innovation playground Idris Mootee

What Is Social Branding? What Makes A Brand Social? What Do You Need To Do To Become A Truly Social Brand Beyond Just Getting Into Facebook And Twitter?

I remembered talking to a group of senior marketing executives two years ago, the topic was “Branding 2.0 Is to get social” and many were scratching their heads and weren't sure what I was referring to. To answer the question "what's social branding?” we need to understand what branding is?  People involved with a collectivity of brands so as to benefit from the meanings they add to their lives. People will look for signs to represent meanings even if we take brands away. If a brand does not have vital consumer meaning, may be it is not worthwhile investing in its leadership both financially and organizationally. So where do they get these meanings?

Where do these meaning comes from? Brands and consumers are interdependence, an attribute that is enhanced to the extent that brands are animated, connected, distributed, networked, humanized, individualized and socialized. (You can read more from my Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass 2007 by clicking on the tag cloud, these pages are from my latest limited edition coffee table version of my 60-minute brand strategy book which has been updated and in its 4th edition. It will be published in multiple languages, you can read the whole book on my slideshare, but sorry download is not available) Consumers demand more from brands and people online are seeking new ways to connect and be social. Social networks and media give testimony to human most basic desire to belong and to be part of a group(s), as we congregate around the things we are passionate about or want to associate with. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media, we have the opportunity to re-establishing ourselves as the ultimate communicators, spreading the word across the geographical, cultural and political at unprecedented speed.  This is the globalization of meanings. It takes your brand with you.

Brand is not just visual images and tag lines, it is the collective emotional response to images and experiences. In other words, a brand is not defined by the product or service, but rather the person who uses it, talks about and engages other with it defines it.  Mark Jacob does not define me, rather they are defined by me, they form part of my personal brand and mingle and mix with other brands (Hermes, Apple and Blackberry). Brands are not composed of the people who purchase their brands; rather people and communities are composed of the brands they use.

All broadcast businesses are in big trouble, and user-generated videos are just the beginning. There are more to come. The social casting of YouTube will evolve and, and in the process, so too will consumer behavior. Instead of passivity, the experience flow of tomorrow will be characterized by immediacy, flexibility, portability, permeability, fluidity, interactivity, mashability and ownerability (these are Morgan’s words). With the emergence and convergence of the mobile phone, the Internet and location-based-systems, consumers also have immediate access to co-workers, friends and family members, involvement and consumer connections.

Brand Obama, Apple and Coca Cola, What Do They Really Have In Common?

This is a special day in history. Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and the America's first African-American president today, it is a big day. The last 16 months, we learned that Obama had not only vision for America, but possessed the commitment, intellect, strength, character and political brilliance to rise to the top leadership. He is wonderful lift of the human spirit against seemingly insurmountable odds – an inspiration for young people all over the world. Obama's popularity and inspiration will impact the next generation significantly. 

The world is eager to see a great leader in action. Many hope that Obama will address the global climate crisis, by furthering the efforts already made to unite America and the world in working towards being more environmentally conscious and sustainability. His speech was just so inspiring even outside of America people around the world are very much looking forward to this change, especially in the "climate change" position on the past the Bush Administration ignored, a very short sighted and narrow visioned administration. 

What does the young people think of the Obama's brand? Here’s a roundtable of 8 teenagers sitting around in my house. This is not a focus group but just friends of my teenager sons. Let’s hear what these young people have to say about the future – technology, politics and culture after watching Obama’s inauguration speech. 

How important are your cell phone and other communication devices to you? Overwhelmingly, the cell phone is most important (equally as the iPod) , mostly to stay connected to friends and family; taking snap shots; and to a lesser degree for music listening. They’re also really, really fond of texting and is becoming their core communication tool. Email is considered slow and wonder how email in its current form will survive the next generation. Blackberry has a lot of work to do to secure this future. When asked about SMS ad, it is a no no. One said he prefers his parent to contact him through SMS even when he is around at home working in his room. Another person confesses technology in general makes life more stressful, because there is not place to hide. It is the paradox of technology. 

What’s your attitude towards advertising? Everyone seems to be able to talk about specific funny ads, but overwhelmingly, no one would believe any thing they hear, watch or read. They admit that they often learn about these new products through ads, but the source of information is through forums and communities. They are quick to form an opinion and 2 out of the 6 considered themselves opinion leaders in their social groups. Some believe that after clothing, a cellphone tells the most about their social status, they disagree. No one in the group cares much about the brand of the phone, as long as it has some basic features. It is not a status tool as many have thought. They think that all big advertising money spent by the handset brands is a total waste of money. Wonder what Nokia, Sony Erickson and Motorola has to say.They should start thinking of new way to engage these young people.

