Branding 2.0

Every consumer is a potential broadcaster with the means to demand specialized products. The nature of branding will have to adapt to embrace this hitherto non-existent aspect of marketing. As such the basic concept of branding will remain unchanged - to create an emotional attachment between the consumer and a product. However that's probably the only fixed point brand marketers can stick to in the future. Here's five reasons why….

1. Brand blogging

The web now teems with blogs on every single subject under the sun. Online individual diaries abound with individuals keen to share their points of view with the rest of the world. They're often so well-informed that the opinions they offer help form mainstream news reports. Given their potency, it begs the question whether blogs should in fact be adopted by brands as communication tools.

The marriage between blogs and brands is increasingly becoming a reality. Brands like Seth Godin and Tom Peters which exude personality, already blog. Brands such as Weight Watchers, LEGO, Apple, TiVo, and Harley-Davidson not only feature regularly in general blogs, but they have their own dedicated blogs created not by their brand-builders but by their fans.

Control over brand messages is gradually moving away from brand builders and edging closer toward consumers. Imagine Disney blogging about its characters, Nokia about its latest products, or Microsoft about virus issues. It could very well help them get closer to consumers by reaching out to the core fan communities. Exploiting this avenue requires a firm commitment.

It's a huge challenge for companies to write regular, informative and useful blogs. To do so, they must be flexible and react promptly. Companies simply aren't armed with the flexibility and quick response time required to run a relevant, interactive, engaging blog. They'd risk producing one-page press releases rather than interactive, topical points of view.

In the future, brands will have to take quick action effectively. They'll need to exhibit opinions fearlessly and share them with the world, meanwhile avoiding litigation and unhampered by risks. Yet companies tend to avoid political issues. Corporate entities feel obliged to clear their opinions with every quarter, eliminating all risk of offending any sensibilities. They thus sanitize their viewpoints rendering them meaningless. Sterilization tends to kill to the momentum needed to sustain and inject value into a blog.

Tomorrow's brands will have to transcend today's inhibitions. In many ways, this is the ultimate test for brands. It would reflect organizations' confidence and coherence. It would demonstrate brand self-esteem and ownership that speaks for itself unhesitatingly, promotes opinions, and shares them in hours rather than in weeks or months. As manufacturers and retailers learned just-in-time thinking in the '90s, brands will have to adopt a just-in-time ability to share information with consumers. If brands don't make this evolutionary leap soon, companies will be left behind. Consumers expect timely e-mail responses and prompt order fulfillment, to become part of the individual's minute-by-minute experience of everyday life.

Companies are far from this point. An organization that can handle the blog challenge requires dramatic structural, systemic, and communications changes.

2. Brand Phishing

Imagine you went down to your local bank, the branch just around the corner, to discuss retirement plans. Imagine you did so because you'd been receiving letters from your bank manager for the past 21 years. He's a great guy. He knows you and your family's finances better than you do yourself.

I agree - let's stop right there. It's too far-fetched. I can't imagine it, either.

First of all, you probably never receive real letters from your bank any more. Second, there's no longer a bank just around the corner. Third, your bank manager has evaporated and been supplanted by a call center. That call center makes anonymity into a fine art by adding that special, impersonal touch. Every time you call and put in the requisite time on hold, you eventually speak with some new person who deals inadequately with your apparently stupid questions and who ensures everything you discuss is forgotten the minute you hang up.

Okay, that's over the top, too. But not by much. Back to the point: branding.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Citibank. It said the bank was updating my client data and asked me to help it do this. Not unusual. I receive such automatic business card update requests almost daily. Being skeptical, I checked out the Citibank e-mail carefully. It seemed perfectly okay. So was the e-mail address, the sender, and the link to the Web site.

In the good old brick-and-mortar world, even in the old click-and-mortar one, you'd know if an e-mail was authentic or not. You'd at least have known the person sending it. If you weren't certain, you'd have called that person at the bank. Let's be frank. The bank would never have sent an e-mail. It would have sent a real letter. A fake one would have been easy to spot, and you'd be unlikely to pass on your confidential data to some unscrupulous charlatan.

Alas, this is no longer the case. The only way I could ascertain whether the e-mail was from a genuine sender or not was to judge its appearance. Thank heavens I didn't comply and reply with all my details, because this e-mail was, of course, an example of brand phishing.

