Brands must not lose their internal focus amidst the din of new information.
The world has changed. The new reality of online customer conversation means brands will need a strongly defined sense of self in order to succeed. This represents a need to think counter-intuitively about your brand – focusing on the inside more than the outside. The initial challenge is not to better understand and respond to the customer. The challenge is to start with better understanding who you are, what you truly believe in, and what you can realistically offer to your customer.
A lot is being said about the effect of social media on brands – from Tropicana changing its packaging and then changing it back again to the use of social media as a ‘real time’ focus group. But the fundamental problem with all of this is that it focuses on the customer at the expense of the brand.
You’d think the predominant marketing ethos – where you defer to the customer, where you position your brand against a perceived consumer need could only be right for these open-conversation, social media times. Yet the opposite is actually the case.
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