Now that I'm a blogger (and hooked on it), I started thinking about the future of branding in a distributed society. I was reminded of a mirror I bought a few years back -- its frame appeared to be carved mahogany and it looked pretty good over my mantle. Unfortunately the corner of the frame got chipped when I moved to a new condo, revealing... not wood, but painted pressboard.
So what does this have to do with marketing & branding, you ask? (It's a bit of a stretch, but go with me on this one.)
In the past, marketers were able promote a sanitized view of the brand through one-way communication. If the product was vaporware and customer service wasn't too hot, that was ok. They could slap some paint & varnish over the brand and proudly display it through an ad or brochure. It looked good enough to attract customers, and it could often win awards. I confess, I've done it plenty of times. When there's not much to work with, you do what you can.
But in a distributed society, especially with the advent of blogs and sites like e-pinions.com, customers brazenly chip pieces off your brand to see if it's authentic... then tell everyone about it. It's now becoming glaringly obvious if your company is the equivalent of painted pressboard. Branding no longer belongs to the marketing department; the brand must permeate the entire organization. Have you ever looked up a hotel on Travelocity.com? You read the official fluffy paragraph provided by the marketing department, then you read guest comments. Last time I was on the site, I'd say 90% of the comments conflicted with the marketing-speak. I ended up selecting the only hotel in the area with consistently positive reviews. I wonder how many of the hotels' execs actually surf around and read customer comments? I'd say very few.
All this to say that authenticity is new brand imperative. No surprise to web-savvy individuals, but it hasn't caught on yet in BusinessLand. It's just a matter of time.
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