I can’t help but spin off the heels of President Obama’s, State of the Union address yesterday, still fresh in everyone’s mind. Until recent years, the economic health of the Republic was largely held together by powerful global brands born in the USA (even if produced “elsewhere”). Until now.
We’ve seen many epochs come and go in the field of, “selling stuff to the public”. It all started with the Town Crier, followed by printed Press, ergo “Marketing”, ergo “Emotional Branding”, ergo “Experiential Marketing”, and finally to “Word-of-mouth” (WOM or mouths). Note that I have not attached the words, branding or marketing, to the latter. WOM has been referenced as “viral marketing”, “peer-to-peer marketing”, “social media” and endless permutations; but, to the extent that no control can be exerted over this organically sprouted revolution, no suffix makes any sense. All these terms are oxymorons. WOM is wholly driven by the masses who now have access to each other on the internet. The internet has convened people around their own ideas, behavior and beliefs, not those manufactured in ivory towers. It is an elixir that no one will relinquish easily as attempts are made by global entities to restrict the organic flow of interaction once again through regulations and laws; for the time being, the flow continues.
I consider the words of Marshall McLuhan, “is it the medium or the message” [that drives our future]? It is neither. The medium allows people to convene and share; by circuitous design, it can also restrict everyone. There is no “message” any longer; the volume of words erupting spontaneously, organically, dwarf the pre-fabricated ones. Words travel across nodes propelled purely by their attraction to other mouths. This is the central problem ailing brands and their stewards today: they are still manufacturing messages and sending them out into “the media”. The world’s esteemed media futurist, Gerd Leonhard, expressed in a recent interview, “are you using magnets or handcuffs”? Most brands are still using handcuffs and losing customers to the magnetizing effect of WOM. Nevertheless, it is the moral checks and balances of our body politic that will ensure an open and free future; McLuhan’s ideas in 2012 are an intellectual distraction from this reality.
As I key this in, I hear a message yelling at me in the background on the cathode ray tube, spouting claims of “joy and happiness” delivered by artery-clogging creme cheese in a :30 spot. Over-promising is an understatement; but, this is testament, this brand that has lost its compass. (I often keep the tube on to see if advertisers have changed their ways. Does not appear so.)
Some brands are experiencing a brand “correction”, now that the voices are able to weigh-in beyond the controlled telephone surveys of the past. McDonald’s struggles as they discover from the streamed consensus that they are not “loved” and that newly discovered alternatives are eating their lunch (now that the public has access to them). The mouths know the brands that are poorly made, unhealthy, wrought with negative history, ad infinitum; no brand can escape poor design and behavior in the talking world.
So what are legacy brands to do? Without further delay, they must innovate and improve. Case in point, some food brands are abandoning “high fructose corn syrup” now that the public is aware of its negative effects on their health. This adjustment may not suffice to obtain forgiveness from a public that now has many choices and a long memory; but, it is the only right move to make for survival. Legacy brands need to get into the sandbox with their customers and humble themselves; they may have to say they were wrong and, ‘sorry’. They no longer reign over the sub-conscious of the public with their branded meaning, invariably a cover for lesser value. Frankly, many legacy brands have become irrelevant and should be retired; so when I present brand innovation as a solution, it may in fact be from inception, and not a make-over.
Humanizing brands through Community Managers is an important asset to develop in this revolution. Forming and overseeing a community, requires clarity on what will stand the test of authenticity and transparency. At the core, almost all brands provide a utilitarian value; however, the mouths add value to this utility according to their world views and experiences. The Community Managers do not add the value, the community does. This value may be social, emotional, or may actually extend the utility of the brand. Now, I am going to take a leap. Here it comes.
Perhaps the branding of products and services is a process of days-gone-by. Brands remain; but, they are shaped by their customers and influencers.
