Being a 90:10 Business

As you may or may not have heard we recently left Brando Social to setup The 90:10 Group.  It’s been a great 13 months that saw us grow from a team of 2 to 15, build a network of leading thinkers from around the globe and achieve some pretty significant client wins along the way. I’m incredibly proud of the Brando Social team, what we achieved and my time there. Thanks to the trust of both The Band & Brown Group and their clients we got to deliver some exciting projects that pushed the boundaries and gave us great learnings along the way.

So why 90:10? At Brando Social we relished the challenge of helping evolve a PR group and their respective client base to be a better fit with the changing media landscape. Without doubt they as a discipline can truly bring about the effective use of new and important environments. However the deeper we got the stronger our beliefs became in that the value of social technology is much more than its use as a media. Social technology has the power to change the world we live in. It has already changed politics forever. It is changing business whether business likes it or not. It is not a fad. People are never going to give up this new found power. They will generally use it for good to fashion their world into a better place.

It became our belief that if business can effectively embrace the power of the network it will help make better products that people want, with cheaper routes to market, therefore leading to less waste. The impact will be felt by everyone not just the business as we will all benefit from cheaper, better and more useful products / services to help us in our particular lives. The trade off for businesses, in order to earn permission from the crowd to join their community and tap into their energy, must be a better business. They must be consistent, honest, clear in purpose and its articulation through actions not just your words. If they can rise to this challenge, as some have already started to do, the gains will be huge.

So our focus became to bring about change across the whole business making greater efficiencies, better products and the like. Previously this kind of conversation was outside of our clients remit. Even in a marketing and PR context they needed permissions from the board to change how they measure success before they could really start to use communities as anything more than a channel. So it became clear our client needed to be the decision makers at CEO / CFO / MD level. At a time when money is tight the opportunity we present is a timely and attractive one. As many sectors such as publishing and music are finding out to a greater or lesser extent a disruption is coming your way. So change can be brought about either from the top or via an external force. Our role is to help facilitate this change as a consultancy or bring it to life in solutions for whole industries.

The reason why we choose to use the ratio 90:10 to represent this mission statement is as follows:

For the last 500 years as David C tells it we have all been passive consumers on the end of a linear production line. Broadcast media reflected that.

It was a supplier heavy scenario with at least 90% of the energy to go from an idea to a sale coming from the producer. Idea generation, design, R&D, productization, through to the marketing and the distribution of it, came from inside the organisation. The consumer arrived for the last 10% – where they simply bought the product – 10% consumer, 90% the business.

With the arrival of the Internet and then simple social technologies from email to Facebook the world has been turned on its head. The consumer is no longer passive. They are participatory. They have opinion and more importantly they trust these opinions. They are the media and they are now ‘visually’ in control. I say visually because the notion of control was always an illusion as most conversations were hidden.

I can’t think of one sector unaffected by this major disruption. Whilst this may sound like a very threatening statement its only so to those that choose not to take the opportunity to evolve and adapt what are generally out-dated and fairly ineffective business models. To the others this is an opportunity. An opportunity to make direct, real-time connections with consumers on a global scale. The opportunity is to be a 90:10 business where 90% of the energy is coming from the consumer.

As demonstrated by the diagram below previously organisations were ‘mediator’ reliant whether that be an agency or media owner. Now success is only really engagement dependent.

We have already begun putting 90:10 thinking into practice across a number of clients and sectors. The successes of which we will share with you over the coming months. It is an exciting time as we bring in yet more great minds into the process with offices now opening in France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

What if MSN bought Twitter?

There has been a lot of speculation on the value of Twitter and quite rightly. I won’t explore it all but the most recent one says maybe a billion but I think this kind of assessment of the value of social media has to be done differently if it’s going to be done seriously.

To begin I don’t think VC’s are going to be fooled by the old reach / buzz being the primary valuation mechanic. Dot.com bubble then a second time by MySpace and Facebook. It just aint worth $1 billion and in these economic times it sure as hell is not. On its own Twitter has a long way to go to being a profitable biz it’s all speculative. Facebook has only just started to break even and poor old Rupert is totally bumbling along with his very expensive gift to Jnr which could become a mountain of debt.

