As part of the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Olivia Collins argues that brands can learn lessons from dating on how to attract – and build relationships – with their consumers.
Last year, I went on 74 dates. Not first dates, just to clarify, but dates in total.
This is not a flex. It’s evidence of my research.
Somewhere between dates 14 and 31, amid the seemingly endless small talk and occasional spark, I noticed that attraction followed a pattern. The people I was most drawn to were the ones who felt familiar. They had the same sense of humour, a worldview that mirrored my own, a presence that reminded me of someone I’d cared about before.
This observation aligns with the work of philosopher and neuroscientist Berit Brogaard, who argues that the concept of ‘love at first sight’ is actually a rapid form of pattern recognition, where the brain matches a person to an internal template shaped by past experiences (Brogaard, 2015). In other words, attraction is not random; it is a somewhat predictable phenomenon rooted in familiarity.
I believe brands work in the same way.
Just as in dating, before loyalty, trust and even consideration, there must be attraction. Therefore, a brand’s first job is creating attraction; the spark of recognition that people are drawn to. Yet in a media environment defined by fragmentation, short-term metrics and constant novelty, many brands have lost sight of this. They often optimise for attention, not attraction, where “the brand relationship is left playing catch up in the game of visibility” (Gulley, 2023).
Attention has become a buzz word in media, the gold standard of metrics, sold by tech vendors as an answer to all planners’ prayers (Manning, 2026). And while it is a vital step forward from vanity metrics brands often rely on, it lacks the human element of connection and deeper engagement required to create attraction.
Attracting consumers is the same for brands as it is for people. Attention is not enough. Although someone in a club might catch your eye fleetingly, attraction comes when they target you with a cheesy pick-up line, buy you a drink, and you discover that you have mutual friends. Similarly, while an ad might be viewed for 3 seconds (if you’re lucky), attraction only begins when it signals something familiar, makes you feel something, and gives you a reason to engage.
Attention is noticing. Attraction is wanting. While attention is a temporary cognitive state, attraction is an emotionally charged predisposition towards future selection.
It is common to get lost in metrics – impressions, frequency, views, viewability, clicks. Although overlaying attention is a necessary precondition for memory encoding, it is insufficient. It tells us that an ad was seen, not whether it created the emotional signals that drive attraction. This is particularly problematic given growing evidence of advertising effectiveness declining, with brands optimising for short-term objectives (clicks and attribution) at the expense of long-term brand building (Binet and Field, 2013). What is often overlooked is that attraction is not built through attention alone, but through recognition, familiarity, emotional desirability and signalling.
Every interaction signals something about intentions and values, creating a sense of their character. This is reinforced over time, where thoughts, feelings and associations form alongside the relationship, where consistency builds familiarity and trust.
This is the same with dating as it is with brands.
Since marketing theory can often feel overcomplicated, it is frequently ignored. Yet, the fundamentals of human attraction remain simple and provide a relatable language for marketers to speak, understand and apply.
In this essay, I argue that brands can learn lessons from dating on how to attract – and build relationships – with consumers. It’s from this perspective that I believe brands should act and communicate with consumers as if they are dating with the intention of marriage.
This could cause tension with traditional brand-building theories. Seminal work in marketing science might question this approach, particularly when it comes to ‘promiscuity’. However, the difference lies in how brands target consumers. There is a distinction between targeting loyalty and loyalty being a beneficial outcome. As the law of double jeopardy shows, big brands are bought by more people, more often and growth comes from breadth of appeal, not depth alone (Ehrenberg, Goodhardt and Barwise, 1990). At the same time, brand love increases the likelihood of being chosen first across multiple occasions and the willingness to pay a premium (Rahman, Langner and Temme, 2021).
This is not an argument for niche loyalty-building at the expense of penetration. Brands should still seek broad reach and mental availability. In dating, if the goal is marriage, it would be misguided to only pursue those already committed. Instead, the strongest relationships are built by casting the net as widely as possible and allowing depth of feeling to develop over time. Although brands can ‘date’ many people (I recommend this, since the ‘best match’ may not be your ‘type on paper’), this theory applies to how they communicate. Ultimately, attraction strengthens the quality and memorability of each encounter.
Drawing on psychological theories of attraction, behavioural economics, and established marketing science, I propose three relational mechanisms (‘love languages’) through which brands can create and sustain attraction: affinity, generosity, and constancy.
I have ordered these in line with the stages of relationship formation, so that loyalty becomes the natural by-product of a brand consistently speaking the right love languages.
