Companies that fuel customer engagement, develop ambassadors, and recognize the value of emotional connections have created a new brand category, identified as Breakout Brands by Miami-based public relations firm rbb.

“Breakout Brands don’t go in to business to fight the market leader,” says Christine Barney, managing partner and CEO of rbb Public Relations. “Breakout Brands put the customer first and aim to do more to make customers lives better and inspire emotional attachments that can be measured at the cash register.”

In a new whitepaper, The Breakout Brand Strategy: An Evolutionary Approach to Creating Customer Passion,” the firm identifies organizations that are adopting an evolutionary strategy to the traditional challenger brand approach as “Breakout Brands.” Breakout Brands, Barney says, focus on the customer, not the competition.

Breakout Brands include established brands such as IBM that have to maintain their leadership by constant innovation and communication with their target audience. Breakout Brands are also companies that are well engaged with customers but seek to distinguish themselves by growing their category with originality, such as Duncan Hines, and can be emerging organizations that create a new market, such as Pinterest.

Details from rbb’s Breakout Brand survey results will be shared at the Holmes Report’s Global Public Relations Summit in Miami in late October and then made available to the public. To download the Breakout Brand white paper and to subscribe to the survey, please go to: http://www.rbbpr.com/about/about-us-breakout-brands.aspx