Reinvention in the advertising world

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I'm an advertising senior creative director with a strong background in brand building. I'm looking to translate my knowledge of traditional media (print and broadcast) to the web. Any suggestions

-- Timothy Delaney (timdela@ameritech.net), December 04, 2000

Answers

Timothy, go beyond thinking that the web is a single touchpoint. What the web has done is to extend brand delivery through all touchpoints i.e. TV, radio, print, promotions, personal computers, personal digital assistants and the wireless Internet. As a brand manager you will be driving previously one-way communication platforms such as TV, radio, print, promotions with two-way communication platforms such as personal computers (peer to peer), PDA's, wireless Internet etc. The trick I believe will be to balance one way delivery to enhance the two ways flow created by the Internet. Once upon a time you threw out a consistent message as a brand manager and hope that it stuck, now that message can come back flying into your face. Before you shot a one-way message missile, now your target will tell you what its feelings are about being hit. You have to begin planning for those eventualities and opportunities. You have to become the web rather than translate knowledge to the web.

The problem today isn't web branding, it is message bombardment and because the consumer is more engaged in two-way conversations, the target area becomes smaller and far more personal as the attention span for fodder decreases and the attention span for substance increases. Branding therefore has to go beyond making a connection with the product but to a connection with the culture that buys that product. Your product no longer can be painted with a warm and cuddly consistent message, it is now connected to a brain that is connected to the internet, that is connected to you.

A good example of a company who understands this is Peoplesoft. Peoplesoft's bubble nearly burst under the weight of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and more importantly the techno-babble that came with it. If you look at how Peoplesoft describes its new voyage into the world of CRM (Customer Relationship Management); the language is in simple business english that any businessperson can understand. They have simplified their messages, thought about the conversation they are having with their market and are utilizing strategic partnerships to resurrect a new type of company.

The current state of the internet is stymieing what brand managers can do, but with the coming of broadband will free brand managers to create simple and interesting messages to create brand awareness. While instant Internet metrics give valuable information, branding is still a relationship so the metrics have to be watched over the long haul. The new Personalization industry already understands that, that is why they are placing so much emphasis on using algorithms to design their personalization engines rather than simple and fast metrics. Quicker information does not equate with faster branding, improving speed to the customer will do that but faster information IMHO makes for bigger mistakes. Good branding is a timeless art and will not be throttled by the Internet, the main change in emphasis is that the relationship is travelling beyond the product and reaching beyond the person. Products once only talked back at you if they failed AKA the Tylenol tampering crisis. What the Internet has done is to personalize the brand manager relationship from the old crisis management at a macro level to a new relationship management at a micro level.

Brands also IMHO no longer start from the outside and work their way in. I strongly believe that branding will now have to begin from the core and works it's way outward. Someone who shares that belief is Jesper Kunde, author of Corporate Religion in which the book cover sends out the message that ["in the future building strong market positions will be about building companies with a strong personality and corporate soul"]. In the future brand managers I believe will also have to start becoming change managers. This means working directly with the CEO to make sure that the company is branded from the core and that it becomes "authentic", which basically means your company or client companies' better start practicing what you preach.

I personally feel that no one fully knows how to translate traditional knowledge to the web. The only thing you can do to understand how to translate it, is to get excited and involved in the brand conversation because I believe that it will no longer be enough to be a brand manager; you will have to become what I call a brand facilitator. Do I have the branding answers? No I do not, but if I do not get plugged into this new world of market conversations and become accustomed to this changing dynamic, I never will. Intellectuals are debunking the Cluetrain Manifesto because it looks weak. That intellectual mindset will not help in the branding world because even hallowed models such as the Proctor and Gamble model have to take a hike because one-to-one isn't merely a cute Peppers and Rodgers buzzword, the customer is one-to-one when it comes to branding today. In the future world of branding nirvana, it is no longer about catching the interest of the Harvard Business Review but about catching the interest of the average man on the street.

I hope you found this personal rant of mine to be an enlightening one.

M.

M Profile at: http://www.fastcompany.com/fasttalk/replypost.html? p=9738

Mantra of M. "Life is about Private Relations not Public Relations" "To be or not to be that is the question" A quote by Willy Shakes.

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), December 05, 2000.


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