1. Affinity
Before any relationship, there must be attraction.
But we are already in a competitive space. More brands, more people, more platforms.
The first love language, ‘affinity’, describes a brand’s ability to signal something familiar, meaningful or identity-affirming to consumers to create attraction.
Pattern Recognition and Familiarity
Psychologists have confirmed that familiarity affects attraction. Brogaard’s theory of love involving pattern recognition was reinforced by neuroscientist John Medina (2009), who argues that the brain is wired to recognise patterns and familiar stimuli because doing so serves an important evolutionary function.
This helps explain why repeated exposure plays a powerful role in shaping preference. Zajonc’s (1968) mere exposure effect demonstrates that the more we encounter something, the more we like it. In this way, familiarity breeds fondness, making recognition and repetition fundamental drivers of affinity.
Similarity and Identity
However, familiarity alone is not enough. We are not just drawn to what we recognise, but to what reflects us. Social psychology studies highlight similarity as a key predictor of attraction. Shared attitudes, values, and beliefs significantly increase liking and deepen relationships, as they validate our worldview and make interactions feel more natural (Festinger,1950); Montoya et al., 2008). This is amplified by Cialdini (2009), who found that we are more likely to value things that others value, using popularity as a shortcut for belonging.
Much like choosing a partner we feel proud to be associated with, consumers are drawn to brands that reflect and reinforce their identity. Brands act as signals of who we are, or who we aspire to be. As Stephen King (1976, p.7) argues, “People choose their brands as they choose their friends.” – or their partners, not through a rational assessment of singular attributes, but “because you like them as people”.
What does this mean for brands?
Brands that reflect shared values naturally appeal to people who identify with them, but that meaning must also be widely recognised. In this way, social standing in dating is akin to cultural standing in branding.
Since values only hold meaning if they are collectively understood, brands must not only stand for something, but do so publicly, allowing those with similar values to recognise them and feel drawn in.
Tony's Chocolonely, Patagonia and Dove are good examples of this, but shared values aren’t limited to social purpose-led brands. KFC’s playful insistence that audiences should “Believe in Chicken” creates a culturally recognisable identity that consumers can buy into through their shared devotion to ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ fried chicken.
The Power of Humour
Young men often ask me, 'Can you laugh a woman into bed?' The short answer, yes. The tough bit comes 20 minutes later, when you're trying to laugh her into a taxi home.
Indeed, evolutionary psychology researchers suggest that women tend to find men who make them laugh more attractive, interpreting wit as a signal of intelligence, honesty, and good genes (Bressler et al., 2006).
In the same way we associate humour with an attractive personality in people, the same happens in brand advertising. Wood (2021) demonstrated that campaigns audiences found funny were considered superior to those they didn’t and yet humour continues to be treated as an optional extra.
Emotional Appeal and Creativity
Humour is not the only emotion that helps develop brand relationships. Evidence from the IPA Effectiveness Databank shows that highly emotional campaigns are more likely to generate very large business effects, including in-market penetration gain, share gain and reductions in price sensitivity (Wood, 2019). Crucially, the emotions that connect people (empathy, nostalgia, warmth) are most effective at building memory structures.
This all points to the process of attraction being emotional before it is rational. As Heath (2012, p. 140) argues, emotions act as a gatekeeper to our decisions.
When we meet someone new, we know immediately whether or not we like them, but struggle to explain why. This is because emotions are pre-cognitive (Zajonc, 1980, cited in Heath, 2012) and shaped by all the experiences your mind subconsciously tracks.
These experiences act as markers that help predict future outcomes. As Damasio (1994, p. 174) asserts: “When a negative somatic marker is juxtaposed to a particular future outcome, the combination functions as an alarm bell”, or ‘red flag’ in dating terms. “When a positive marker is juxtaposed instead, it becomes a beacon of incentive” (a ‘green flag’).
The same thing happens when choosing brands. The thousands of interactions we have with brands register as emotional markers in our minds. Some are trivial, while others leave lasting impressions that shapes future behaviour.
These impressions are formed not just through what brands say, but how they say it. In the same way tone and body language communicate meaning in human relationships, brand cues are conveyed through every aspect of its behaviour and advertising.
This is where creativity becomes critical. Heath (2012) argues that emotion underpins relationships through ‘meta communication’, the signals beyond the message. Tone, music, visuals and distinctive brand assets act as the behavioural equivalent of attraction cues, communicating meaning in ways rational messages cannot. Heath et
al. (2006) proved that while rational messages have little impact on brand relationships, emotive creative builds them.