So its value all comes down to who buys it. What value it brings the buyers existing biz and vice-versa.

So when would it be worth $1 billion. Well. What if MSN bought it? What if they integrated it into Messenger, syncing it with MSN Groups and Hotmail? The whole suite. If MSN’s reported figures are anything to go by it has the largest global reach of any social media through Hotmail alone. Yes email is social media for those in doubt. So add that with MSN Groups, Messenger with a desktop app on X million computers (anyone know the figure?) AND Bing. You just need to crack mobile which Twitter kind of already has.

It has good proven ad technology and a well organized global sales force behind it for agency / big client advertising. It would only need to adopt a Google Adwords approach to hit the long-tail and bingo you have the number one cash rich social media platform tied together by Windows Live ID that syncs the lot.

It looks like MSN are already trying to make Messenger more like Twitter with ‘Whats New’ and ‘Post Note’. Don’t bother just buy em. You have the pockets.

Some questions to ask when thinking about making a website.

When a client asks you to build a website you should consider the below before responding..

 - What is the desired action? Not what is the desired website action but human action? Is it to buy something. Believe something. Join something. Contribute something. What does the role of the website play in achieving that goal?

 - Does achieving that goal really need a website?

 - What would it take for YOU to perform the desired action above. Honestly. When was the last time you did it? How did a website help prompt or empower you to? Not as a marketer or web geek but as an average punter who doesn’t give a shit about clever executions.

- Why does this site deserve to exist in a sea of billions of web pages. What value does it bring to the creative commons? Or is it just adding to the clutter?

 - Would it be popular without the support of buying millions of impressions of media placements? Clicks are easy to get when you pay for them. But wasting clients money even if they are too stupid to realise isn’t professional.

 - If this is the ‘final’ destination? The grand finale in the relationship. Does it make it feel dirty like a one night stand? E.G. I got what I wanted now fuck off. Or could this be the start not the end of a relationship? It should always be the latter with the consumer at least.  

 - When reputation is everything would people really risk looking uncool to share this with their peers?

 - If it involves a game when drawing on inspiration think hard about which game you ‘liked’ that you actually played. I hear loads of people saying they went to check out a game and thought it was great but when asked if they played it they often say ‘not to the end’ or they simply find and excuse as to why not. 

- Are you just building it to take the clients money?

ANYTHING I HAVE MISSED?

Some inconvenient truths about the networked world that could save your asses.

It’s nothing new to suggest that the Network disrupts all it touches. Working as a specialist in the networked space over the last year it shouldn’t have come as a surprise all the things I had previously believed as a marketer, professional, businessman and more should also be disrupted. By focusing purely on working with brands in this space I am beginning to have to face some realisations that force me to be more puritanical in my dealings with clients. This means saying some unpopular things to people in crowded rooms but I assure you do it you will feel a lot better!

 

Inconvenient Truths

 

 

-Branding exercises, no matter how much money you throw at them can’t hide that what you say you believe in and what you do don’t marry.  

 

-The only awards worth winning are sales. Clever creative advertising just makes people talk about how clever the ad was and how great your ad agency is and not your product. Just because it’s a clever ‘viral’ ad where people were the channel you broadcast through doesn’t mean the same does not apply.

 

-Agencies that fail to enforce the required changes on their clients thinking just to protect old margins or be safe in meeting old KPI’s should also be held to account. As a purest it is my duty to show up these failings. If you are wasting 99.96% of your client’s budget you should not have a job. A conversion rate of 0.04% is literally just that. If you need you client to spend millions on getting people to engage with your mechanic they are paying for your incompetencies.

 

-Client: If your agency isn’t challenging you on a daily basis with these different rules you need to find a new one. The world is changing dramatically why aren’t your KPIs.

 

-If advertising bridges the gap between supply and demand. What happens when there is no gap?

 

-When you are left only with your naked product. What happens if it’s not the best one?

 

-Why isn’t it the best one when social media offers the market research nirvana of non-interruptive voyeurism? Listen.

 

-If you have to spend millions on trying to convince the consumer its what they need it obviously isn’t.

 

 

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-Don’t be so afraid of being seen to be real people? I can trust a fallible person far more than an apparently infallible one. Even if they were infallible how could I, a fallible one, ever connect with them? People buy people.