Let’s talk about the brands that you love? Everybody picks a different one: Apple, Urban Outfitters, Obama, Xbox, Coke, In-N-Out Burger and Addidas. They talked about how much these companies are willing to listen to uses and respond to their needs. Surprisingly no one likes the Apple ads, although everyone loves the brand. Wonder how much the advertising actually contributed to Apple's  brand equity if any at all. I think the stores are doing more than the ads.

Do you think the world will be change for the better after today? 

“I think Obama is going to bring a much-needed change to the world. His ideas will make people more open-minded, and he will inspire them to get more involved.” 

“With a new US president comes a time for hope and possibilities. Here’s what they say they hope to see happen during Obama’s first term as president of the United States."

“My hope for him is that he will be able to fix the recession and end the messy war in the Middle East quick.” “I hope he cleans up the giant mess and put the focus back into education and out planet.”

“I would like to see actual changes happen, he is inspiring us and many people at our age. You don’t find too many inspiring figures around us today.” 

“I hope that he can sort out the economic crisis and help with global warming. I hope that as president, Obama will make the right choices in fixing the current state of our economy.” 

Obama is probably the most popular brand built in the shortest period of time (shorter than Google). Obama, Apple, Coke and very much same of a kind. They share a lot of attributes the say way the president is presenting himself. They're meant to look transparent, empowered, hopeful, accessible and democratic to a certain degree. Non-intimidating and trustworthy. At its heart, authenticity is about practicing what you preach; knowing about who you are and what you do best. When a brand's rhetoric gets out of sync with customers' actual experiences, the brand's integrity and future persuasiveness suffers.  It is something which is hard to manufacture even with lots of advertising and packaging craft. Being able to project an identity that people are willing to credit with being authentic is a very hard thing to do. But Obama, Apple, Coke are all doing a great job.

Saving Your "Zombie Brands" ?

This is what I hate most, checked online making sure flights are on schedule and only discovered when you get to the airport that it was cancelled. Wonder if the system allows them to send those update to passengers through cell phones. That way I can turn around and drive home.  Anyway this has been a productive week.  If I can keep my travelling to three days a week that’s pretty good, I do need to spend more time at the office.

I have not been written much on brands since our Advanced Branding Masterclass so I thought maybe I should start that dialogue.

“Zombie Brands”, “Dinosaurs Brands”, “Ghost Brands” or “Graveyard Brands”, these are names that people use to call brands that have either customers have completely abandoned or simply hanging in there (often on the bottom shelf or only showing up occasionally in 99cents stores or Costco in totally unrelated product category). Some of them gone through some revitalization efforts that were unsuccessfully and some ended up existing only in some emerging markets. Others have simply lost their relevance in their core market place (Xerox, Oldsmobile) and the brands are used casually on products that are totally outside their product categories (Teac, RCA, Polaroid etc.).

If you happen to own one a “Zombie Brand”, what can you do? You have the following options: 1/ Invest and attempt to revitalize it, 2/ Milk it, 3/ Position it for the emerging market 4) Sell it for whatever it’s worth, or 5/ Dump it. People who have special relationships often have sentimental reasons to give them a second chance.  The cost and risk of bringing a brand back to live is enormous and what is needed to make sure the decision is based on sound logic. If you run a large portfolio, the question will be, “Which brands are worth the revitalization effort?” and “Why?”

Many b-school case studies have been written about of how brands were “brought back from the graveyard.” Unfortunately, however, the lessons are often so idiosyncratic. There 100X more cases where companies tried revitalizing old brands, hiring new advertising agencies and throwing endless amounts of money in advertising hoping to rebuild a great brand even when if there wasn't a relevant product or service or a sound business strategy behind the it. First question is ask is how bad your situation is and here are the three most common ones:

My Brand Is Sick. Market changes direction and the brand become irrelevant. Everyone used to understand what the brand means and they all stick to it -- advertising to product design to promotions -- and they believe it all connects to something larger and more enduring. Until one day they woke up and realize there was a big disconnect. Your brand is stuck in the past. In another word, your brand is IRREVELANT.

