Does your customer mold/control your brand? or do you…
During a jog this morning I was listening to a podcast series by ‘The Marketing Guy’, Jay Ehret – called the “Marketers Roundtable”. They brushed on this topic a bit and it lead me to this post. My thoughts…
There has been a lot of talk about who actually controls you brand, especially with social media in the realm; folks have been leaning towards the acceptance of your customers controlling your brand, because you really can’t control it anyways.
I think there is a little give and take on this.
You can’t totally allow the consumer to dictate or define what your brand stands for. Not all customers see your brand like everyone else does. They create their own use and how they see you individually. People will always talk about your brand, whether it’s good or bad. This doesn’t control your brand, its merley dialogue. Where the control, or brand representation, comes in is how you respond to those messages. Your actions, your demeanor, your attitude is what dictates your brand. It’s a personality, it’s how you live and breathe.
Your brand is going to be hated, loved, and felt somewhere in the middle. By altering it, one way or the other, to gain acceptance by those who don’t accept your brand, it’s most likely going to disrupt your loyal customer base. Just like human relationships, not everyone is attracted to everyone. They usually gravitate towards a certain personality. It’s up to the brand to hone in on the loyal customer base to please them and flourish that relationship, others will proceed, you just need to establish a loyal foundation.
A brand comes from the inside out, you the organization controls your brand.
Don’t be influenced to do otherwise. If you do this, you’re altering your personality to ‘please’ everyone, thus resulting in an ‘artifical’ relationship. You’re basically putting on a good face.
For instance, back to the human interaction (relationship), when two people are about to enter their marriage life as one they do so because they were gravitated towards eachother because of who they are, to both the good and the bad. In this sense, the good by far outweighs the bad, therefore a few mishaps is ‘life’.
We don’t enter this stage of our life with the mindset of thinking that there is potential in this person, so what the heck, - ”I can just create or mold my significant other into the person I’ve always imagined I’d be with”. This doesn’t work, it may work for a while, but the controled partner will soon reach it’s boiling point and will have had enough. They’re not being themselves and they’ve lost touch of who they really are - it’s a fictitious relationship.
So, to end, your brand’s relationship with the customer, in a sense, mimics that of a human relationship.
It really can’t be molded by your consumer. They must be loyal to your brand because of what your brand stands for – they must gravitate towards it naturally. This, of course, is done with the assistance of marketing and advertising. If your brand is continuously changing to please everyone, you send mix messages and alleviate all loyalty. You can’t trust or be loyal to something that is constantly changing. Products and services are always going to change, but your brands message must remain constant.
What’s your take? Who is in control of your brand?
Would love to hear your insight in the comments below.
I can’t say that I agree with this… I was at coke hq a few months ago and they were giving a seminar on their social media strategy. One major point they made was that we are no longer in control of our brands… consumers are.
An example is the ‘coke experiments’ video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKoB0MHVBvM When this first came out, the coke pr person responded with something like, “I’d hope consumers would be more interested in drinking diet coke than doing experiments with it. The mentos thing doesn’t fit the brand personality of diet coke.”
But now they’ve completely changed their philosophy on this . Now they’re embracing what consumers do with coke. And they’re actually trying to give consumers a reason to shape their brand (International Federatino of Snowball throwing ads… Expedition 206.. etc)
But, as consumers, or disgruntled consumers, depict your brand, how can you just sit back and observe that. Thinking “they control and mold our brand so I guess this is what we stand for”. What I mean by control is the way you steer them back to being a satisfied consumer. How you engage and respond to the negative uproar. Of course, consumers are going to do whatever they want with your product, whether it’s drinking the diet coke or using it for experiments – this is what you accept because it’s not in a negative light.
The way you are perceived still can be molded by the brand itself. How you are perceived is how you act, react, respond, live, breath, etc. Coke was accepting that diet coke be used as an experiment – this isn’t negative by any means. But when the consumer begins to tarnish the image of Coke as a whole- sheds a negative light on the memories, emotions, history, beliefs, it’s DNA, etc.; then this affects the brand.
I completely understand your point of view. I think it reaps benefits looking at both sides of the coin.
I appreciate the comment Andy!
@EricUngs