Social Brand Equity – Every Brand Needs to Earn It

The Traditional Marketing basics tell us that the inherent trait of a brand is to stand apart in a crowd and invoke aspiration, positive associations and good word of mouth while in the process also create some natural brand assets like consumer loyalty, good recall, value & persona associations, price premium, etc. While in a real time marketplace where every product is competing for market share and consumer eyeballs at the shelf space level, a distinctive brand that stands apart does garner some attention among its consumers and once it does that it eliminates the fear of unknown thereby making them feel comfortable with the brand.

Eliminating this fear of unknown and making a consumer feel comfortable is what experts today call as the Brand connect factor. This connect factor is usually difficult to create and retain but easy to lose.

Today’s marketer establishes this brand connect through classic Brand Values Reinforcement, which is nothing but consistent/ different advertising (messaging) in different Communication mediums/ Channels. But the problem is that these mediums are called mass media and are typically one way messaging channels / mediums; which means that the marketer can send his message to the consumer but consumers cannot reciprocate back through the same medium. The medium available to the consumer to reciprocate back is usually through a Toll free number, where the person at the other end is more concerned with the sales closures (product trials/ purchase); Which is rather odd because it is very difficult for the Consumers to engage with toll free numbers. Ahem! Would that mean that all consumers who are not feeling connected to the brand’s values and offerings then it’s his problem!! – He shouldn’t call the toll free no – is it that Simple?? Or is it that the Consumer reciprocation is defined by measurable sales increase / product trials.

Lets face the truth – The Real Sad Truth!

Sad but true! Today every individual is a prospective target audience for so many products within his buying and decision making capacity (soaps to refrigerators, to iphones to play station – across consumables verticals/ industry). And every single day the same target audience is exposed to same/similar sponsored messages by multiple brands. To an audience it looks like the entire society has become an endless stream of advertising. No matter what they do, there’s always a sponsor, a banner, a button or patch, a logo, a brand-identification scheme or something with intent to sell. Its not that the consumer of today doesn’t know who is actually paying for the advertising!

More consumers are avoiding ads today and a majority of them feel there is “too much advertising”.  Infact, many consumers today are ready to pay a premium for advertising free content (there goes the concept of brand equity out of the window!) . This seems to be true because advertising/ marketing content in any media today is close to 30-40% of real / original content consumed by users/ audiences.

Obviously people en masse have begun to distrust marketing and marketers. … A marketer’s ostentatious attempts to declare undying love, to get ever closer to the customer with a brand connect through traditional media is immediately discounted by the users who start from a position like “who and is this guy and why is there so much unwanted Love and care for me everyday, every time I switch on the TV or a newspaper”.

Besides all the marketers and their baby “Brands” are so used to talking and only talking about themselves, their product, their USP’s….. (whatever) that  they have forgotten about their consumers, and top it up they are not allowing their consumers to reciprocate – Thanks to one way one way messaging features.  Doesn’t It sounds like being tied to a chair with tape on your mouth and left alone with your worst fears?

Enough Talking – Lets Start Listening!

The reality is Consumers don’t go seeking for Advertising Content – they are looking for solutions to their problem. While all this while the key need was to create “Listening experiences” rather than enabling “ Me only talk – you only Listen” experiences- such experiences are what are being termed today as sponsored relationships. And consumers don’t like sponsored Experiences or relationships because a relationship is very personal – A sponsored relationship is like having a sponsored mom or kid. Such sponsored relationship and the resulting experience surely lasts for a very little time. In a real traditional media dominated world, there is hardly any choice available for the “Un Connected” Audience to express or voice his opinion or even attempt to engage with the brand. The truth today actually might lie somewhere else!

Social Media space allows the target audience to not only express and reciprocate but also allows them to share and participate. Today, The engaging type of Target Audience is already talking about brands and products among their circle of influence in most social media channels more vociferously and profoundly than any brand’s communication itself. When the consumers are not looking for Sponsored Relationships they are looking for reciprocation. Reciprocation becomes important, because not many brands have done that with consumer till date; While all the consumer might be wanting to tell / ask is:

“Hey I have already bought your product”

“I don’t need your product now”

“your brand is expensive than others why?”

“your brand is not what you claim to be?”

“Can I have this in red?”

“ Is it available near my place?

“I like your brand” and so on and so forth

Social Media is an arena where the brand has to earn its respect – not by media spending muscle but by engagement, conviction, participation, Collaboration, and sharing. Please understand that Social Media is an Experience and not a media. In the social media context it’s a “deserve and then desire” Keyword that needs to be strengthened. Because gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences.  Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization.  It no longer matters what you say;   your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are!

And the key here is “Listening”. if you listen >  you will understand the consumer’s needs and wants > if you do something about it >  you will engage with the consumer > If you do something as well as engage then:

• You would have created a good relationship with the customer
• You will prove that you care for a consumer
• The consumer in turn will Respect your brand, follow your brand and recommend your brand to his circle of influence
• Such respectful encounters with the consumers enthuses that you are listening and supporting the views of the audience- These are the times when the target audience joins relevant support groups and communities and magic happens when they come together as a group (where individuals of the group have like minded thinking & a strong purpose and of course its own group dynamics). A lot of groups with similar purpose get together to form a Community and lots of communities get together to form an  entire eco system- where one group supports other while depending on some other group to fuel its purpose. They will engage with each other and with the brand in a typical group behavior that I had talked about in my previous post
• The consumer will now be part of your eco system that provides feedback, recommendations, ideas, support, following and real time collaboration. Many of the consumer ideas may not work but there will have enough innovation points for a R&D and customer experience team.

When that happens, you will always be with your customers – not behind-; which I think is an optimized way of growth – if not ahead of the customers and marketplace

Now Don’t you think Social media very powerful tool! It can make or break a lot of reputations.

Social Media is Infact the game changer for a marketer who understands its power. Social media can enable the big turn of tables; The social media platforms can destabilize the marketer’s power parity because it provides the rightful power back to the People / audience.

A small but latest nokia incidence should help clarify things a bit, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop on 10th Feb 2011 sent out a company memo explaining how the firm is losing the battle against its rivals and standing on what he describes as “a burning platform”. Here are some selected excerpts from the memo

The Nokia Case:

“In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

 

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

 

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America.
At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

We’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.”

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

The above recent case exhibits that when it came to marketing and brand spends Nokia’s was amongst the highest, When it came to technology, Nokia did everything possible in their R&D labs– except that when came to customers and consumers Nokia decided to go separate ways. This is what made them stay behind their customers.

Sounds Amazing! because The brand that stands for ” Connecting People” failed to connect  with its   Audience

All that Nokia had to do was to make consumer; part of their Innovation team and R&D lab. Nokia just had to initiate a listening device amongst its consumer communities (listening devices= listening in social platforms) and sooner or later a great idea would have emerged (in Nokia innovation or R&D lab) from the consumer insight or experience, probably before iphone,

 

The truth Remains: Social media is not about buying media but about earning it. The more you engage – the more you earn respect as well

The source of all consumer needs and wants does not start in a company’s innovation centre or an R&D Lab.  Neither does the respect for a brand come with one way communications – nor it does not require hundreds of thousands of dollars of market research to prove it.

Getting New customers is important not just for every marketer but for every organization – but not at the cost of a progressive consumer base and Brand Equity. New customers will eventually happen and will be generated through social media not through hard sell or data capture of content followers but through conviction and honesty in engagements.

After all A Brand is about Experience – so is social media. Hope some marketers are listening!