My Brand Is Dying. The brand is becoming boring. It doesn't create excitement for the customers or even employees anymore. Younger customers think of us as their Parents’ brand. This is quite common for brands that have made their successes and achieved market leadership. This is in fact the result of being too successful. Remember every business success laid the seeds for business failures. Don’t remember who said this. In another word, your brand lacks customer ENGAGEMENT.

My Brand Has No Vital Signs. Or it’s just a walking dead. You ignore your brand for way too long, or simply let it ride for too long, and at some point, it just expires. Every drop of goodwill has been squeezed out. It loses all of its mystic, energy, its power to capture your customers' or even your own imagination. In another word, you brand has been reduced to just a LOGO.

The interesting question is can social media save the "Zombie Brands"? The Social Media Generation has phenomenal impact over determining the fate of brands. These digital communities are vocal, active and mobile. They would share their joy, anger and frustration of their daily experiences with friends and anybody. These web 2.0 tools that allow continuous and immediate connectedness at all hours and regardless of location and geography. Brand Communities are formed as a result of the connectivity. What is a brand community? A brand community is a brand-centered, non‐geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. These brand communities include four core markers of community:

- Shared hobbies and interests

- Shared consciousness

- Shared rituals and traditions

- Shared purposes and destinies

The commercial and mass‐mediated ethos in which these communities are situated affects their character and structure and gives rise to their particularities. This is the most disruptive trend from a brand and marketing perspective. I wrote about the service episodes regarding my Lenovo experience earlier this week, I received responses both from Lenovo and from national publications like the NY Times who is interested in my story. Just as Mark Hopkins (Social Media Specialist from Lenovo) wrote in his email to me “I think write ups like yours are actually very constructive to the long term decision making of global companies. Creating tangible evidence of marketplace damage, in a visible fashion helps to sharpen focus on the customer at all levels. Thanks to the web, visibility to customer experiences is no longer geographically limited.”

A customer community has now become the collective “sources of truth” for brands. It is also a possible cure for "Zombie Brands".

(Photo: Toronto Annual Zombie Walk- a group of some 200 Torontonians setting the Guinness World Record for the Largest Performance of "Thriller" - in full zombie ensemble.)

Advanced Brand Stratgy Masterclass - Week Seven - Global Branding

This one is long overdue and I apologize for the delay. Between airports, clients meetings and running workshops there is not much time left. This is the last of the series and next week we will conclude our masterclass.  This week we will focus on global branding, I remember we did touch on this subject during week two and three, so we can now revisit this again.

While many consumer goods markets in the Europe and North America are stagnating, 65% of the world’s population is living in societies that are experiencing economic growth of 5% or more a year. While the baby boom occurred between 1945 and 1960 in the US, much of the rest of the world is still experiencing a baby boom that began in 1975. The average person has seen his or her standard of living double in the past 15 years, far surpassing that of the US or Western Europe. Put very simply, the majority of the growth potential in consumer markets exists outside of the US and Western Europoe.

Here's an excellent piece by John Quelch, Prof Quelch is the Senior Associate Dean and at Harvard Business School where he taught markeitng for decades. I remembered one time when he was lecturing he presented a marketing positioning diagram of the royal family members, it was hilarious. He is also the non-executive director of WPP Pepsi and a few other companies and has published probably half a dozen books on global marketing.

How To Build a Global Brand - by John Quelch

Ford has finally woken up to what Toyota knew a long time ago: the power of a single global brand. Over twenty years ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt praised Japanese manufacturers for their focus on "what every consumer in the world is seeking: world-class modernity at affordable prices." Either because they didn't understand regional differences in consumer preferences or out of self-confidence, Toyota, Nissan and Honda sold standard products under a single brand umbrella. For decades, Ford adapted its manufacturing platforms, features, and model names from one country to another. The results: added manufacturing and supply chain costs that strained consumers' willingness to pay; a balkanized bureaucracy in which regional managers exaggerate the need for local adaptations to defend their turf; and a deteriorating market share, financial performance and stock price. Ford was once one of the ten most valuable brands in the world. They’re no longer on that list, but Toyota now is. How did Toyota—and the other nine companies—do it? There are five characteristics that all top global brands have in common:

1. The same positioning worldwide. This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola and Disney.

2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.

3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM.

4. Access to the global village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM's "solutions for a small planet."

5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world's problems. Think Nestle and clean water.

