[Note: I posted this elsewhere awhile ago. Since then I've thought a little more about it...]
Much has been made of the specialness of brands that are adored, desired, and truly loved by consumers since Lovemarks was published. Only a few consistently come to mind, and you can see how they play out in the brand battles at brandtags.net. Sometimes it seems like there are so few true ‘brands’ that you can count them on both hands: Adidas, Apple, BMW, Coke, Ferrari, Google, Lego, Nike, Pixar, YouTube. They stand for something, they have meaning, they evoke imagery and feeling and spirit. They are, in other words, lovable.
But for many years now we’ve been convinced that anything with a trademark or a .com or a business card can be a brand. It isn’t true. Not everything – or everyone – is a brand. Sometimes they are just people, companies, products, services.
A friend and former colleague told me about a client who wanted to make a button on one of their remote controls a brand. A component piece of a component piece of a utility service – made into a brand. I’ve had clients who want the silhouette Apple iconography – now. I’ve had others muse that if they just had the Intel chimes, they’d stick in people’s heads longer. They’d completely forgotten about the work those companies had to do to earn the right – and the privilege – of being so recognizable. We had to have “1000 songs in your pocket” and “Rip. Mix. Burn.” in order to get to the iconic iPod earbud cords. We had to to see stickers on every PC tower and see the dancing technicolor ‘bunnysuits’ and get excited about the Pentium (remember that?) to give Intel credit for that sound.
And as we know, love fades. Brands that once deserved, even demanded our love, have grown distant, tiresome, old. Some brands have deserted us for younger consumers. Others stopped bringing us flowers, thinking we’d settle for something a little less. Many make us work harder to get their attention and their affection. You see, the problem for years was that marketing managers, companies believed it was their right to demand our love. They believed if they were loud enough, repetitive enough, big enough, we’d all adore them.
Over the last decade – the one just ended – many marketing managers concluded that the brave new world was upon us; that the monologue had been supplanted by a dialogue. That was the nice way of putting it – what many really thought was that they’d opened up the doors to all the riff-raff and found themselves deafened by the cacophony of consumer voices. Control of the brand was threatened by this transparency, by all this commenting and linking and reviewing and forwarding and tweeting.
But a new age is upon us – everyone’s going digital, everyone is, in the parlance of The ARF, “listening” – or in the framework of Henry Jenkins, fostering participatory culture. Yet even this winds up as a one way street. Many agencies are interpreting digital solely as online direct response marketing – and leaving creativity, demand creation, brand building in the dust. Many researchers and brand managers interpret listening as eavesdropping, getting consumers to do the work for you. It reminds me of how Tom Sawyer pulled a con – I’ll let you paint my fence if you’ll give me your apple. Who’s getting the better deal? As it turns out, no one.
Positioning and brand strategy have become empty vessels for a lot of companies. Getting people to love you is the result, not the strategy. What I’m interested in and passionate about is figuring out: what do you have to offer that makes you lovable? What can you offer people that shows them you care? And how do you prove it? When I talk to clients, we’ll talk about your brand, and your consumer – but we’ll have to talk about it in a slightly different way. We’ll need to reckon with your present and your past, but we must face the future.
If we don’t talk about who you really are as defined by what you do, what you make, how you present yourself – in other words, your products, services, employees, distribution methods, design, pricing and service – we’re only ever talking about window dressing. If we don’t align who you are with how you want people to feel about you – we’re likely to make products and messages that don’t break through and don’t stick.
And if we don’t keep our eyes open to the possibilities – to the people who do, could, and should love you – then we risk your business. To get love, you have to give it – all the relationship advice in the world can be boiled down to that truth. The way companies give love is simple: respect the people you want to sell things to, and make things they would want to buy. The hard part (read: the really fun part) is figuring out how to get there.