How To Kill Your Love Brand
There’s a specific kind of brand built entirely on belonging. Customers talk about it unprompted, wear its merch, and feel something when they see the logo that they can’t quite explain to a rational adult.
Bud Light had one. Southwest had one. Peloton had one.
Then they killed it.
Bud Light held the top spot for 21 years.
It won on identity, on ritual, on the feeling of cracking one open at a tailgate with people you like. That customer was predominantly male, sports-obsessed, and loyal to the point of ritual. The brand knew exactly who they were selling to and built an empire doing it.
Then the VP of marketing decided their core customer was a problem. She described the brand publicly as “fratty” and “out of touch” and said it needed a new image. The team’s solution was a commemorative can sent to a single influencer, with no strategic foundation, audience consideration, or plan for what happened next. Their CEO later called it “one can, one influencer, one post.” Within months, they’d lost the top spot to Modelo Especial for the first time since 1982, and North American revenue fell $1.4 billion.
When the backlash came, the brand had no idea whose side to be on because they’d never figured out what side they were on. The CEO’s apology was so carefully worded that it said nothing to anyone. They went quiet when their people needed to hear from them, and they’ve been paying for it ever since.
The partnership wasn’t the mistake; going into it without a strategy or plan was.
Southwest had 50 years of genuine goodwill.
No assigned seats, bags fly free, and flight attendants who seemed to genuinely enjoy their jobs. People went out of their way to fly Southwest. That’s a love brand.
Then came Christmas 2022. A winter storm hit, and Southwest canceled 16,900 flights, stranding over two million passengers during the busiest travel week of the year. Every other major carrier recovered within days. Southwest took two weeks. The culprit was an outdated crew scheduling system that employees had been warning leadership about for years. Pilots sat on hold with crew scheduling for five hours straight. Some fell asleep waiting and woke up still on hold.
The fine was $140 million. Total costs topped $750 million. But Southwest had survived crises before, and there was still goodwill left in the tank.
Then they spent it.
In January 2026, Southwest eliminated open seating and introduced baggage fees, ending two of the brand’s signature policies that had defined it for five decades. The backlash was immediate. Loyal customers who had tolerated the 2022 meltdown as a bad moment now started asking out loud whether Southwest was worth their loyalty at all. One industry analyst put it plainly: “This is how you destroy a brand. This is how you destroy customer loyalty.”
Southwest’s response was to promise they’d keep “refining” the experience, which is what you say when you’ve already made a decision you’re not taking back.
Peloton had the pandemic.
People cried in Peloton rides. They got tattoos. For a moment, it was something genuinely rare: a consumer product people had an emotional relationship with. Then the world reopened, and the stock fell more than 90%. Two CEOs. Five rounds of layoffs.
Worth noting: even at its lowest point, with 2,800 people walking out the door, Peloton protected its instructors. Leadership understood that the revenue follows the relationship.
What Peloton couldn’t survive was that its love brand had been built on a behavior that was never permanent. When people went back to their gyms, the intimacy they’d built wasn’t enough on its own to keep them paying for a bike collecting dust in the guest room.
Here's why this matters for your dispensary.
Cannabis operators are building love brands whether they’re thinking about it that way or not. Every customer who chooses you over the dispensary a mile away is making a values decision. That’s a gift and a responsibility most don’t take seriously until they’ve blown it.
Every story in this article follows the same arc: a brand stopped paying attention to what its customers valued and made decisions that served the business without considering what it would cost the relationship. Here’s what that looks like in your stores.
- Your budtenders are your Peloton instructors. Customers don’t always return for your menu; they come back for the person who remembered their name. Turning over your floor staff to cut costs means liquidating relationships you spent years building.
- Your promo calendar might be training customers not to value you. Regulars who wait for a sale before coming in are a Bud Light pricing problem without the goodwill to survive it.
- Silence is a brand decision. When something goes wrong, your customers notice before you say anything. Southwest went quiet. Bud Light issued a non-apology. You have an email list and an Instagram account.
- Changing what made you distinct is a slow bleed. Southwest killed open seating because it looked like the smarter business move. Those policies were the reason people chose Southwest in the first place.
Don’t Become a Case Study in Lost Loyalty
Your customers are already telling you what they value. The question is whether your brand is paying attention before the relationship starts to crack.
At Hybrid Marketing Co, we help cannabis operators build marketing strategies that do more than drive the next transaction. We help you protect the reasons people chose you in the first place, so your brand does not become another case study in loyalty lost.
Ready to build a brand people come back to for more than the deal?
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Aaron Rosenbluth
- Aaron is Hybrid Marketing Co's Content Director. He loves writing blogs. He's written so many blogs that he's lost count. Beyond his skills as a writer and storyteller, he's an obsessive reader and researcher. Aaron writes on subjects ranging from cannabis to collaboration, social equity to HR software, and interior design to cybersecurity. His words attract, engage, and convert. By the way, Aaron hates the phrase "content is king."