Ford has a proud history. Its name recognition is strong worldwide. The chairman is committed to the environment. Many consumers are no longer considering Fords when buying their new cars, but they are predisposed to giving Ford another chance. Fords worldwide should henceforth have a common look, feel and brand essence. Low volume management distractions including Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo will be sold off; they’re now meaningless. US-based models like Mercury will be discontinued.Can Ford recover? The answer lies in whether the common vehicle platforms developed for the new strategy prove to be truly global in design or merely more of the same Detroit-centric product that have caused Ford's market shares around the world to erode.

Branding In the Post-Modern Culture When Consumer Transcend The State Of Being The Subject In A Society

Brands are transforming themselves and I would argue they are becoming more and more important. They exist beyond the ads and the products, they are trying to find new ways to get inside your home and be part of your life in the form branded content, branded entertainment, branded utilities and branded space. L’Equipe, the Parisian based daily sports newspaper invented the tour de France only to sell more newspapers, its branded content with a pinch of engagement.

New social forms have emerged from all kinds of new network-based social behavior.  These conversations between customer that are previously unknown to each other to the extent where over 50 million people are able to interact in a single online space, generating billions of web site page impressions every month.  The question is how should brand play a role here. These social webs are exploding everywhere and this can no longer be ignored by any brand. 

The structural nature of consumption of information and content are in a state of flux as we enter a world where content will be increasingly delivered through all kinds of networks that can be personalized and entirely self-scheduled. In that world, the viewer – not the broadcaster – whoever that may be, will decide what is consumed, when, how, when, and with whom you share it with.

We are in a transition from interruption and intrusion to engagement. When distribution is trivial, unlimited, and available to all comers, marketing to a captive audience sitting on a cough in front of a box is the thing of the past and creating "quality" product/service/content is paramount. Content is now a part of any product (and its experiences). Consumers will consume only what‘s relevant and what entertain them most, not what is marketed to you them in a repetitive fashion. By providing branded experiences, brand can extend engagement rather than disrupts it, by doing so it strengthens its contextual involvement and connection with the consumer.

With the emergence and convergence of the mobile phone and the internet and location-base-system we suddenly have immediate access to our co-workers, our friends and family members and know where they are at any point of time. We are getting used to living in a connected age where we naturally and increasingly draw on our participation in various networks for information, assistance, information and support.

The language of our post-modern world is not broadcast-branded-content pushed to our TV box that we consume passively. This kind of traditional marketing has become adversarial in the eyes of customers. Customers have changed and adapted to this new always-on, always connected, media fragmented world, where they seek value by searching, where they are not waiting for you to interrupt them with unwanted messaging, where they look to their peers for voices of authority. The behavior of sharing user-generated-videos will evolve and new behavior will emerge.  What we are seeing in YouTube I called it “socialcasting”. Does this signal the end of broadcasting? Consumer will spend more and more time interacting with each other and mashing-up content rather than passively watching low quality content. I think we have yet to see the full impact of this phenomenon. This will determine the new of our post-modern culture which I define as follow:

- Immediacy

- Flexibility

- Portability

- Permeability

- Fluidity

- Interactivity

- Mashability

- Ownerablity

This postmodern culture is characterized by the density, the intensity, and the fragmentation of the instances of communication, by hyperreality that continuously creates fresh vidoes and meanings based on the same signifiers, and by the incredible array of brands and products that impose their own rules and procedures as a way of life. The postmodern consumer thus transcends the state of being the subject positioned in society to satisfy one's individual needs. And everything seems so hyperreal's. Please share your thoughts.

Advanced Branding Masterclass Week Six - Customer Experience Design

This has been one busy week and I am back with week six of our Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass. We are continuing on the second part of brand strategy development framework which focuses on brand identity, brand images and brand delivery. The delivery one is probably the most important and interesting aspect.

Two of the key drivers to building brand strength are creating a distinct brand identity and developing a unique brand personality and their associated images. Unfortunately, semantics quite often gets in the way of understanding how these two factors can influence brand strategy. Brand identity, for example, is often used in a limited, graphic-centric manner or used interchangeably with brand image. All too often, identity is seen as just the graphics, logos, colors, and symbols that generally make up corporate identity. Those elements are the appearance (which is very important) but not the substance of a brand, just as the clothes you wear are an important, even distinguishing, part of your identity, but not the substance of who you are as a person. An obsession with image tends to attach greater importance to appearance than to inner reality. But brand identity is a richer, more substantial concept to embrace. The two concepts are quite different. There’s also a simple way to sum up and understand the essence of the two terms: image is how the marketplace perceives you; identity is who you really are. We recommend that companies focus on building brand identity as the driving brand-strategy component. Brand image is not to be diminished at all.  It is, after all is said and done, how a company is perceived. But don’t make the mistake of thinking your brand image is your identity. The challenge for brand strategists and champions is to align image and identity. That happens—and can only happen—by careful, proactive management of your brand identity components.