 

-Closed models of any sort won’t save you. The only restrictions and limitations you are imposing are on your own business.

 

-The only way most shareholders will realise this is when all that they possess has been stripped of any or all value.

 

-Marketing in social media is only just a bit better than marketing any where else because marketing treats things as ‘channels’.

 

-Business leaders that neglect the opportunities that the network presents to their company should be held responsible for gross misconduct. Even if their limited view of it is as a market condition they still failed to account for it.

 

If more than 10% of the energy around your brand is driven by you there is something wrong. This means that if less than 90% of the energy around your brand is not from the consumer there is something wrong. The 90:10 rule means your consumer is engaged, they like your product, they are improving it with you, they are marketing it for you, directly selling it for you, and they are your brand. This is where you need to be. If you aren’t you are not future proof and the future happens quickly nowadays.

What should a qualification in social media look like?

Social media as a dedicated working profession is still fairly new. Whilst there have been a handful of pioneers banging on about this stuff and helping shape the theory for some years they have struggled to get the financial buyin required to unleash its true potential within organisations as a practitioner. This is changing fast and it is not uncommon to have CEO’s and MD’s making the call to specialists rather than the eager but eternally restrained grad. Some of us have managed to make that fringe practice of our generalist digital lives the main ticket. I am one of those lucky people. Frustrated over the years by watching social media drop off the plan at the last minute for other more ‘safe’ online media activity it’s now all I do and I feel very lucky for it. I would like to find a way to help others do the same and find their vocation within it.

Companies embracing social media

Every week I‘m getting someone wanting to come and help with the strategy side at my agency. From web-designers to programmers account managers everybody wants in. But what are the skills required to do this role and is it for everyone? This question set about my wanting to explore what a qualification would look like if formalised and I would love your input as to what the curriculum would entail.

One thing is for sure I don’t think doing the strategy side is for everyone. Just like I don’t think being a planner, creative or entrepreneur is for everyone despite the masses of people who continually kid themselves of where their skills and weaknesses really lie. Few can think of new and creative ways of problem solving just like few can actually deliver those ideas. So from the start lets not think everyone working as a social media professional should be a strategist there are many more parts of the machine that need oiling.

Where should they come from? Well most people I know arrived at working in social media by a happy accident. Most had little interest in technology to start with and still don’t but love what it enables people to do. They often fell into digital as a whole by following a personal interest online and found this Internet thing connected them with others easily and quickly around the globe. They maybe found it helped them do their job quicker and better and having this knowledge slowly made them the digital guy in their company. Personally social media caught my attention as I slowly begin to realise the futility of the other kinds of online marketing I was implementing. I saw the opportunity to be doing something new and pioneering more attractive than driving down fairly unimpressive conversion or click through rates that at best reached the wonderous heights of 1%. To me that was a good indicator it wasn’t working and a clue that there might be a better way.

I never really read all the books about social media and still have a tonne sat gathering dust on my bookshelf despite protests from my well-read semi-intellectual peers. I don’t attend many events but might catch-up on the highlights. I often can’t see the point. I’ve found if you are a social media citizen you inherently learn the ethics. If you do social media in your job you learn what does and doesn’t work mostly by making mistakes along the way. These books in my mind add colour to what you already should know and are generally written for people who are finding the transition from the broadcast mindset difficult. I don’t know how relevant they will be for the next generation who have grown up knowing nothing different. They serve as a catalogue of eloquent analogies to pull out the hat when pitching. They do work and do help you articulate your point but it’s often a way of justifying what you already know to be common sense. Again how long will we have to undertake this arduous task? If we are planning a study of social media that is going to be relevant to today’s students as well as tomorrows we shouldn’t teach them how to suck eggs.

In my mind it should be much wider than just ‘marketing in’ but more ‘social media for’. For organisations, for business and more importantly for people and causes. Looking at the organisational or institutional change for the better that can be brought about by the empowerment of staff through social media is the most powerful lesson. After all if you are part of the community whether as a business or a person and are building relationships with those influential within them you no longer have to market in a traditional sense. You know what they need because they tell you. They will even help you find a solution for that need. Because they need it you don’t have to convince them of solutions worth. That cuts out a lot of the old practices.

