What makes some brands stand out from the pack year after year? In a vast marketplace glutted with countless "pretty good brands," how are some products able to command unquestionable customer loyalty and lasting enthusiasm? Veteran business strategist Kate Newlin defines the key ingredients that go into passion brands--brands that we recommend to friends wholeheartedly, with a joyous, even evangelical zeal. Passion brands inspire an emotional attachment. Unlike consumer fads, we become personally invested in them, sometimes even more so than we do with our friends and loved ones. Newlin identifies the social factors that have made passion brands the driving force in consumer marketing today. Based on proprietary research, which makes use of in-depth interviews with company executives as well as state-of-the-art analytics, she answers the following key questions: - Are there common characteristics that enable passion brands to become carriers of personal meaning? - What is the financial impact on a company that produces a passion brand? - Do passion brands create a halo over the stock prices? She notes that in a world of almost unlimited consumer choices, the old rules of marketing just don't work anymore (product, package, position, price, and promotion). Now marketers must react to consumers in real time, encouraging "brand democracy" in which users can help decide a product's characteristics, from size and color to how it should be marketed. Passion Brands is must reading for entrepreneurs and denizens of corporate cubicles and boardrooms alike.