If you didn’t know already, Julian Assange must have convinced you: the brand as we knew it is dead.
In my father’s time, corporations were run by a few men, who met in private clubs, seated in leather wing chairs and protected by wood-panelled walls from the outside world. There was no fear that a radical idea might disguise itself and creep in, and what crept out was tightly controlled. In those days, choice was limited and consumers, by and large, bought what was made available to them.
Baby boomers are fond of telling tales of how they took to the streets to oppose these elites, but of course we know now that these are the nostalgic laments of former armchair radicals. They took over the leather wing chairs from their elders and preached the doctrine that brands could be planned, managed and controlled. And, in their world, this was largely the case.
Shocked as the mainstream media were at the impotence of the US and other governments in the face of the Wikileaks scandal, governments were only experiencing what businesses have already seen several times over: you can’t control what is said about you. The gentlemen’s clubs have long since faded away, and other forces have taken over.
At one time, we might have written off these other forces as geeks: for a few years, those who understood new communications technologies had privileged access to public discourse. Now, the technology is so simple that a child has as much of a voice as those aging gentlemen who continue to linger on in the halls of power.
And that child can destroy a brand that has taken decades, and millions of dollars, to build. Conversely, he or she can build a brand from nothing. When Dave Carroll’s guitar was broken by United Airlines and he took his case to the court of YouTube, millions chuckled at his amusing videos, but United took the damage to its brand very seriously indeed. Unilever brilliantly built its Dove brand through a combination of conventional media and the internet, around its “Campaign for Real Beauty” theme: the campaign was widely parodied, not always positively, but it stuck.
This is Web 2.0, controlled not by corporations but by users. It’s the Wild West of communications, where anything goes but not much sticks. To survive, indeed thrive, in this environment, you need to do three things:
1. Forget the illusion that you have control over your brand. More than ever, your brand belongs to consumers. You do not control the discourse around it and there is no point losing sleep over what is said about it. This said, you can contribute to, and influence, the discourse.
2. Monitor what is being said about your brand. Keep a close eye on the discourse, where it is heading, and where it might go. This is relatively easy to do through monitoring software on blogs, social networking and video sites.
3. Engage in the discussion online. Don’t wait for a crisis to erupt: be part of the conversation with and between consumers. Position your brand as a facilitator and a medium, and in some areas an authority by virtue of the credibility you earn with consumers.
Web 2.0 can be seen as a threat or an opportunity – but either way, it is here to stay. For now, that is. Nothing is assured in the age of user control, except perhaps that Web 3.0, whatever it is, is around the corner. The leather wing chair is a bit less comfortable now, but comfort was always overrated …