For arguments sake lets say it’s a 1-year masters that can be undertaken by working professionals who know they need to upskill or post grads. The general theory covered in the aforementioned books should only serve to deschool rather frustratingly everything they have previously been taught and not take up too much of the focus. It is amazing the outdated theory still taught by reputable academic institutions on business, marketing and PR. For me the deschooling begins and ends with some simple basics; you can’t broadcast in social media, you can’t lie or spin and you can’t hide. You have to be a good citizen. You have to add value to the network otherwise it doesn’t need you. You have to give to get.

From here on in I think you can move very quickly into the doing part. Students should be asked to identify, join and / or create communities around a personal interest of theirs. They must identify an unfulfilled need felt by the community and find a way to serve it by providing social utilities or currencies through social media. Success as judged by the community is the only really important measure.

It would be great to get down to the specifics and break it up into modules with your help to find a way of writing a syllabus and offering this is a recognised accreditation. There are a number of Uni’s / business schools that have expressed an interest in pursuing this discussion with my agency but I feel a true solution can only be offered by the industry as a whole and in the spirit of our discipline be crowd-sourced.

Female Social Media Guru UK Awards 2009 (Official Line)

The award serves to celebrate the wealth of female speakers and practitioners of social media living in UK. In doing so its objective is to challenge the current under-representation of females on event panels by offering a high profile platform for women.

Anyone can nominate a person to be one of the five speakers at the final event, to be held in April 2009, via a previous posting on this blog.

The five will be selected through a poll of industry members, hosted on the Social Glue blog. By asking some of the UK’s best connected social media users to utilise their medium of expertise in order to promote themselves across Twitter, their blogs and respective communities we are ensuring maximum exposure for the competition, nominee pool as a whole and associated sponsors.

Each speaker will choose a subject they want to present about (subject to liaison with the event guardians to avoid any cross-over on the day).

Speeches from the event will be video recorded (courtesy of Wordia.com) and hosted on a dedicated competition site built by Brando Social. The site will then host a further round of voting by the industry at large (open to those outside of the UK) to choose a winner. All profits from ticket sales for the event will be donated to the Macmillan’s Cancer charity. The event winner gets to choose which specific sector of the wide-ranging care offered by Macmillans will benefit.

Additional prizes for the winner will be subject to event sponsors.
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Current Nominees Include:

@suw (Suw Charman-Anderson)

@aleksk (Aleks Krotoski)

@lauraoliver (Laura Oliver) of Journalism.co.uk

Emily Dent from St Lukes @emilydent

@mseaons Melanie Seasons

@katyhowell Katy Howell of Immediate Future

@Laurajohnson from Pegasus PR

Helen Aspell @hel_razor

Fleur Hicks of Pass it on Media @PassItOnMedia

Amanda Rose @amanda

@vikkichowney

Laura Whitehead @littlelaura

Amy Sample Ward of NpTech Comm@amyrsward

Joanna Shields from Bebo

Katie Lee of Shiny Media @shinykatie

Helen Nowicka from Shiny Red @helennow

Judith Lewis @judithlewis

Alex Goldstein @dogstrust

Helen Keegan @technokitten

UK’s Top Female Social Media Guru & Speaker 2009

Lisa Devany contacted me through the P2P Community I admin on Ning and asked if I could suggest some top notch female speakers in social media for an upcoming conference being planned on behalf of Brand Republic here in the UK. 

Well I didn’t know too many. In fact I am ashamed to say none. Having just put on a social media event of my own with what was later pointed out as an all male cast I felt  like some girl power. I reached out to my network across Twitter etc only to be inundated with recommendations within minutes. I’ve listed them below but if I’m honest the only reason why I can be sure they are any good is because in most cases they have come through people I trust some of whom are gurus and great speakers in their own right.

