If customers pay more attention to what “others” say about your brand, then maybe you need to shift your mindset from trying to control customers to cocreating brand meaning with them and those “others.”
For a long time, marketers believed they could control how customers think and feel about brands – the Mad Men style approach to advertising. While it is still possible to get these effects, studies have confirmed what we suspected for some time… that customers pay more attention to what “others” say about brands than what companies communicate to them.
Brand meaning is now being shaped by a range of “others” including influencers, online product reviews and social networks. Digital and social media changes the way we build brands because customers can have branded experiences through multiple channels that seamlessly connect.
This means we have to stop treating brands as static things that can be positioned, and appreciate that brand meaning is generated, changed and dynamically reinvented together with customers and “others.” In other words, a more humble, open and participatory style instead of the traditional dissemination approach.
Brand cocreation can be achieved through the way we engage and involve people in activities that build brand knowledge and brand community. It can also be done through technology and platforms that enable people to experience the brand in a more personalized way.
The goal is to shape perceptions, attitudes and emotions towards the brand in an authentic way that keeps the brand relevant – not to control or manipulate!
#marketing #branding #brandcocreation