The next big goal is the translation of the Brand Promise into Customer Experience Strategy for brand delivery. It is easy to make the mistake of developing a grandiose brand promise that one cannot deliver. Although you must combine vision with realism, one should not take weakness in any particular dimension as an excuse to do nothing. No company gets it right all the time. The customer experience strategy is used to align the brand promise to customer expectations. It describes the service characteristics objectively. It is important to depict these service characteristics so that employees, customers and managers alike know what the service is, can see their role in its delivery. (One of my business partners Scott Friedmann is a big believer of this, he is trained in service managment at Cornell grad school and believes the crossover of tradtional service deisgn principles and software as services can spark unlimited innovation). Services are delivered through integrated systems consisting of three basic elements. First are the steps, tasks and activities necessary to render the service; in other words, the service process. Second are the means by which the tasks are executed, typically some combination of people, technologies and products. Third is the evidence of the experience and how customer relates to the experiences. All service systems can be visualized by understanding these elements and their interrelationships. This is where things break down.  The people who create the brand are not the people who develop the brand. The people who design services and operation standards are not connected to those who develop the brand. The people who design the interfaces are not connected to those who create the ads. Sure we've all seen that.

The customer experience strategy gets complicated these days. The deployment of machine-dominant (automation) interfaces on the front lines drastically improves business economics, but creates a new set of challenges. People are good at conveying empathy and handling exceptions but are challenging to manage and costly to deploy and maintaining consistency, especially in scaleable businesses. In effect, the front office needs computers to compensate for people's shortcomings and people to compensate for comouter' shortcomings. Today businesses are using a hybrid approach. Then comes Web 2.0 and brings a whole new element of disruption. So the interfaces, the communities, the content and the connectivity all becoming part of the band and brand experience.

But that doesn’t stop here, with the success of Starbucks and many are experimenting with the launching of hundreds of Brand Spaces, all those large flat-screen TVs, WiFi and comfy lounge chairs, and are finding ther ways into banks and clinics etc. These are the most tangible physical manifestation of any brand. Here are some interesting examples: from launderettes turned ‘wasch.salon.lounge’, like German Clenaucum, to the boom in private clubs in London or NYC.  Even hotel chains such as Hyatt (Hyatt Place) and Sheraton (Sheraton/Yahoo) are waking up to the fact that their long ignored and depressing lobbies could be converted into brand spaces. Others include LG Washbar (Paris, pictuer below) ING Direct (picture above), Nokia (picture below), Apple and Nintendo. Expect this is become the latest experimental front for brand experience innovation.

Brand Vision - Is It Only About Winning Market Shares?

Should the brand vision be limited only to the business? Is there a different way of thinking about a brand vision? Patragonia was the first one that came to my mind, I know it's the same case for Bart. "Their environmentally based brand vision is very visible in everything they do." according to Bart. I am in full agreement.  A brand vision needs to be connected deeply o the brand and what the company belivies. Should brand vision go beyond winning in market shares and create shareholder wealth? How about brand vision is something more.. how about changing the world? (Patagonia, Body Shop, Google) It is the essential dream that inspires people inside the company to keep striving even when the financial rewards are uncertain(i.e. stock options under the water). Brand vision need to survive even the loss of a beloved founder. It is not something to be framed on the wall but quietly whispered inside the heads of each employee, from brand managers to service personnel, it is embedded in the companies that are bound for greatness, the dream that only every employee believes is possible. And once the dream becomes reality, once you’ve achieved the vision, the brand vision is fully realized, then it's time to expand the vision or lose the troops to complacency. The human spirit loves (and needs) a good challenge – especially if it is directed at an attainable and meaningful ideal.

Brand vision provides the focus that ensures a stable, cohesive foundation through the rollercoaster ride of growth and industry cycles. Who’s job is this?  As Flavio puts its, “…someone should be really taking care of the job of transforming vision into reality on the shelves. And not only on the manuals.” On this note about “manuals”, that reminds me of fast food and restaurants.