Brands were conceived inside the organization, leveraging studies of mass segments which no longer have any definition in the aggregate. You will say, “yes, but what about Harley Davidson and Virgin”? A Harley is indeed an artifact that resonates with a large population, still. All things Virgin are imbued with deeper, untamed expressions of “self” (no surprise Richard Branson dropped from a tall building in a wedding gown). Both Harley and Virgin do limited advertising and branding, i.e. little pushing and yelling. Their magnetism is built-in. It seems their tribes (the other word for community) provide their meaning, both having had the wisdom not to inject their own ideas into their products and services.
Emotional drivers are no longer constructs that can be successfully leveraged by any brand in one-way media; these have returned to their original owners, the 90% on the internet. These people share their emotions willingly; yet, none of their expressions sound remotely like the diet of brand epithets the public has been fed for over 50 years. All you have to do is watch the conversation streams to witness the difference. Communities that have formed the world over will simply not consume brand information that isn’t deeply resonant. The public does not have the attention span for shallow, average messages anyway. Brand hegemony is over; the lion’s share of the public does not define itself by brands any longer. Don’t be misguided by reports of running-shoe brand door crashers or black-Friday maullings; these are over-reported.
This 2012, brands must facilitate their users by building communities. These communities will experience your brands in different ways; be prepared to offer many iterations of your brands. (Now, read my last sentence again.) If brands now require many iterations to suit many tribes, clearly this indicates that “central branding” has ended. It seems it is the context around your brand that will make or break it. If you produce hair conditioner, the communities you will build will discuss hair, beauty, age, attraction, style, nutrition, etc… Brands are becoming publishers and broadcasters. What do we replace branding with? Not wishing to complicate the answer, I will go out on a limb and state, this is all you need : expressions of your brands’ tribes. Yes, this may mean, more and narrower facings on the shelf. You must enable customers in communities you build and join with context and two-way interaction.
In the short term, many technologies such as QR codes permit folks to access rich information particular to them on the spot, even an on-going conversation stream specific to their inquiry. Speed of information is increasingly a factor. And this has added value to the retail experience, and feet which have been disappearing from floors to keyboards.
The possibility that our world will resemble a scene in Minority Report where personalized messages are shouted from billboards can be avoided if the legacy brands learn to relate to humans openly rather than impose their will through sensors or other devices. To some extent, this is already occurring as they lobby search engines and social networks to favor them through algorithms. I looked at a brand on-line, once; for an entire month this brand was everywhere on my desktop the result of which, I have tuned-out. This algorithm has narrowed my options and I suspect my searches will be equally filtered by my last search. (I love to confuse the computing beast by executing searches that are so varied it can no longer marginalize me.) I am weary that this is what the future holds; but, not if people resist and attempts at control fail. People have turned a deaf ear to corporations on TV and opened them to their peers and friends on the internet; this is the heart of the power struggle. If the future shifts organically, messages from peers, friends or family, related to brands will occur; the success of Pinterest and its effect on retailers is remarkable. Brands need to have faith in people; they will always aim to fill their needs. Can you be there when they choose or will you bang them on the head once again, unrelentingly, in this new medium.
In this final social revolution, it is imperative that corporations listen in on conversation streams and learn. They can then adjust, retire or give birth to new products and services shaped by their users and influencers.
“So how do I advertise to reach people?” you say, holding fast to control. Aye, there’s the rub. You don’t. Now Google will be all atwitter over this comment; but, when you witness the evolution of advertising on the web, you see shifts over the years. Email is opt-in. Advertising is opt-in (although foisted on users when they join certain networks). The opt-in definition is being stretched beyond good form. Attempts at old-fashioned intrusion endures, resulting in dropped views; you do not want this friction attached to your offerings. Brands must now be publishers, broadcasters, and foremost peers, building content around the stuff they offer and its context. It seems brands are evolving into “content”. This is the magnetism they must build around their brands.
Recently, a major sports organization in Canada changed hands; the CEO in a press conference referred to this hockey team as “content”. I predict, this incisive leader will navigate the new frontier with relative ease.
Stay-tuned for Part 2
