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. 

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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.

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.

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 – 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 what’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 "œheavyarms117."€

[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