it’s limited to telling a story on the screen. A good story can bring the world you created into the audience– just like what Severance did here.?