Posts Tagged ‘active consumers’
November 3, 2009
The Zen of Low-Control Branding
This is a duplicate post from David Allison’s blog on BC Business
Absolute control of your brand is now out of your hands. Don’t fight it: believe it or not, it’s the way forward.
The art and science of branding is undergoing a sea change. We’re moving from a system where your brand is what you tell people it is, to a system where your brand is what people tell you it is. The most intriguing part of this change is that no one really knows what the new system is going to look like. But there are clues.
First, let’s deal with control. Absolute control of your brand is now out of your hands. Even if you aren’t aware of it, your brand is being discussed, praised, slammed or slandered online. In one way, that’s no different from how it used to be. People always talked about your brand; the difference now is that when people talk amongst themselves, millions of of others are listening, ready to jump into the conversation, offer their opinions, and re-post the commentary.
To remain in the game and exercise some control is to participate. You can’t always drive the bus, but you can have a seat near the front. If you try to make everyone else shut up and listen to you, the bus will pull over and you will be kicked off. Then where are you?
The first step, then, is to find the bus. Be aware of what’s being said about you online. Have someone monitor the conversations on Facebook, and in the blogs, chat rooms, and other places where customers are congregating right now. You can lurk there silently, if you like. Or, better, join in the conversation and try to direct people to the information and online assets you have posted that present your point of view.
Don’t have any online assets or information that present your point of view? Oh, dear. Best get on that. And you’d best remember to sell the truth.
Truth as a touchstone has never been more important in the branding game. Every single decision you make – from R&D through to sales and marketing – needs to ring true. If it doesn’t, if you are trying to spin things, or present an angle that is covertly or overtly advantageous to your brand, you will be called out. The crowd loves to expose a charlatan. And even a seemingly small misstep, one that used to go unnoticed, can now cause an enormous flare-up of vitriolic verbiage.
Witness the country-western artist who wrote a song about United Airlines, wherein the musician, peeved about the airline luggage-handlers breaking of his guitar, saw his fortunes peak and the airline’s crater as his music video went viral on YouTube. Almost six million people have now watched United Breaks Guitars.
And while this is a very public example, it’s not the only case. Every day consumers are ranking and rating your brand online. Woe unto the author who has one or two bad reviews on Amazon. Yelp is another popular rating program for restaurants, shopping, and entertainment that pulls great traffic on Google searches. Google’s new program called SideWiki is the ultimate in water-cooler chatter generators, with the opportunity for anyone to leave comments for others to find on any website – including yours.
It’s a brand new branding day here on Planet Marketing. The days of painstakingly crafting a brand image over time, each strategy and message building on past brand equity and leading to a glorious future as outlined in the brand platform – they’re over. Realizing that is Step One. The real work begins after you push your brand messages out into the world, and the world pushes back.
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- Pasted by Chris
File Under BcBusiness, Business
August 20, 2009
Just Die, Will You?
This is a duplicate post from David Allison’s blog on BC Business
Will the dinosaurs hurry up and die already? The future is here.
In several sectors of the economy, hope is on the march. In real estate development, sales are ticking along, with resale volume for July 2009 hugely improved over 2008. The same holds for other industries. Two weeks ago, the Bank of Canada pronounced the big slide over, and said we’re on the road to recovery.
True or not, as a marketer, I am afraid. Some of the old-school brands out there – big banks, car companies, and many real estate developers – put their head in the sand in an attempt to survive the recent troubles. If they were big enough, and well funded enough, they made it through the storm without having to adjust their thinking. And that’s exactly what worries me.
Some dinosaurs seem to have survived the Ice Age. And this is no good.
The economic wobble we’ve all just lived through was a wake-up call to businesses around the world. There is a new consumer on the scene, one that won’t stand for the old-fashioned yell-and-sell approach to branding and marketing. These new consumers want a relationship. They want trust. They want to be heard. They want to know how and where you do business. They want to know everything about you. But the dinosaurs don’t get that. They want it the way it used to be: they told us what to think, we whipped out our wallets.
Active consumers will make our economy stronger. They will make sure that we are honest, straightforward, and real. And, even though she presents new responsibilities, the active consumer will make us merchants better. Nowhere is this more true than in marketing and branding – the interface between company and the consumers.
Some old-school companies managed to survive the recession, and, yeah, I’m pissed about it. But their day of reckoning is nigh. Let them go back to their old ways, feeling self-righteous and smart; there’s a meteorite on the horizon.
My advice to them: use this market correction as an opportunity to clean the cobwebs from their marketing. Think new thoughts. Look around and you’ll see that this wasn’t simply a bump in the road. It’s a brand new road. Get on it.
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- Pasted by David
File Under BcBusiness
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