@suw (Suw Charman-Anderson)

@aleksk (Aleks Krotoski)

@lauraoliver (Laura Oliver) of Journalism.co.uk

Emily Dent from St Lukes @emilydent

@mseaons Melanie Seasons

@katyhowell Katy Howell of Immediate Future

@Laurajohnson from Pegasus PR

Addtions:

Helen Aspell @hel_razor

Fleur Hicks of Pass it on Media @PassItOnMedia 

Amanda Rose @amanda 

@vikkichowney

Laura Whitehead @littlelaura

 Amy Sample Ward of NpTech Comm@amyrsward 

Joanna Shields from Bebo

Katie Lee of Shiny Media @shinykatie

Helen Nowicka from Shiny Red @helennow

Judith Lewis @judithlewis

Alex Goldstein @dogstrust

Helen Keegan @technokitten

The shame of not knowing any of these women has led me to take this one step further and offer up a quest to find the…

 

 

 

UK’S TOP FEMALE SOCIAL MEDIA GURU & SPEAKER!

So 1st phase is taking recommendations for entrants (this can be self nominated if you’re that shameless) over the next 2 weeks starting from today 27.02.09. Simply post the full name, twitter / blog URL and link to a profile. 

Then at the end of the two weeks 12.03.09 we can start voting over who folk think should go through to the final round.

The final round will see 5 women selected to each provide a 20min presentation (Additon: at an event to raise money for Macmillans) whihc is recorded and uploaded to Vimeo to a set social media theme. You the community get to decide those themes.

In the mean time we are looing for brands to sponsor the day and a prize. Oh yeh and you get to say you’re the…

UK’S TOP FEMALE SOCIAL MEDIA GURU & SPEAKER 2009

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED @ www.femalesocialmediaguru.com

You must be Joaquin & the Socialization of Entertainment

Getting the public involved in the creation or marketing-of entertainment is nothing new from Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds to Blair Witch. Recent speculation around Joaquin Phoenix’s headline making bloopers has pundits Parez Hilton, Huffington Post and even the UK’s mainstream Guardian debating if this is the latest the-jokes-on-you. I think the fact his brother in law Cassey Affleck is currently following him around making an undisclosed documentary about his ‘transition’ suggests all is not as it seems. So I won’t focus on the validity of it all as I think we all know the answer. What does interest me however is the role the public can now play in this kind of process through the use of social media now it’s firmly mainstream.

Previously War of the Worlds duped the public, the passive observer, into believing their world was being invaded. I don’t think the end result was expected, I may be wrong, but rather it was a rather nice and unexpected turn of events due to the pioneering quality of work achieved by Mr. Welles. Once media execs saw the value to this kind of outcome the format was continued and honed in the emerging TV medium where the joke saw the unsuspecting public as the cast / victim.  Japan took the format to another level with sometimes quite sick but hilarious Crowd Man pranks. But it was all just for laughs and not really making a cultural impact or statement.

Enter daring Chris Morris who lampooned the UK Media’s changing obsessions that had focused its glare on pedophilia through a tong-in-cheek social commentary and mockumentary Brass Eye. Agree with it or not it got the public and every hack debating what it said about our society today and the media. But what if the general public could play a bigger part and unwittingly construct the story?

Recently a client who represents fighting the stigma of mental illness in the UK wanted a ‘viral’ to help combat and highlight the issue. You only have to look at how the media treats those on the edge Kerry Katona / Britney to see the media don’t exactly help the average Joe perceive mental illness in a particularly sensitive way. My idea, that I don’t think ever got to the client was; lets get a celebrity (of the cult student variety) to go along to a fresher’s event and lose the plot. Have an emotional breakdown right there. Let the students with all their camera / video phones capture and then distribute the content across social media until the newspapers, celeb mags pick up it. Sit back and watch the media / public fill in the blanks and create the story for you. You can just imagine the gossip mags YouTube comments… ‘Celeb losses the plot’ Celeb X is a nutter!

Whilst I don’t think Joaquin has done this subtly or well as he has created too much of the media himself and given too much too soon the concept is there. Rumor has it he is making a mock-u-mentory about Hollywood fame and the media circus that surrounds it. 

I think the explosion of social media usage, which now dwarfs all other media for consumption, and the complexity of RPG gaming culture has created a generation that want to get much more involved other than just decide what the character should do next. Brands have tried to get into this space with their own misinformed brand versions of things like Kate Modern EG Nokia and Annasphone but failed. To be honest I’m not sure how much a brand can bring to the table beyond this attempt but would be open to suggestions.