So here’s another one for us to think about. I remembered in 03, McDonald launched a brand new brand vision: "our customers' favorite place and way to eat," a theme they wanted their ad agencies to embrace. McDonald's marketing chief challenged 14 of its biggest agencies from 10 major world markets to brainstorm new ideas based on this brand vision. "This was a meeting about brand direction," according to Larry Light, McDonald's global marketing chief, "We're going to reinvest in local store marketing...we are going to be passionately focused on the customer."  The question for you is ..What does this brand vision has to do with customers?

Advanced Branding Class Week Five - Developing a Brand Vision

Welcome to week five of our Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass. We are now getting into the nuts and bolts of how to develop a brand strategy. I have divided that into two parts. And here’s part one.

Brand strategy development is a business process as much as a creative process. Branding is a business process—one that is planned, strategically-focused and integrated throughout the organization. Branding establishes the direction, leadership, clarity of purpose, inspiration and energy for a company's most important asset—its  brand. Even the most potentially powerful strategy will fail if not executed effectively and consistently.

Here’s an important point: A brand strategy is not the consequences of planning, but the opposite: it’s the starting point. Here are the three basic requirements before you start:

1/ We need a clearly articulated business strategy / business plan with a view of the scale and scope of the business and how you want to compete.

2/ We must have good customer insights and understanding of evolving business economics. This requires you to look at evolving nature of different target segments and their existing and potential profitability.

3/ We need to first determine the role of branding as perceived by your corporation which will help shape many strategic brand decisions during the development process (Going back to the brand taxonomies introduced in week one).

The most common pitfall is many companies have no long term business strategy, at the very least, they should have an articulated description of the business such as how it creates value and how do they compete in their chosen industries. An effective strategy should act as a bridge between the past and the future. It involves judgments and decisions about when to commit and be willing to bet, when to delay making a commitment, when to kill something that won’t work and when to change the rules of the game. Strategy is a complex system of acting and talking, a system that occasionally manifests itself in rational designs. Many brand strategy development efforts are unintentionally turned into corporate strategy discussions and as a result these efforts are blamed for not delivering any value. REMEMBER You cannot develop a meaningful brand strategy with the absence of a business strategy. Although you can still create a name, a logo, tag lines and a set of graphic elements for brand identification purposes to deal with short term marketing needs.

The key task here and the most challenging one is to craft a brand vision. Crafting a brand vision forces you to think through where you want the brand to be over the longer term to support the corporate strategy.  It helps the management team achieve consensus on the longer term goals and the level of branding support that is required to achieve those goals. It also provides guidelines to determine what kind of research to put in place to monitor brand building progress and return-on-investment. Most of all it gives you a starting point and a mandate to start developing other elements to support the delivery of the brand promise.

A brand vision statement has no fixed length or style of composition.  It should be relevant, and therefore specific to the business and the world within it operates. A brand vision statement is by definition long-term and transcends particular products, markets or even current executive leadership. A brand vision statement should be complimentary to the company’s vision statement and sometimes can be combined. (click on the slides above to see some examples) Ultimately, it is the interconnection between aspirations, values and the brand that is important, not what the statement is called.

 

Take a look at this example from Sony:

SONY. We Help Dreamers Dream. Sony is a company devoted to the CELEBRATION of life. We create things for every kind of IMAGINATION. Products that stimulate the SENSES and refresh the spirit. Ideas that always surprise and never disappoint. INNOVATIONS that are easy to love, and EFFORTLESS to use, things that are not essential, yet hard to live without.

What do you think of Sony’s brand promise? Are they delivering on this? Do you think it is too aspirational or it is realistic? Is there anyone out there that execute better than Sony on this? If this brand promise is to drive the future of the company, where Sony should be going next?

On Celebrity Endorsed Brand

On the topic of brand architcture, Morgan wrote, “With all his sky-diving off buildings and hot-tubbing it with the hotties - what Flavio calls his "Indiana Jones acts" - Branson has put himself so far out there as a personality (THE personality of Virgin) that Tom's comments (about consumers turning away from the brand), Pete's comments (about succession being critical for Virgin's evolution) and Mike's comments (about "less of Mr. Branson and more of something else")should definitely be ringing the old geezer's bell.”