The Cadbury’s gorilla advert is a perfect example of this. Despite having no rational message, it generated a 20% increase in favourability and a 9% uplift in sales (YouGov, as cited in Health, 2012. p. 157).
British Airways and Andrex have also successfully harnessed the power of metacommunication to build brand associations over time. The music British Airways uses in its advertising and onboard experience evokes feelings of comfort and reassurance, while Andrex’s Labrador puppy has conditioned audiences to associate the brand with
softness, warmth and family-oriented values. Through repeated exposure, these cues become emotionally encoded in memory, creating familiarity and sustained attraction.
At a deeper level, these signals work because brands are built in the brain. As neuroscientist Dr Christina de Balanzo (2026) explains, “A brand is a web of connected neurons that fire, built on emotions and a set of expectations based on memories.”
The implication is that if every signal a brand sends contributes to how it is remembered, the more repetitive, or distinctive the signal, the more likely it is to stick.
Peacocking
When date number 7 arrived in a sharp suit with an Uber Exec waiting to take me to dinner at a Spanish restaurant (that he’d booked and paid for), he was signalling - his confidence, commitment and intentions.
Brands do this too, through ‘peacocking’, whereby investment in relatively expensive, public forms of communication acts as a signal of their financial and social strength. Much like a peacock’s tail — a flashy, difficult-to-fake signal of confidence — the medium is the message.
Biologists describe this as ‘costly signalling’: visibly expensive actions that signal value to potential mates. Beyond the financial commitment (and the confidence it demonstrates in the product), public communication carries more weight. Visibly displaying a message to large audiences makes it harder to retract, and therefore more trustworthy. Sutherland (2019) notes that this is why wedding vows are made in public, and why ‘as seen on TV’ is more persuasive than ‘as seen on Facebook’.
While signalling value can create attraction and build trust, a brand must also deliver disproportionate value to develop the relationship. In other words, they must put their money where their mouth is.
2. Generosity
The second pillar of my theory, generosity, is the language of emotional exchange. If affinity creates attraction, generosity deepens it. Rooted in principles such as reciprocity (Cialdini, 2009) and social exchange theory (Homans, 1958), it reflects the idea that relationships strengthen when one party gives more than is strictly necessary or expected.
When date number 68 offered me tickets to see Hans Zimmer on our second date and a horse show for 3 weeks ahead of this, he was not only demonstrating investment, but long-term commitment.
Brands have always been a value exchange; a mutually beneficial relationship in which a brand provides entertaining content, product value or tailored experiences in return for consumers’ attention, money or data.
However, as Douglas (as cited in Kendall, 2015, p.88) argues, “[brands] have to offer more than functional and one-dimensional emotional benefits” to compete with cheaper, unbranded rival products amid mass consumer choice. It’s about adding genuine value.
Cadbury’s IPA Grand Prix-winning ‘Glass and a Half in Everyone’ platform demonstrates how generosity can function as a long-term organising principle for growth. Rather than directly targeting loyalty, Cadbury built a broad emotional appeal through repeated demonstrations of warmth and generosity, thereby increasing penetration and adding £261m in annual revenue (IPA, 2022).
Discretionary effort signals surplus resources and confidence, making generosity persuasive precisely because it appears unnecessary. For brands, this could take the form of small but meaningful acts of generosity, such as Five Guys adding an extra scoop of chips, DoubleTree’s warm cookie on arrival, M&S Sparks offering unexpected rewards, and Octopus Energy’s ‘wheel of fortune’. These gestures exceed expectations to build goodwill and strengthen relationships – and loyalty - over time. What makes the latter examples even more effective is their deliberate use of surprise. As Edwards argues, “When people are surprised, it does some pretty amazing things to the brain” (cited in Kendall, 2015, p.35). Surprise sustains attention and deepens emotional connection, preventing relationships from becoming stagnant.
However, surprise must be balanced with familiarity. Too much novelty risks becoming a ‘one-night stand’ (memorable but fleeting), while too much familiarity reduces the brand to a utility.
Dates 18–24 and 41–49 were with a 25-year-old filmmaker and a nocturnal bartender, respectively. In both cases, while there was certainly attraction, laughter and a lot of memorable experiences, their worlds were too dissimilar to mine. These ‘situationships’ reinforced an important lesson, both for dating and for brands: too much novelty and not enough familiarity fail to produce a lasting relationship. As Feldwick (2021) argues, brands and advertising work best when they are familiar enough to be recognised and processed easily, yet novel enough to remain interesting and engaging. When the balance is off, attraction struggles to develop into something more enduring.