My thinking is it’s the production companies that should be really pushing this area now that the golden reality show format is old-hat and failing them. I think social media allows social entertainment to be more than personal medias, a prank or advertising campaign but rather an opportunity to let society collectively create the story, provide the characters, then look at itself for what it really is.

 

User generated ads aren’t the same as consumer generated ads

I am all for companies inviting consumers into the creative process to help define and communicate their brand. There is nothing worse than 30 something advertising execs trying to be street and think like an 18 boy from Peckham. Even with focus groups they just give you a framework to be creative within. The point is let; the consumer market the product for you in the way they see fit for their peers. But does asking creative folk to come up with your latest ad fulfil the same ambition of peer-2-peer or is it just a way to get a cheap advert when money is tight.

The reason I ask is every week there seems to be a new campaign where brands are asking people to make an animation, song or shoot a video for their next advert. You Make It We Play by Doritos Is just one example but there are many more. Don’t get me wrong these are all nice baby steps towards where we want to be but the problem is who does this appeal to? Is it actually your consumer or just a very small community of art students? If it’s not your consumer and its just all the people who haven’t progressed to the position within your agency creative team isn’t this crowd-sourcing a grad hire to come and work for free.

If the one that wins is because they have made the most entertaining ad, others voted for them, but they weren’t your consumers does that mean it has more relevance or just likely to be more seen. What are the impacts of that on sales or brand equity? If the idea is supplied by a non-professional creative and approved by your 30 something marketing director hasn’t it missed the value-give of your actual consumers participation. It would be interesting to know if any of the winners of these competitions actually ever bought the products they made the ad for BEFORE winning. If not we are back at square one; the Marketing Director and ad agency guessing what the 18-year-old boy from Peckham wants from a pool of UGC.

There is also a new take on just totally replacing the retained agency and ‘crowd souring’ solutions to briefs as seen here at Idea Bounty. However this leaves even more power in the hands of the 30 something marketing director who now has no one fighting back, and trust me the best relationships between client and agency require that dynamic to achieve anything close to brilliance, at least brilliance in the old broadcast model. And guess what they get it for a fraction of the price.

No matter how you look at any of these models you end up with one ad to meet the requirements of many. Even though its been crowd-sourced it is still broadcast and even if you get the million views viral video yes its still broadcast. The clue is in what happens after your broadcast version gets millions of hits the mash-up (Dove Real Beauty time-scape) but not necessarily the mash-up that gets the next million hits but something more meaningful than eyeballs.

Solution (A):

Do you like our product? Here are some tools to tell your friends and us why. For every sale / signup your creative achieves you get prizes or plain old dirty MONEY (straight old fashioned affiliate deal). The one with the most sales / actions becomes the official campaign.

If that’s just too scary hows about this..

Solution (B): AKA Social Brief Creation

Find a handful of people who are out there talking about your product / company and another handful talking about your competitors. Pick a couple from those groups that have the widest social graph and invite them to your HQ to join the creative process beyond a one-night stand focus group. Ask all the obvious questions and empower them to even ask their peers the same ones. Ask them for their ideas and sit them down with your creative team (should be social media team but I know many haven’t made that step yet) and collaboratively come up with ideas (again get them to pitch these to their peers leveraging their social graph) and see which work. Guess what by the time you nail the creative invite all those who participated to watch it be made and you won’t have to do any seeding as you already have your advocates (that which we create we embrace to quote David Cushman’s ramblings).

The Brand & social media

The humble brand was once a literal stamp of ownership and control on the butt of your stock. It became a seal of quality and gradually evolved to become the narrative used to fill the physical gap that arose between the supplier and the demand once we stopped just buying all our goods from our neighbour. ‘Old Jack Daniels of Tennessee made this with love and care so you folk in Dulwich can have some fun’. ‘They’ve been doing it for a while now and know what they are doing’. It was a sign of trust that ensured a premium price, a price control that defied continents.