"And he is old, which is part of the problem - whether it's about him dying and leaving Virgin fatherless or him just getting so creepy and crusty in his old age that anyone who remembers the punk rock cachet he launched the company with, is on their death bed too. Is there an expiry date on a Branded House that's 'slightly maverick'? Will RB make a big personal purchase and re-launch the little blue pill under the Virgin logo? Branson isn't the boss of the brand, he is the brand. It's more than an iconicity, it's like a cult-status. Which leaves just one avenue to pursue if Virgin wouldn't explore the house of brands avenue to prep for the future. Andre's got it: start looking for the future Branson or start producing them. Now.”

Think about this, Britney Spears and Elizabeth Arden launched a fragrance from Spears that is, like J. Lo, be linked to the pop princess’ name. The fragrance marked Britney Spears’ debut in the fragrance/cosmetics category. Not sure how well the fragrance is doing lately with Britney’s latest stunts. The main inherent downside to a celebrity brand is that when the name is no longer the public’s darling or when the celeb pulls some stunts. Yeah, there’s the old saying that there is no bad publicity as long as they spell your name right, and to some degree I think that is true.

Successful celebrity brands have to have a very direct connection to the celebrity. It has to make sense to the prospect. Michael Jordan selling Nike sneakers is no question an effective strategy and flawless execution. The Jordan maketing team are world class. They enjoy great success naturally. But can Tiger Woods sell Viagra? I don’t know, may be not, for the simple reason that the prospective customer sees no natural connection to it. People see he was just paid to be in the TV ad. There is a growing feeling that traditional marketing based on a brand's inherent core values is being crushed under the relentless march of celebrities collaborating with, and now creating their own, brands.

This is an ad for Nikon cameras. The brand-to-celebrity connection is quite clear. Here is a question. Kate Moss has recently launched fragrance Kate by Kate Moss. Moss is one of a growing band of famous faces who are making the journey from featuring in advertising campaigns, to being the "face" of a brand, to becoming brands themselves. Moss' development into a standalone brand is being managed by her modeling agency, Storm. So Moss now needs to continually up-keep her credentials as a style-setter in order to grow into a sustainable brand, with a degree of longevity, as opposed to being a short-lived marketing campaign.

Brands that associate themselves with celebrities such as Moss need to find the balance between choosing the right star for a campaign and not allowing the message to be overshadowed it happens in 6 out of 10 by the celebrity with whom they are collaborating. But Moss is not alone.

There was an incident during the football World Cup, David Beckham appeared in four separate ads during a single commercial break. This highlights the fact that marketers can no longer think of their brands as a single entity but must also manage the brands with which their celebrity endorser may have other arrangements. Essentially their role changed from a brand endorser to a co-brand. Not something marketers would like to see. I think celebrity brands will continue to be welcomed by marketers and celebrities who are forging new relationships with marketerss with a a lot more complexity than the original endorsements and licensing deals.

The obvious upside of attaching a celebrity to a brand is that the brand literally has a real face and a distinct personality that a consumer can link or relate to the product. What is better than the image of a living, breathing, likeable person as opposed to a faceless corporate entity? The downside is celebrities have lifecycles and they are often less predictable. Remember how people were concerned with Martha Stewart a couple of years back? Celebrity branding can be high risks and these risks are sometimes hard to manager.

Advanced Brand Strategy Masteclass Week 4 - Managing Brand Architecture

Welcome to week four. This week we are introducing brand architcture. This is less exciting previous sessions as the primarily focus of this one is on the economics of brand management. So why do we need a brand architecture?

Creating a clear brand architecture is to help structure a brand's position (both now and for the future) and support management the task of developing that brand and ensuring that everyone within an organization (from ad agencies to field mkt folks) is working to a common and clearly understood goal. When do you need one? Consider GM has 32 brand names, P&G has hundreds, BMW has 3 or 4, IBM has 5 and Starbucks has 1. Obviously the more brands you have, the more you'll need one. It gets more and more complicated as companies have multi-brands as a result of merger and acquisitions, aggressive brand extensions due to pressure for quick profits and increasing complex structures involving sub-brands, endorsed brands and co-brands.

Brand architecture is not an one-off effort. Often the task includes periodic regrouping multiple product groups, brand families, reposition them to reflect their role in the market and to create a structure for immediate successful marketing. The establishment of a clearly understood and coherent brand architecture creates the structure within which the vital day-to-day tactical decisions can be made. Without this brand architecture in place, these tactical decisions become strategic and long-winded in nature.