3. Constancy
The advertising industry has fallen for the short term. Like the guy looking for a one-night stand, brands are focusing too much on immediate returns.
They obsess over the newest technology that enables more precise targeting and attribution - and fundamentally, constant change. But even Meta, a platform relied on for its measurement capabilities admits their systems struggle to capture advertising impact beyond short-term attribution windows (Meta, 2022).
It is not only channels they are changing; it’s creative too. Agency models and short CMO tenures incentivise new work, encouraging marketers to chase the next idea (or worse, a ‘viral’ moment), rather than build on what already works.
Despite clear evidence of consistent brand campaigns working twice as hard, generating 28% more very large business effects, and reporting double the profit gain (System1 and IPA, 2024), marketers continue to reset, often in pursuit of attention or personal recognition rather than long-term growth. The consequence is predictable: brands that change creative agencies most frequently see their ad distinctiveness erode over time (System1 and IPA, 2024).
More fundamentally, this inconsistent approach contradicts how attraction is created. Humans are hard-wired to prefer familiarity over constant change. By repeatedly altering logos, messaging and creative platforms, brands disrupt the very memory structures they are trying to build.
Constancy does not limit creativity, it multiplies it. Through familiar signals that are constantly reinforced, brands become recognisable, trusted and easy to choose. Just as in dating, it is not the shared values, humour or unexpected gestures alone that build a lasting connection, but the confidence to show up again and again, in the same way.
Specsavers’ long-running ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’ platform demonstrates the commercial power of attraction through affinity, generosity and constancy. While individual executions vary, audiences always recognise the brand’s familiar personality. Over time, its humour has become a distinctive brand asset, reinforcing emotional memory structures with each iteration. The campaign also balances familiarity with novelty perfectly. The setup is recognisable enough to feel fluent, while each execution remains fresh enough to sustain attention and enjoyment. Alongside this, gestures such as home visits, free repairs and hearing care reinforce a sense of generosity and longterm commitment. In this way, Specsavers acts in accordance with my theory; deepening relationships through a constantly attractive personality.
A New Code of Behaviour for Brands
Given the importance of viewing brand-consumer relationships through the lens of dating, I propose a playbook to guide brand behaviour and measure the strength of consumer attraction over time.
The first thing a brand should do is ask themselves: am I communicating in a way that would attract consumers, were I dating them with the intention of marriage?
Conclusion: The Secrets to ‘Happily Ever After’
As with the original love languages devised by Gary Chapman (1992), these principles are not mutually exclusive. Affinity, generosity and constancy must work together to create and sustain attraction over time. After all, generosity and constancy are irrelevant in the absence of initial attraction.
While the love languages outlined here form the foundations of this theory, I believe the parallels drawn between dating and branding provide a practical playbook for brand behaviour that is both relatable and far-reaching.
Brands must consider how they would act and communicate with a potential partner, with every interaction, on every touchpoint. As each signal is stored in memory, they might not get another chance to make a positive impression.
If you, as a brand, consider how you would act in a dating scenario with the aim of marriage…
Would you bombard them with a barrage of messages? No. Would you rely completely on digital communication? No. Would you settle for seeing them for a few seconds and never again? No. Would you ghost them for months on end, allowing you to fall from front of mind? No.
Instead, would you make a profile on dating apps to make sure you’re visible to as many potential people as possible? Yes. Would you be available when and where they need you? Yes. Would you invest in yourself, so you always look and smell your best when you meet them? Yes. Would you value yourself enough to expect a high perceived value in return? Yes.
In line with this, brands must invest in broad-reach media that signals trust in their product and flight their campaigns to avoid falling from memory. They should look beyond channels only attributable in the short-term, and when using digital platforms, implement suitable brand safety measures and frequency caps.
At the same time, being desirable requires an element of scarcity; not being too available or too cheap. This is why limited editions work to increase interest and appeal.
It may have taken 74 dates, but I am pleased that I persevered because I am now in a relationship with an attractive, generous and constantly charming man. Brands should aim for the same: not fleeting attention, but enduring attraction built through affinity, generosity and constancy.
Olivia Collins is Account Director & Co-Head of Slingshot at John Ayling & Associates. This essay was submitted as part of the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands.
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.
Last updated 22 September 2026