How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Plot the Graph.

In a business world relentlessly driven by numbers, the word "love" doesn't roll easily off the corporate tongue. It's too squishy a concept, too touchy-feely compared with nice, measurable things like market share, unit sales, or gross margins. "I've been in some boardrooms where there was a definite, audible gulp when I put the words 'love' and 'business' together," says Kevin Roberts, author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands (powerHouse Books, May 2004). As CEO of the giant global ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Roberts has been on a five-year crusade to convince clients and colleagues that in a viciously competitive marketplace, love is not a flaky concept -- it's a realistic profit driver for the 21st century.

Lately, even rabid rationalists seem to be getting the message. McDonald's ads blare, "I'm lovin' it!" Jenn-Air urges shoppers to buy its ranges "for the love of cooking." And Honda's "It Must Be Love" campaign invites car owners to send in photos showing how they resemble their vehicles. Why all the public displays of affection? Money may not be able to buy love -- but love, it turns out, brings money. Research suggests that brands that engage people emotionally can command prices as much as 20% to 200% higher than competitors', and sell in far higher volumes.

And now, in a breakthrough for market researchers and love bunnies alike, Roberts and a British company, QIQ International Limited, have developed a tool to quantify the emotional power of a brand. QIQ's research technique measures the twin drivers of what Roberts dubs a "lovemark": respect (performance, trust, and reputation) and love (mystery, sensuality, and intimacy). Marketers have long measured performance and trust, but mystery, sensuality, and intimacy are brand attributes few have thought to worry about, let alone quantify. Roberts insists they're vital for generating affection, whether you're selling cars or laundry detergent. "We've put dozens of Fortune 100 brands through the Lovemarker," says Roberts. "We've tested Nike and Adidas, Oxford and Cambridge, Bill and Hillary." The former president, he says, scored very, very high on love, and significantly less so on respect.

QIQ gets at the mystery dimension by asking people about the myths and images surrounding a brand. Nike fans cited the swoosh as a modern icon; Guinness is a near religious movement. In the sensuality category, New Yorker readers cited jazz as the sound most identified with the brand, and "rich" as what the magazine might smell like. On the intimacy scale, Cheerios lovers recalled eating the cereal as children and the warm memories it inspired.

The Lovemarks Web site, where people nominate their own favorite brands, is a window into just how emotional consumers can get about some brands. Anne, from New Zealand, effuses about Lego: "Lego puts parents and kids where they belong. On the floor. Together, hunched over an embattled castle, heads almost touching. Intimate? You bet." Laura, from the United States, writes about her favorite search engine: "To Google is to love. It's the only search engine that is a verb. I am a Googler. I have been Googled. I will Google."

Wouldn't it be nice to stoke that kind of passion? James Stengel, global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, knew that selling a product's benefits was just not enough. In the late 1990s, one of P&G's most famous brands, Tide, was at risk of becoming a boring commodity. Instead of focusing on cleaning power, P&G strengthened the emotional imagery that had once driven the brand's popularity -- mothers caring for their families -- but with a message that also showed empathy for women's busy lifestyles. The blend of information and intimacy goosed sales in some markets as much as 25%. "Decisions made about our brands are based on rationale and emotion," Stengel says.

But how do you measure emotion, especially in a computer survey? To start, the lovemarks survey shows pictures of various relationships -- a grandparent and child, an embracing couple -- as a way of delineating the nature of a relationship with a brand. In another exercise, subjects are asked to fill in speech bubbles, describing what, for example, Tide would say to you, and what you'd say back.

All these results are then mapped on a love-respect axis. In the lower-left quadrant -- low love, low respect -- are commodities such as sand, salt, and brussels sprouts. Roberts says many telcos risk falling into that unlovable hole. On the flip side of the chart -- high love, low respect -- are fads, fashions, and infatuations: things we love for the moment but soon abandon. Think Beanie Babies and reality TV. Most solid, respectable brands live in the upper-left quadrant, home of high respect and low love: Maxwell House, Dell, Colgate, Holiday Inn. Roberts says even he was surprised at how many products consumers consign to this less-than-desirable class. "Lovemarks might, on first blush, sound sweet," he says, "but the approach is actually ruthless -- Darwinian, even."