This is arguably the most dramatic of changes to hit brand building and marketing as a domain, in the last decade or so. Customers have not only ceased to be mute receivers of brand communications but have a say in it with an unmistakable impact on the brand story. About 15 years ago itself, I recall at the MNC ad consultancy I worked at, we included a slick video in our credentials presentation to showcase that we are a consultancy that understood that brand communications had moved from a ‘one to many’ to a ‘many to many’ system.
The long term repercussion of this change, however, is a lot clearer to see today. A brand’s journey is no longer executed by the business owners and employees alone. No matter how carefully we plan and curate it, it is being shaped by consumers/customers, in equal measure. This would have been fine if we could have formally inducted every current, potential and tentative customer there is, into the brands’ intended ethos, guidelines and playbook, the way we do with employees. But alas, that’s not how customers roll. They don’t start out with imbibing the brand’s stated vision, mission, purpose, personality and tonality. They just go with the vibes they get from the product/service and the brand. This puts renewed pressure on brands to put their money where their mouth is. In other words, to create chances to live out their brand ethos.
If our brand does not live out all that it states in its ads and brand literature through their actions and proactive initiatives, the audience is very likely to write a very different brand book about our brand from the ones we strategically and creatively craft.
Brand building has not become difficult, it has just become drastically different. Putting all the veterans and freshers on a level field, back to the drawing board. For centuries, the name of the game was ‘consumer understanding’. Today, consumer understanding is incomplete without consumer-community understanding.
It would be a mistake to have this sort of approach only in digital marketing and not when creating mass video for TV led advertising, if that is still a thing. Digital marketing is now mainstream and the customer touch-points are via content in different formats for corresponding digital platforms. The video ad or the TV ad, if you please, is but one cog in this wheel. Even offline touch-points are never disconnected from the digital. Be it under a bus stop, or on an escalator at the mall or a physical store or while handling the physical product, we know that people are accessing us online, at all times. And so, not approaching every offline touch-point as a phy-digital touchpoint is a recipe to compromise impact.
Our brand wheels and brand keys still pivot around TG description and a TG insight/tension point. Perhaps in the re-invented wheel we need to start with stating the ‘TG participation insight’. An endeavor to capture insights on what makes our TG participate and contribute positively to the brand story. This sort of thinking may make us considerate towards the online audience.
Good companies that offer good products and service and good brands always have a fan following, rooting for them. Traditionally there was little we could do, to access and leverage our fans. Today, we have the facility of finding our fans, engaging with them and making them feel a sense of ownership towards the brand story. Behavioral sciences have revealed that people value things that they psychologically feel are created by them or with their contribution.
We call customers ‘king’ but have turned them into mere lost creatures as they try to navigate a confusing, predatory, manipulative world of brand communications. Not surprisingly, now that they can, customers have willingly given up the illusional pedestal and are upholding the tenets of democracy in brand reputation building. For, by and from. The loved brands of the future will be built on strategies that leverage the role of consumer participation in their stories.
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