Spammers employ this technique by assuming an identity to extract valuable data from unsuspecting consumers. They then hack into victims' bank or credit card accounts to transfer money to their own accounts.

So how would I know if this e-mail was genuine? I put this question to a top programmer who confirmed there's no way to really know whether an e-mail message is authentic. Major financial institutions outsource their direct e-mail to vendors. Most bear names consumers have never heard of. Sure, the address might look right, but who knows about the sender?

This leads to the issue of superficiality. As things stand right now, most consumers base their assumptions of credibility and authenticity on an e-mail's looks and logo.

Phishing is the fastest-growing scam in the world. It's made possible because of an inconsequential, but crucial, fact: We've taught consumers to evaluate brands simply on looks alone, the superficial image. We've forgotten the value of the handshake, eye contact, branch offices, real letters with real addresses. We've systematically denuded brands of authenticity, left them with no protective features, and made them vulnerable to brand phishers in the process.

New technologies will solve the problem, and just as quickly new scams will emerge to replace this one. One thing's certain: online fraud and scams are here to stay. Bearing this in mind, we must strive to communicate what our brands stand for without compromising authenticity in the interests of cost savings. That's difficult to achieve.

If, for example, the branch office was your brand's real point of differentiation, don't get rid of it. Think how Starbucks has made its cafés its real point of identity, with those couches and comfy chairs. If having a real name on your e-mail and real people on the phone differentiates your brand, stay that way.

You might very well save money in the short term investing your all in your logo, but before you do, consider whether it's worth it in the long run.

3. Brand alliances

The rules for brand alliances have changed as the consumer has become familiar with the concept. This opens up a new global alliance opportunities which only few years ago would have been impossible to predict.

Recently I was in a taxi, heading for Copenhagen airport. My co-passenger was a woman who carried a fancy suitcase. A stylish piece of luggage, to be sure, but what interested me was the combination of brands it represented. It was produced by Samsonite. No surprise there, as Samsonite is the world's largest luggage manufacturer. This Samsonite bag also represented Philippe Starck, a designer known for his work with furniture who, in this case, had designed this particular item for Samsonite.

Indeed, brand combinations are often surprising. These days, I often notice alliances I'd never have predicted. Nestlé and L'Oréal recently announced a relationship. What do these two brands have in common? Anything? In fact, yes. Nestlé's aim is to produce food that's healthy, not only for the insides of our bodies, but for our skin as well. Who's the global market leader in skin care? You got it: L'Oréal.

This new, laterally-inspired approach to brand alliances will change the way we build brands. In the good old days, only brands with an obvious relationship tended to team up. Market leaders joined with other market leaders. There's every indication now that an alliance between a low- and a high-equity brand can be just as valuable for both parties as a marriage between equals.

Why is this development so pertinent? Most likely you control an online business. If there's one business arena that can benefit from a brand alliance strategy via links, co-branding and general brand alliances, it's the interactive sector.

So try liberating your strategy from traditional alliances and think outside the square.
The good news is that not many brands have begun considering alternative brand alliances. There are still lots of opportunities out there. But don't get complacent. It's only a matter of time before your competitor will run away with a partner that could have exposed your brand to a whole new world of business.

4. Situation placement

If I glanced through your media plan, I'm sure I'd see the usual conventional media options. TV and radio ads, Web banners, print ads, and outdoor advertising. We've been going down this track for years. Decades, in fact. We know we won't be fired for using them, just as an IT guy won't be fired for installing an IBM solution.

But the comfortable media road is disappearing. One day, you may very well lose your job for stubbornly clinging to the old options. Take for example the computer game market. It's already generating revenue double that of the film industry. AC Nielsen predicts within just four years, the film industry will be shrink further to one third the size of the computer game market. Where is Hollywood's enormous power headed? Online? If it is, where are you in that scenario?

It's fascinating to reflect on the fact that almost every medium has a price for inventory. With a click, you can find that price on search engines. Media prices are more or less fixed and understood. Except for one channel: computer games.

Do you know the price of placing a commercial message in a computer game. I'd guess you haven't a clue. Is it $1 per user? A million up front? One cent per second? Who knows. No fixed model exists, and no media agency to date specializes in booking game space. This is virgin territory for brand-builders, which often means low prices.

