What is a brand?
Is it identity, a name, symbol, or trademark? Is it a personality?
If you are reading this, you know these are rhetorical questions. A brand is all of these things and it is no single one of them. The idea of brand is a paradox. A brand has value but the value is intangible. A brand’s value is also undeterminable at any single point in time, it’s cumulative. Here’s a little story that illustrates my point:
Picasso, sitting in a café, was approached by a woman. She asked the artist if he would do a sketch for her on a paper napkin. He agreed, did a quick sketch, handed back the napkin, and asked for ten thousand dollars. Surprised, the woman asked, “Why so much? It took you less than a minute to draw this!”
“No”, Picasso replied, “It took 40 years.”
Picasso was aware of the value of his personal brand and he knew it was derived from his cumulative work and reputation.
Before social media, businesses were able to dominate the public’s perception of their brands with paid advertising. Today, reputation is earned. Word-of-mouth (perceived as genuine) holds more sway over consumer opinion than marketing (perceived as self-serving.)
But, just because social media undermines traditional marketing’s credibility, does not mean the end of advertising, although it may mean the end of paid persuasion. Advertising isn’t becoming irrelevant, it’s role is simply changing.
The world is cluttered with content. The problem with everyone having a voice is the noise. Consumers look to their peers to learn the truth about which brand lives up to its promise, but they still look to the brand itself to understand what the promise is.
Brands still control their marketing messages. They can even control their reputation in the “blogosphere” and “twitterverse,” but not by blogging and Tweeting. The way to control what’s said about you on-line is by walking the walk, serving your customers and minding your reputation. If you do that, the public will create positive chatter about you. You can encourage it by hosting the forum, but you can’t fake positive chatter, you can't spin it and you can’t advertise your way to a good reputation.
It’s not about who’s voice is loudest, or the most frequent, or even the most relevant anymore. It’s about who’s is the most genuine. Social media may turn out to be the window into a brand’s soul.
