Facebook – the big brand arena

“Overwhelming majority of big US brands are on Facebook

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 10-Aug-09, 09:15“

Having worked for many major US brands, I find this article fascinating. For me,  Facebook is a powerful tool for brands and as the above article states many major brands are having incredible success – but it can also be a dangerous pool to swim in as brands equally expose themselves to attack. To really engage with a brand’s audience via social media means relinquishing a great deal of control – not something that comes naturally to many established US brands, in my experience.

Key to success through social media is to understand that it is not about communication… it is about conversations. It is as important (if not more so) to listen as well as talk. If customers, employees or others are saying bad things about your brand, listen, be honest, and if there is some foundation… take action. If you are conducting your business in an honest and ethical manner there there should be minimal scope for brand damage – the good should outweigh the bad.

That so many major US brands should have been prepared to relinquish a good measure of control is a pointer for us all. I find that it is often lesser brands who are more paranoid about what they see as the anarchic nature of social internet. Paradoxically, it is also for these brands that it presents some of the most cost effective opportunities.

Ultimately, it is about brand confidence: if you believe in your brand get out their and talk about it. Engage in those conversations… and above all listen! At the very least it will save you a shedload of money on focus groups.

New website

Okay, I admit I’ve not been doing much blogging recently as I’ve been working on my company websites and developing a new site aimed at my European business – www.one-marketing.eu.

Brands and social networking

I have long advocated the use of social networking in brand developent – it seems so fundamental to what brand awareness is about, people talking to each other about the brand.

Well, for uk brand owners and promoters there is an even stronger case for including social internet in the branding mix. It seems we brits top the league in social Internet use.

UK leading social network use

Brits average 5.8 hours per month on social networking sites

Yet still major companies are missing the opportunities:

Businesses fail to tap social networking

Gartner identifies major challenges for corporates

MePLC – forget the brand as person model, what about the person as brand?

I get very bemused by the way the media, and indeed the wider public,  has latched onto the idea of the brand – today, everything is a brand. I’m not going to irritate my ulcer by trying to define when it is or is not right to refer to something or someone as ‘a brand’. During the recent US primaries, there was much talk of the Obama brand and the Clinton brand. I struggled for a while over whether this was a useful way of looking at the candidates as having a brand – having something that had a life beyond that of the candidates. I had to conclude that there was some currency and utility in looking at the ‘brands’ as the brand represented values and actions that extended beyond the individual.

Now I look at phenomena such as reality television and social internet: with Facebook, Utube and MySpace, everyone seems striving to become a brand. It’s MePLC.

Well, that’s gone too far I think. John Smith with his blog, his space, his twitter is not a brand – he is John Smith. People may strive for celebrity and we may all look for our 15 minutes of fame, but let us rejoice in the reality of our own personality.

More missing the point.

Hmmm… so in another effort to help protect us from ourselves, the government are suggesting banning all show of logo’s etc. for cigarette merchandising. I am constantly amazed at politicians confusion between the brand and brand communications… but it does present an interesting thought exercise.

If cigarette brands (or any other brands for that matter) are banned from communicating their brand or using their brand assets, where will brand differentiation come from? I guess in ancient times before we had many formal brand communication, Eli the bowmaker made fine bows. One expert bowman might ask another where he got his bow, to be told it is one of Eli’s bows. So, it is word of mouth, stimulating conversations and generating viral brand communication. So are we likely to see cigarette brands exist in the world of personal conversations?  Will there be a flowering of smokers’ blogs? Are we talking Fag 2.0?

Sadly we will probably never know because such a fascinating social experiment will never happen as another sound bite idea is destined to end up under the Westminster sink with the yogurt maker and the multi-chopper.

Managing multiple personalities

There was a recent article in the New York Times, discussing how individuals present themselves in virtual worlds and the social internet. The author referred to the work of psychologist and sociologist, Erving Goffman who used the analogy of theatrical performance for the way we present ourselves to others in the world.

We all have multiple identities in this life – parent, child, workmate, lover, friend, enemy, teacher, pupil etc.  In the virtual world of social internet we present ourselves in various ways and manage out identities by subtle means. We choose or usernames or screen names to convey meaning; the interests we choose to list, the books and the music – out of all the things we could list, we are very selective to create subtle impressions, even though we often do this partly subconsciously.