Let's do the math. Research in BRANDchild, my book published in 2004, shows that kids, spend almost the same amount of time playing computer games as they do watching TV. These numbers will soon trend away from one another as games lead the way kids allocate their time. The really critical difference? Your TV spot probably secures some 30 seconds with consumers. A computer game placement is likely to spend hours with them. It's no wonder energy drink Red Bull claimed it achieved such enormous success because it featured in the first PlayStation games. 'Want more energy?' was the message. I don't have to tell you the answer.

If you belong to the gang inclined toward traditional solutions, stop reading now. However, if you believe TV is no longer the one true path to brand success, you should already be considering opportunities in the wonderful world of computer games. Prices are still low in this unexplored territory. Results are high, as brand clutter is limited. And it's all going full steam ahead.

The Sims Online from EA, one of the most established game creators, no longer operates in a non-branded world. In a Sims game, players buy McDonald's franchises and sell the branded food products, earning 'simoleans,' the game's currency. Eating the food also improves players' standing in the game.

Computer grames build brands through interaction. In the past, brands didn't interact with customers, nor were they able to engage them in their philosophies. The relationship between brand and customer is set to change. Brands are learning that to create an engaged consumer, you must first engage them. Surprise!

5. Me Selling Proposition

Let me introduce you to the Me Selling Proposition (MSP) brand.

That's a brand owned by you, rather than by the manufacturer. MSP branding is a phenomenon we'll be hearing about a lot in the near future. The reason? Because, finally, it's possible to produce highly customized products that appeal to and are fashioned by individuals.

Some months ago, I was in a perfume store in Tokyo. The crazy thing was that there were no perfume products on the shelves. Instead, the shop offered special expertise in identifying the scent that would complement each customer's personality. After answering numerous questions, I walked out with a perfume designed especially for me. Not only that, but I chose my own bottle and received my own 'eau de Lindstrom' presented to me with my own personal label!

This was my perfume. I owned it! In short, the product exemplified the true MSP brand.

Increasingly more brands are arriving at this proposition. Take Procter & Gamble's Reflect.com as a good example. Here's a brand that's realizing its MSP ambitions. Its home page offers its (presumably) female customers the promise of 'true custom beauty' and asserts the 'active ingredient' is 'you.' Color, skin care, hair care, and perfume products are offered along with the opportunity to design them according to your individual needs.

I tested the process by randomly selecting the 'age-arresting treatment' products. I found myself defining my skin type, answering questions about the current state of my face, and indicating my preference for a cream that felt silky (rather than velvety, another option). I could even dictate the accent color for my product's packaging. And I got to give my customized night cream a name of my own invention.

But for the majority of existing brands, the road to achieving MSP-driven branding is long and often expensive. We're talking about a concept that means more than individualized customization. This is branding that responds to a dialogue with each consumer.
Brands such as Dell, Nike, and LEGO are well on their way to the MSP heaven. For example, LEGO offers its devoted customers special sets of LEGO blocks customized so recipients can build their own portraits out of LEGO blocks. Yep, LEGO has designed a computer program that scans an image of the subject, calculates the number of blocks that particular customer's likeness requires, and, along with the customized set of blocks, provides the recipient with a customized instruction manual on building his own portrait.

As you'd imagine, not all brands arrive at this. Pepsi offers us an example of the perils of adopting the idea of MSP-driven branding without fully adopting the spirit of it and developing a process to deliver it. What the company offers is the opportunity for Pepsi fans to join a Pepsi advisory panel. The promise is to involve them in future research and development (R&D) projects.

Keen to see how this worked, I signed up as Peter, age nine. By now it feels as if it were nine years ago that I did so, seeing as I've never received even a single word in response from Pepsi. Just a 'thank you' or 'we'll be back to you soon with more' would have kept a boy involved, interested, and feeling important.

MSP brands live and breathe the principle of communication - they're born of listening and responding to, learning from, and being inspired by feedback from the consumer. Not an easy achievement. Far from it. The MSP is a trend that demands intimacy between brands and individuals. The established brands of the world are used to having distance between themselves and their customers.

MSP branding is what Jones Soda does when offering its customers the chance to design their own labels and receive their own exclusive version of the product for use at parties. MSP branding is about handling individual feedback promptly, within 24 hours. It's about building a branding platform entirely according to the consumer's parameters rather than the manufacturer's assumptions.

It's a long, hard road to MSP. So far only a handful of brands can claim to be driven by it. But, for sure, MSP is here to stay. It's only a matter of time before the individual consumer becomes accustomed to expecting brand ownership. That expectation will be what separates the true MSP brands from the fakes.