A brand is a conversation between a company and its customer tribes. That’s a simple idea, yes, but it’s also one that’s very difficult to deliver on. And just what do we mean by a “conversation”?
First a trip in the way-back machine: For a very long time, businesses focused on products and sales. And they thrived. Their marketing flowed in one direction, from company to consumer: selling, advertising, and generally imposing their brands on a hungry audience of consumers. A one-way conversation.
Then: Change. Markets became crowded with competitive choices, and interruptive advertising became pervasive. Businesses no longer thrived. The marketing techniques that grew out of their sales-and-product focus stopped working. Today, the volume of product choice is enormous, and the media is saturated.
Something new is demanded of businesses. They can no longer force-feed their messages to consumers. The conversation is no longer one-way. But businesses have found that it’s a Herculean effort to start listening to consumers and asking permission to talk to them. Where do you start?
The following is a list of essentials that we’ve used to help companies find their brand voice and engage in meaningful conversations with their customer tribes:
•All brands, big and small, tell a story. People love to tell stories, and stories spread. We advise our clients to be extremely clear about their brand stories, and to be smart about how they communicate them. A brand like Harley-Davidson calls to mind stories about the open road, freedom, rebellion. They’re rich stories, and they spread. We get our clients to ask the question: what story does our brand tell? What do you want it to tell? Then we help them craft a story that people will feel, and then tell, about them.
•A brand story stays out of the way unless people seek it out. People are busy and have high expectations. Interrupting them in the middle of something (like a television show or reading a magazine) is annoying. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has gotten the message. They’ve signed on as the sole sponsor for the History Channel's 10-part series about the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier. As a result, the episodes will have 55 minutes of content instead of the 45 minutes typical of hour-long programs. The deal is indicative of a trend among broadcast networks and marketers toward reducing commercial "clutter" to retain their audiences, according to a recent New York Times
article.
•A brand story that is present in places where people are looking for it is well received. That’s the reason for the rise of search engine optimization and the dominance of Google. It’s all about the content: education, entertainment, resources and community. Countless businesses of all sizes flourish due to search engine optimization, and storefronts on eBay, where eager shoppers seek specialty products or bargain prices.
•A brand story gets customer tribes talking, both about the company and to the company. Many companies claim that all of their business comes from referral. Even when their first awareness of a brand comes from advertising, many prospective customers take steps to explore the brand before they buy. Often that means asking a friend or colleague. The founders of Zilker ventures have built an entire business model on this concept. Their efax shopper comparison site lays out an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of products and services, making it easy for small business owners to make a choice. The company plans to launch a series of resource websites for small and middle market businesses, and expects to attract customers by search engine optimization as well as satisfied user evangelism, brought on by the satisfaction of having a single source for comprehensive buyer info clearly laid out.
•A brand conversation has integrity. Unilever’s dove natural beauty campaign took a hit with the company’s male deodorant product, Axe, and its sexist imagery .
•A brand conversation takes place anywhere the company touches its customer tribe, so is therefore about much more than the marketing media, but also the product offering, customer service, consistency and integrity. Thinkink! Provides negotiation training for large sales organizations. Their philosophy: how you negotiate deals is a reflection of your brand. If one rep offers a discount while another does not, your image becomes inconsistent in the marketplace. This can be confusing in the eyes of customers, or even damaging to the business.
There is a lot of pressure on marketers to be accountable for results. Seeing their brands as a conversation doesn’t make accountability any easier, but it does let marketers start a conversation, and that’s the path to long-term relationships with customers.
Kevin Masi is Co-founder and President, Future Builder