Out of control
This brand republic article makes an old claim that’s - still - a bold claim: “brands have lost control of their identity and they will never get it back”.
I’ve heard that a lot, it might be true: my brief experience with brand identity leads me to believe they’ve never had much but I think now that yes, they probably have even less.
But you also have to ask what this idea of ‘control’ means anyway, and where it went. There’s a ready answer to that: YOU control brands now! You the public! You the consumer! You the “influential”!
But of course that doesn’t follow at all. Just because consumers were - if they were, there’s a tendency to exaggerate this stuff - a passive partner in the brand/consumer relationship doesn’t mean they have the whip hand now.
Here’s a metaphor: you’re a passenger on a bus, slumped on the back seat. Suddenly the driver has a heart attack. He’s not “in control” any more. But nor are you! Are you more ‘active’? YOU BET you’re more active - for all the good it will do you ;)
If brands aren’t in control, maybe nobody’s in control.
But what about social media, doesn’t that give consumers a voice and hence gives them control? The problem here is that there’s often a confusion between the individual action on social media and the mass behaviours that emerge within it. If “the masses” have control, it absolutely doesn’t follow that individual consumers have any more at all.
The article gives an example: “A powerful example of this democratisation is the millions of people who turned to Twitter rather than established news sites to find out the latest updates on Michael Jackson’s death.”
The thing is, if you were on Twitter that evening it wasn’t a case of “turning to” it - it wasn’t a voluntary individual choice, it was absolutely impossible to be unaware of Jackson’s death. Sure, the media weren’t in control of the story, but nor was anybody else: all systems that might have structured the story basically jammed.
This isn’t control the way we might usually understand it. Similar things apply to “brand identities”, though here it seems that the picture of consumer control is clearer-cut. Consumers don’t like Tropicana’s new packaging: they get it changed. Consumers don’t like Motrin’s adverts: out they go.
There are three points to make about how ‘consumer control’ works in these cases:
- It tends to be lucky. For every brand on earth there’s somebody willing to go “it sucks” in public, on social media. The vast majority of YouTube slams, facebook protest groups, angry blog posts are MASSIVE FAILURES in terms of getting influence and traction.
- It tends to be a minority. Most customers aren’t even aware there’s a furore until the company takes action. This doesn’t necessarily mean the minority was wrong, of course. But we’re not often talking about mass consumer movements. (If you’re a consumer who did like the new look Tropicana, where’s your control?)
- It tends to be negative. This is really important. “Control over a brand’s identity” tends not to mean “Consumers like to work up positive and clear brand identities distinct from those the brand itself devises.” When people say good things about the brand they’re generally in line with the good things the brand says about itself. “Consumer control” on the other hand is often a reactionary or destructive force. Again, that’s not always or even usually a bad thing but it shows, again, that this “control” is more limited than sometimes painted.
As an individual you have very little control over “brand identity” and you have very little control over the masses who might influence that stuff. Since this was always the case anyway you probably don’t very much care.
But brands care about not having that control, which is why there’s so much talk about it. The idea of power ceding to the consumer is neat, and actually makes people feel quite radical and good, much more so than the possibility that maybe there’s nobody at the wheel any more.
(And let’s not overstate this: brands do still control marketing budgets, often very large ones. What’s out of control is the relationship between that budget and the effects it has - one reason there’s such a clamour to understand social media ROI!)
