According to marketing leaders BrandLogic, brands “act as a point of coalescence for needs, aspirations, ambitions, and self-realization; they can have an emotional effect like no other asset in an institution’s portfolio.”
Graphic designer Teak Sato tells us “your brand is NOT your logo”, and Vancouver Marketer Darren Barefoot once wrote a post about brands referencing possible song lyrics as tattoos – a very branding experience, to say the least.
OK, so I’m confused. The good folks at BrandLogic are experts at what they do, but I don’t understand what their prose really means to me, personally. Darren’s perspective was entertaining, and took me on a philosophical tour of the brands I recognize or own, but I have no plans to get a tattoo. Teak’s talented and his comment makes sense to me, but tells me what a brand is not. I have some work to do.
The best definition of brand I know is one we quote at Duet Media. I don’t know the original source, but it relates to social media platforms and the online world very well. It goes like this: “Your brand is the sum of the conversations about you”.
So, what brand ARE you? What are the conversations that are going on about you? Where are they happening? Who is involved? How would you know? Why would you even care?
Those are all good questions. Today, if you write a blog, make a comment on a site, have an account on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – there could be many conversations going on that include your name or ideas. That may be what you want. You did link all those sites together, didn’t you, so that could happen? After all, increased exposure IS part of your marketing plan!
However, if those conversations are going on without you, perhaps there are some other things you should know. For example, if someone pays you a compliment – you would want to acknowledge them for taking the time and extending the courtesy. If they ReTweet your comments on Twitter, you will want to check them out, follow them and maybe say ‘Thanks’ with a mention on Follow Friday yourself. If it’s your company they are talking about, your ‘Thank-you’ may include a coupon or other reward. That’s all well and good, but what if what they are saying is not? (good, that is).
If you are not paying attention, how would you know? Remember the viral video about United Airlines and the now-historical affair of the broken guitar? They handled that rather badly….but how long did it take for them to even know something was going on? During the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, our friend and Blenz Coffee Pres., George Moen, caught a comment on Twitter from a customer with a problem in one of their stores. The customer had a laptop, Blenz had free wireless…..but there was not a power outlet free, at that time, in that particular store. Seeing that he was just a few blocks away – and being an avid user of Social Media for his chain – George seized the opportunity and responded directly. He tweeted ‘help is on the way!’, unplugged a power cord from his own office, and ran three blocks to deliver it himself! The customer was delighted, and lots of great ‘conversations’ ensued.
Your brand is the sum of the conversations about you. Do you know what they are saying, today?
Hi;
If the question is how to define “brand”, well the simplest, useful definition I have been able to distill down from 20 years in corporate branding is that from a brand manager’s perspective a brand is equal to an identity + a targeted reputation; with the reputation achieved through conveying a clear set of Value Propositions- VPs (with associated attributes) to its targeted audiences and fulfilling those VPs time and time again over time.
This sort of optimal “brand performance” requires correctly crafting and casting the brand toward factors that truly drive customer consideration, purchase and loyalty in a category.Done well this is what can create an emotional connection, even self-identification, among customers, employees, partners and, yes, even the investment community.
If the question is: “Is a brand the sum of the conversations going on about it?, well that requires a somewhat different perspective. In my own view, listening to conversations in social media about brands or a company’s current performance is useful to marketers of those brands in particular as a way to monitor “Brand health”. In this sense the social media provide an ongoing longitudinal research study on how different actions by the company or by users of its brand(s) increase or decrease favorability and/or risk ( or put another way add to or dilute/threaten brand equity).
Yes, there are those truly exceptional instances (that prove the rule) in which some actual intervention with a customer saves the day, but if those occurrences are the awaited big pay-off for social media don’t hold your breath! There is a natural but I fear ill placed expectation that social media represent the future for brand building investments. I think the real pay-off is likely in brand monitoring not brand building.
Anyway, with that as context, conversations on brands are useful and certainly do represent some portion of brand’s current image and equity. However, as at any given time only a small, self-selected portion (and perhaps not a truly representative one) of a brands targeted audiences are in that conversation it is difficult and potentially dangerous to project the content or sum of these conversations as equating to total of a brand’s equity.
Your thoughts?
James