From these humble beginnings to today it has become something people were willing to sacrifice the quality of the actual thing it was branding just to be in its association. You only have to look at the billion dollar global counterfeit industry to see just how out of control the brand has become. A bag that looks like a Louis Vuitton but will fall apart in 3 weeks is desireable! So valuable is The Brand that when the controlling company is valued by the financial markets the share of value attributed to its brand or brands equity can be over 60% more than the actual revenue yield. Look around you right now. Companies that are bankrupt, not very good businesses, are being bought because of the legacy of The Brand alone.

 

Planning a brand

So what does The Brand mean in the changing cultural landscape brought about by social media? What does it mean in social media? I ‘ve being having an ongoing debate with my, other, significant other David Cushman and colleague at Brando Digital about these very such issues. Having spent some time at JWT, founders of the brand planning discipline and creators of supposed timeliness brands such as Mr Kipling cake, I have come to admire The Brand and its creations,  that little Andrex Puppy, and have always paid it a silent respect. David in true revolutionary style quite simply shat on that Andrex puppy. He told me in no uncertain terms The Brand quite simply is a tool of mass media to sell mass product to the mass consumer and well social media was going to do away with all that. What no brands! Erm gosh David I think you might be going to an extreme there.

 

I debated the fact for over a week and began thinking about this post. Firstly there are many different kinds of brands; Employer, Corporate, Consumer. Without doubt social media destroys or at least vastly restricts the old power of illusion The Brand could magic. You now have to really deliver on your promise or face the consequences. Just look at the effect on Kryptonite’s losses as a result of losing the illusion. It’s true there is even greater convergence between all three brand type as the employees that sit behind these brands start popping up for better or worse in social networks. You are represented by your employees who are out there participating in social media, talking freely without managerial supervision, telling it like it is. And lets not even talk about that dastardly consumer.

David’s point was, which he clearly communicates in his book, that mass media / The Brand filled the physical gap between supply and demand. Digital made that gap smaller as it made the world smaller. I am sat next to who I wish when I wish.

Engagement marketing means that through social media producer and consumer can connect on a one-to-one. There is no need for an illusion or narrative. But rather communication can be conversation, can be personal not mass, can be practical not mythical. This is the gradual ‘Mass Destruction’ of media and production. Mass Destruction that causes a fragmentation of all it touches; TV is ever more fragmented into what I want and when. Production of goods ever more so. I can tell the producer what I want if they will listen. Which improves the product. No longer is it ‘supply and demand’ but ‘demand and supply’. Already online sees an opportunity for people to customize their Nike trainer to be exactly what they want. This means they will almost certianly talk about it. Perhaps they should even allow people to sell their designs to their peers and take a cut. That’s right they will sell it for you without any marketing. It makes me wonder how long before David Beckman’s endorsement and brand equity is worth less revenue to a manufacturer than Kenneth, aged 36, from Stoke. Sure not everyone is going to be a creator. Just as not everyone, currently, uses social media. But they narrow the gap for the rest of the other folk still stuck in the world of Mass. Because by them improving the product to fit better the needs of their peers they decrease the need for the brand investment to have to lie. This should be a large relief to the manufacturer who has being paying billions to ad men since the 1930s.

What social media does is decrease its importance as a means to inspire purchase. Right now, this very minute, organizations who have grasped this concept and who have embraced engagement marketing / social media are reaping the benefits. I will, as would any social media professional, cite Dell here. They invited the consumer to improve the product, they listened, they sat down at the campfire (as David would say) and sold over $1million through Twitter alone. The benefits are felt by every Dell consumer even the ones who didn’t participate. The Dell brand isn’t dead because of social media it has been freed to go back to its humble origins as a genuine stamp of quality and importantly approval.

So in part David is right. The Brand is becoming the brand. However as long as mass media exists, until its very last breath, so The Brand will keep some of its old ways. But it will be truer. The brand planner, excluding any unforeseen upheavels that will almost definitely come along, continue with their processes but take into account how social media changes the Environment part of the planning diagram above.

So what to do now Mr Brand Manager? Well during most economic downturns the bulls say ‘invest more money in the brand seize a greater share of the market’. I have a better option for you and one that will be a huge relief to your no doubt  stressed finance director. Invest a fraction of that money in reducing the gap between you and your consumer. Start listening and where possible let your employees sit down at the consumer camp fire and join in the conversation. Let them co-create your product. Incentivize them to sell it.