You Don’t Own Your Brand — Your Customer Does

The nice folks over at the Washington D.C. chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA-DC) asked me to provide my perspective on how “traditional” marketing is changing as a result of social media. It really is incredible where technology has come these days, check out this duplicator for an example of one of your options! Both these methods used together would be excellent for the marketing industry as a whole. But anyway that’s by the by, let’s really get into this topic.

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You Don’t Own Your Brand —
Your Customer Does
by Christopher F. Carfi, CEO
of Cerado, Inc. (http://www.cerado.com)

Brand (n.)

1. A trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer.
2. A mark indicating identity or ownership, burned on the hide of an animal
with a hot iron.

(source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition. http://www.answers.com/topic/brand
)

We marketers like to delude ourselves. We delude ourselves into believing
that if we can distill the meaning of a product or service to its very essence,
that if we can determine the perfect message and imagery, then the market will
internalize those things for which the brand “stands” (and perhaps
look a little less closely at the actual product or service to which the brand
has been applied). That’s what we do. We create “brands”
that will resonate in the market. If you’re looking to get your brand out there a little more with branded items, look into these promotional products design company.

But a “market” is not an undifferentiated mass of consumers[1] with
upturned gullets interested in gobbling up our marketing messages. A
“market” is actually a place. When you hear the word
market, think “bazaar,” not “customer segment.”

Some of the historically great “brands” are learning this the hard
way. Let’s look at Sony, for example. Some estimates state that
Sony is going to lose up to $1 billion dollars on creating and marketing its
new PS3 gaming console in its first year[2]. One BILLION dollars.
With that kind of money, they should be able to ensure that the
“branding” in the market is perfect, right?

Not even close.

Wikipedia defines “social media” as “the online tools and
platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and
perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms,
including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs,
message boards, podcasts, wikis and vlogs.”[3]

The ease of access to social media has flattened and democratized the
market/bazaar. Instead of those with the loudest megaphones and billion
dollar marketing budgets running roughshod over customers, we, the customers,
now have the ability to critique, to talk back and to connect with each others
and share stories and opinions. What does this mean for marketing?
It means that the old, top-down hierarchy of searing brands into the consumer
psyche is done. Over. Finished. It means that businesses have to engage with their consumers, building their brands on the ideas of their customers and their experiences. To achieve this there are now social media tools, such as this instagram bot and other automation tools, in order to help these businesses grow through social media and the engagement with their customers.

Let’s look at a tangible example. In the wake of the PS3 launch, an individual only known by the
online handle of “heavyarms117”? posted a video to YouTube entitled “How To Kill
A Brand”[4] (based on the song “How To Save A Life,” by The Fray). Here’??s the first verse:

Step 1, you make your console
cost the most,
You beat your chest and proudly boast,
Despite no good exclusive games
You make a bunch of ridiculous claims,

Then ignore our need to play online
Don’t make it fun like Xbox Live
Use Blue Ray, which I don’t need
Now you’re getting your ass kicked by the Wii

Sony, you went wrong, with your PS3
I’ll just keep playing my 360
Hope this song has helped, you understand
Now you know, How You Killed Your Brand…

Simple. To the
point. And devastating. As of this writing, the video has been
viewed 1,419,639 times, and generated over 12,000 comments. What was the cost to produce it? Minimal. The cost was some basic editing equipment that comes with every laptop
and a few hours of time.

1.4 million connected customers versus a
top-down, billion dollar budget? I’??ll
take the customer in that race every time.

So, if the customer is truly in
control of the brand, what can we as marketers do?

If the customer truly is in control as a result of the advent of social
media, the most important thing to do is to actually engage in transparent,
authentic conversation. Anything less
eventually ends up with a situation similar to the one in which we currently
see Sony and other brands. This means
listening in the blogosphere, and taking the pure, raw customer feedback that
is out there and bringing it back into the organization. It means creating social networks and online
communities where customers can engage with your organization and each other. It means acting not as teflon-covered
representatives of the organization, but instead engaging in natural exchanges
as the human beings that we are.

“But what if the customer is critical, or says bad things about us?” It’??s happening already on the over 70
million blogs online, and between the hundreds of millions of members of
existing online social networks. And
when it does happen, a marketer’s best bet is not to go into “spin”?
mode, but instead to address the issue directly. If there is no issue, or the facts surrounding the conversation
are incorrect, then correct them factually. However, if there actually is an issue, address it, and state
what is going to be done, and by when. For example:

1) Say what happened – State the case,
tell what happened, explain what the situation was. Don’t spin, don’t make excuses. Just state the facts.

2) Say what you’re going
to do about it â?? Inform customers about the short term fix. How are
you going to put out the fire?

3) Plan for Murphy
– Ok, the immediate crisis is over. What are you going to do to make sure this
doesn’t happen again

4) Report back –
Let the customers know what’s going on. Was the short term fix applied? Are the
long-term changes happening?

Following this simple process can avert the firestorms that erupt online
when an organization decides to batten down the hatches and ignore whatâ??s
actually being said about them via social media.

And so, here we are today. We’??ve
created an entire industry based on marketing via top-down methods, based on
the broadcast models of TV and print that have served marketing well for the
past fifty years. But things have
changed, radically and quickly. Customers are turning off the TV and putting down the newspaper and
getting their information about brands not from our billboards and glossy
collateral, but instead from their trusted colleagues online.

Even those colleagues only known online as “?heavyarms117.”?

[1] – “one who consumes”

[2] – http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/167

[3] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

[4] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R98qC0fd_1w