Communities of online customers are rewriting the rules of corporate branding. The reason is because they're spending more time talking with other consumers through various types of online connections than listening to companies with their traditional branding messages.
In other words, customers are wresting control of the branding message from companies. In an environment like that, how do you continue to be an influential voice for your own company and products?
We're going to talk about that today.
The shrinking advantage of traditional brands
That's good and bad news for companies, according to Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, in a Feb2008 article entitles The Shrinking Advantage of Brands.
Among the good news is that branding through web-based initiatives is a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Haque uses Google as an example, determined by the Millward Brown Optimor's Brandz report to be the world's top brand (In Haque's article, he referenced the 2007 report but Google tops the Brandz list in 2008 too). He makes an amusing yet pointed comment regarding Google's investment in traditional branding:
Stop and think about that for a second: the top brand in the world belongs to a player that…uhhh…doesn’t advertise.
Now, here's the bad news...at least for companies seeking to maintain full or high control over the branding messaging.
Haque writes,
[...] For the economics of an industrial era, branding made sense. Interaction was expensive – so information about the expected benefits of consumption had to be squeezed into slogans, characters, and logos, which were then compressed into thirty-second TV ads and radio spots.
But cheap interaction turns the tables. The cheaper interaction gets, the more connected consumers can talk to each other – and the less time they have to spend listening to the often empty promises of firms.
In fact, when interaction is cheap, the very economic rationale for orthodox brands actually begins to implode: information about expected costs and benefits doesn’t have to be compressed into logos, slogans, ad-spots or column-inches – instead, consumers can debate and discuss expected costs and benefits in incredibly rich detail.
Is branding value really shrinking or just evolving?
My answer to the above question is "evolving." If you ask me, branding is as relevant as ever. Take Google for example. Just because they don't employ traditional branding efforts doesn't mean they don't have a clear brand.
They do. Google just got to the end point -- that place of high market recognition -- but new media means.
You also have to put Google into context. Their business is built around providing online services so of course they're going to focus their marketing efforts on this channel to market.
Summary
Branding is still as relevant as ever, but the way you go to market needs to include avenues that allow you to connect with your customers -- if you want to maintain their loyalty.
In my next article, I'll discuss how you can leverage the influence customers have over your branding efforts to advance your marketing efforts.