In my last article, I highlighted Umair Haque's perspective of the shrinking advantage of traditional brands.  However, unlike Haque, I don't believe branding value is shrinking but evolving. Today let's discuss methods in which a company can leverage the immediacy of online connectivity to maintain its branding advantages.

In my mind, it all comes down to this.  For success today, a company has to be willing to listen to their customers and to work with them.  And that means ceding partial control of the branding process to your customers.

If you're a marketing manager going "eep!" right about now, then you're not getting today's customer environment.

Media savvy customers "in the know"

Today's customers are media savvy, especially among the younger set.  They have a wide array of avenues to explore information about your company and your products.  They aren't going to take what you say at face value -- but they will test what you say against the experience of others.  And with connectivity today, their pool of "others" extends far beyond their friends.

So if your company "walks its talk" in terms of its corporate and product branding, then your community pools -- customers, partners and employees -- will know.  Of course, if you fail to do so, then they'll know that as well.

The great news, though, is there's tremendous opportunity in doing your corporate walk.  You'll gain the greatest advantage though when people can see your walk in action.

It's not enough just to do your corporate strut.  Today's customers expect interaction and that means two-way communication.

Listening to customers has always been important.  For today's media savvy customers, raise that importance to the 10th power.

Listening to your customers versus talking at them

Fostering branding creativity rather than control

Consider your company and its branding efforts.  What are your customers saying about you?  Are you still influencing the messaging they receive or are you out of the loop?

To put yourself back in the loop -- and more importantly, to put yourself into a continued place of influence -- consider launching your own collaborative community initiatives.  These sorts of initiatives include blogging and group forums.

Make your branding initiatives be about the big C for Creativity rather than Control.  Make your customers be part of the product branding process. 

Why?  Because they get heard -- and that has the potential for you to reshape your products to meet real demand.  Their demand.

What about negative messaging in your communities?  The bad news is customers and prospects will hear it.  The good news is your company will too.  That means you have prime opportunities to mitigate the negative and accentuate the positive .

You have a choice in your business.  The days of full control over your media is gone.  Folks are too connected online and can ferret out information too easily.

Summary

So your corporate choices are:

1. To talk at your customers.
2. To listen to your customers

The second choice employs connectivity with today's customer and it leads you to creative innovation.  The first choice leads you along the more traditional branding path.  It is more likely to alienate your company from your customer base over time.  And, oh yeah, drive up your cost of business relative to your competitors that select option 2.

I'm not suggesting your stop your traditional branding efforts.  Rather, I'm suggesting you expand your channels to your customer to include more online connectivity.

If you do, here's one final bit of good news to close today's article.  While expanding your channel, you'll also end up lowering your costs.  Cool, huh?