You Brand

No, this is not going to be a review of an old (or not so old) movie about Robin Hood.

The Sheriff of Nottingham (as many other castle owners at that time) was, amongst other things, a control freak. The town of Nottingham was surrounded by a huge wall and the entry was a drawbridge, which could only be operated from the inside. This way the Sheriff thought that he could control what and/or who left or entered town.

Many companies love the ‘drawbridge-principle’ to try to control their brand and the conversation about it.

The problem is – it didn’t work back then and it doesn’t work today.

Robin Hood and his followers didn’t trust the Sheriff and they had good reason to. They didn’t need the market of Nottingham, as they had found other sources. Actually they didn’t need any of the so-called ‘services’ provided by the Sheriff. For them the Sheriff was redundant.

The walls and the drawbridge didn’t prevent Robin Hood from entering and leaving Nottingham as he pleased. And they did not keep the residents of Nottingham from providing Robin Hood with ‘insider’-information.

At one point Robin Hood even used the drawbridge against the Sheriff. You might recall the scene, where he was about to be hanged. His followers had found their way into town (despite the wall and the drawbridge) and liberated him. During the escape, Robin Hood took his sword and cut the ropes that were holding the drawbridge. The drawbridge pulled up and the soldiers chasing Robin Hood were caught in their own trap.

If we were to replace ‘Robin Hood’ by ‘consumer’, ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ by ‘brand’ and ‘drawbridge’ by ‘information control’, we would have a pretty good description of what is happening today. Companies should stop acting like the Sheriff of Nottingham, because at the end they will lose and Robin Hood, i.e. the consumer, will win.

The other day I was watching an old Western film. At some stage there was a close-up of a horse and I noticed the brand. Back then it was common to mark a horse and other livestock with a branding iron. The resulting brand identified the owner.

Nowadays our individual mobility mode has changed. We don’t ride horses anymore, we drive cars, at least for the time being.

Have you taken a close look at your car recently? Have you noticed how many logos there are – logos being the modern interpretation of the ‘brand’? They can be found everywhere: on each wheel, on the engine hood, on the trunk hood, on many parts in the engine compartment and of course in the passenger compartment – the most prominent location being the steering wheel. In many cases you will also find it on the car key.

Whilst we are grateful that they discovered an alternative to the branding iron, one burning question remains: Are we comfortable with the inflationary use of logos? Does it add value for us? Does it add value to the brand in question?

I personally don’t think so. Especially in today’s world where less and less consumers are relying on brands to beef up their own public image. How do you feel when being excessively branded?

Some of these are actually very funny with impressive view numbers:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/929732/YouTube-hits-top-ten-home-made-videos-time/

More and more people don’t trust advertising. A recent GfK survey carried out in Spring 2009 in Europe and the US found that only 28% trust advertising managers, only politicians were found to be less trustworthy. As Howard Schultz aptly analyzed:In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. 40 years less than 10% of the public believed it was true.Is advertising dying, because people think it’s lying?

In the world before the Internet, one way media dominated. In this world, brands used advertising to address and influence target consumers ‘efficiently’ – ‘reach’ became the magic word and with it CPM (cost per thousand views of the ad) became the benchmark to calculate the relative cost of the campaign. A dialogue with the consumer was not on the agenda!

Since the 60ies, one way media channels exploded and they effectively developed two revenue models:They sold content to their audience and they ‘sold’ their audience to the advertising industry. Hence the amount of advertising exploded as well. The following 2 examples illustrate this point perfectly:

In 1965 it was possible to ‘reach’ 80% of the 18-49 year age group with 3 60-second Television commercials. In 2002 a brand needed 112 Television commercials to reach the same target.

In 2006 the average US consumer was exposed to approximately 5.000 advertising messages per day. Assuming a 16-hour day, that means 1 ad every 11,6 seconds

It is not surprising that consumers are increasingly annoyed with the omnipresent, impersonal brand monologue in one way media accompanied by an increasing loss of trust and a decline in quality caused by rapidly increasing demand.

Is advertising doomed to die? I personally don’t think so and will share my views in the upcoming posts.

What do you think?

Let me first explain what this post is not: It is not another comment on his incredible performances in Berlin and won’t attempt to analyze his relationship with the brand that supplies his running shoes.

Rather it is a post about decision and resulting action.

When Usain Bolt got his first running shoes – I assume he still had to buy them back then – he knew beforehand that he wanted to become a runner and to do what it takes to become a successful one. In other words, he didn’t get the running shoes to perform a task he previously performed with other shoes (like going to school or to the beach or shopping or whatever). He got them to run as quickly as possible on the track. He also realized that it requires a special, different attitude (training, nutrition etc.) to be really good at that.

Looking at many corporations and the way the treat social media, we find that they are not acting like Usain Bolt: They treat social media just like another marketing tool (i.e. just like another normal shoe) and refuse to realize that it requires a change in attitude.

If they want to be successful in social media, they have to commit to it beforehand and adhere to the rules that apply there. As long as they don’t change, they won’t be successful. Just like Usain Bolt wouldn’t have been successful wearing his running shoes to go to the beach or wearing street shoes to run on the track

Governments, economies and communities require trust to function and a society without trust ultimately dies. Even so, surveys keep on showing us that mistrust in on the rise. Besides politicians it’s usually managers, bankers and marketeers that we trust least. Why did our trust compass break?

Is it because of a general moral decline? Or because the value ‘trust’ was considered to be old-fashioned, meaning it didn’t sell well in a society shaped by an ‘anything goes’-mentality? Or because of the communication breakdown between producers and consumers in a world dominated by one way media before the Internet arrived?

The results are devastating: Companies have lost brand control, but many still refuse to realize and accept that.

Restoring trust therefore belongs on top of the agenda. That implies a change in corporate attitude: more entrepreneurship and less management. Entrepreneurship meaning discovering the chances, implementing the innovation, tapping the resources and using them and bearing the risks. Back in 1912 Joseph Schumpeter called this ‘creative destruction’.

Consumers are the most powerful ‘resources’. Including them in the corporate architecture of value creation will ultimately lead to a new, more successful business model.