Brands to do this: there are the explicit and overt things they do – the copy, the selection of images, the clients they choose to list. If we follow the brand as person model, it is like a person choosing to list Wittgenstein and Dickens in their book list rather than Jeffrey Archer and Harry Potter, where a brand might select multinationals with spotless records rather than dodgy arms dealers or polluting manufacturers.

Waitrose gets social

On the News Quiz on Radio 4, Sandi Toksvig said; “the only purpose of Sainsburys is to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose”. It is testament to the power of brand positioning that we all knew what she meant and were able to laugh at it.  But, hey: look what’s happening Waitrose! Their website is embracing social internet with blogs, forums and lots more.

Who knows, maybe they will even be successful in engaging with riffraff like me. Anyway the site is well worth a look and a lesson to retailers on how to harness social internet, even if Waitrose have still have not plucked up the courage to give up total control.

New media v traditional media

How does new media stack up against traditional media? 

There’s and interesting bit of research from Ketchum/University of Southern California on user trends in media usage by consumers. In brief, one of the key findings is that consumers rely more on TV and press than the web, in making their buying decisions.  Good news for media owners you would have thought – except like many academic studies the element of cost does not figure – comparisons in terms of effectiveness per pound (or dollar) might show a very different picture.

Another interesting finding is the importance of recommendation by a trusted friend in making buying decisions. This is probably further endorsement for social internet as a tool for enhancing brand reputation bu recommendation.

Read the summary of the report here.

How do we learn what we know about brands?

There are two main ways we process information about brands, one is actively dealing with facts and the other is information we absorb and deal with without consciously processing it. There are various terms for these but I tend to use Active Involvement Processing (AIP) and Passive Involvement Processing (PIP).

For example I can give you a lot of information about, say, the Mercedes brand – it’s a German manufacturer, has a particular range of vehicles, its history, pricing, dealer network, residual values etc.  You can actively use that information to make decisions by AIP.  But there is a lot of knowledge you have about the Mercedes brand in terms of its values, ethos and personality that you have acquired while never being consciously involved in processing – you acquired it by PIP.

The first kind of knowledge is very accessible to normal marketing communications techniques, advertising, PR, literature etc. – its the ‘what’ we tell customers. PIP is about far more – it is not just about the ‘voice’ and the ‘how’ we tell it, but it is about the organisation and products or services themselves. Once again it is about brand relationships.

Increasingly this is an area that can be explored by engagement with social internet: becoming involved in and listening to the conversations about our brands and products.

How do brands live in a digital world?

How has new media impacted brands?
It goes without saying that digital media has dramatically changed the marketing and marcomms mix and anyone involved in branding or brand development has digital high on their agenda. Just how high depends upon the brand itself – not all brands are created equal

It’s apparent that this is a massive subject which I’m sure I will return to again and again, so for now let’s just consider the categories of brands

Traditional and existing brands – these generally take digital <into their standard marketing activities, though there are many brand awareness surveys indicating that a combination of online and offline promotion has far greater impact then the sum of the two activities.  Simple factors also have impact on existing brands – for example, consider B&Q and AT&T – where ampersands are not available in URLs. No wonder we have diy.com.

But many brands are now exploiting social internet, as strong brands generate discourse and conversation – for better or for worse. Everyone wants to talk about well-known names and if the brands are smart they can tap into this valuable resource to inform their marketing decisions.

Web-only brands

The internet has sponsored many brands that would not have existed previously – Amazon, lastminute.com, Google, Facebook etc.  For all of these, the web is their only shop window.  Such brands are usually very adept at on-line marketing but the really smart marketers exploit traditional marketing equally well.

One of the dangers with an online brand is that the owners are so focussed on the digital environment they neglect the offline arena. Just as offline brands need to exist in a digital world as well, online brands may also have opportunities to develop and extend into the offline world as well. Owners must take care to consider these opportunities in their brand development and not create something which presents real difficulties to work with offline.

New Brands

Perhaps the most exciting area is the creation of new brands. It is here taht the greatest impact is seen – any aware marketer must consider online opportunities as part of the brand development programme.  Equally important though are the opportunities digital media presents for the brand development process itself. Research, testing, market intelligence, surveys and brand comparisons can all be executed quickly and inexpensively online – even launches can be effected with massive impact for new brands.

We touched on Web 2.0 earlier, but for new brands the conversations that can be stimulated and the feedback marketers can get is hugely valuable. The only discipline that needs to be applied is in relinquishing a measure of control to engage with the audiences – something many companies find extremely difficult.