Brand Architecture is the logical, strategic and relational structure for all of the brands in the organization’s brand portfolio. The objective is to maximize clarity, synergy and leverage to maximize customer value and internal efficiencies. The main advantages of developing a brand architecture:

1. It helps everyone in the organization see and understand all the connections between corporate brands, sub-brands and master brands.

2. It makes decision making easier when it comes to allocating and sharing marketing resources such as advertising and promotions.

3. Protect brands by being over-leveraged and being diluted by over-stretching communications messaging and graphic design options.

P&G’s brand architecture effectively manage the relationships between product, brands and market segments. Head and Shoulders dominates the dandruff control shampoo category and Pert Plus targets the market for combined shampoo and conditioner. Pantene is positioned as a brand with a technological heritage and the benefit of enhancing hair vitality. The three brands basically optimizes their brand coverage instead all products under a P&G product brand names. One additional major benefit is to avoid a brand association that would be incompatible with another offering and adversely affect the other brand’s performance.

The most important strategic decision is to decide whether a company should adapt a "Branded Hosue" or "House of Brand" strategy.  I have seen hundred of heated debates in the boardrooms on this and it is never an easy one. Because it involves corporate strategy as well as many long term views. Questions for deabte:

1/ Should Google employ a "Braned House" vs. a "House of Brand" strategy when it expands into new areas even ourside the internet seach and ad space?

2/ Should Yahoo gradully replace those brands that they acquired (Flickr etc) and putting them under a Yahoo umbrella or let those companies continue to operate under their own brands? If not, should there be any assoication with Yahoo? If yes, what kind?

3/ Should Virgin consider moving away from a Branded House and start creating new extensions or co-brands preparing the brand for the next decade as there will be certainties over succession issues as well as maintaining relevance beyond certain categories?

Pls share your thoughts. 

. 

Luxury Brand Marketing - Marketers Must Read

Here's a piece by Morgan Gerald, it is an interesting piece so I decided to post it here. So you know, Morgan is an anthropologist (he holds BA, MA and PhD in Anthropology) and has a special interest in youth culture. He spends a lot of time hanging out in malls observing teen and youth’s behavior. Interesting job, right?

In Grade 10, I had a friend who liked to make loud farting noises in French class and who once did something relevant to the current luxury crisis, transformation or challenge.

Over the weekend, my friend visited every store on

Yonge Street in Toronto that sold Zod Lacoste. In dressing rooms and on display floors, he used an exacto knife to perform a little brand surgery and, arriving at school Monday morning, proudly showed us all his new t-shirt, complete with over 100 safety-pinned alligators. Even though he had long hair and listened to Ozzy, we all thought that was pretty fxxking punk rock!

20 years later that same aesthetic is back, maybe in a bigger way than ever. Some hints?

COUNTERFEIT

On Canal St. in NYC or at the corner of Brimley & Sheppard in Toronto, there are more locations selling knock-offs of luxury goods than there are Barney’s, Bloomingdales and Holt Renfrews times 1000. If brands are signs and not just products, need we look for any more proof than here? And if consumers can’t make an authentic connection with a brand (translate, in this case: afford it) you can bet they’ll steal it. Will counterfeit chic come to rear its pirate head in the near fashion future?

THE MECONOMY

A report from Amsterdam-based trendwatching.com predicts 2008 as the year of the ‘meconomy’ (as opposed to the me-too economy of aspirationalism). Why?

- a disdain for big-box retailers

- a loss of faith in the cost of luxury goods.

- a feeling that luxury brands have flopped on their promise by sometimes producing less-than-stellar quality goods

- luxury house are run by brand managers rather than designers

- luxury brands have diluted their exclusivity (Lagerfeld at H&M, anyone?).

One effect, according to the report, is a desire to tell more personal brand stories through odder, more obscure and more curated puchases made from local, independent retailers and designers.

STREETWEAR

With its focus on obscure brands (1-man lifestyles like A-Ron), Customized and Limited Edition and Artist Series remixes of standards (hundreds of Air Force 1 variations since 1982), and personal tweaks on product templates (Nike I.D.), streetwear will drive more consumers towards purchasing personal and defining brand space through exclusivity.

Traditional luxury brands have a place in that space (streetwear’s musical arm, hip hop, made that obvious in breaking Prada, Gucci, LV, Moet to the mainstream), but only if they jive with core value placed on heritage and on the core aesthetic of curating one’s style by mixing & matching high and low cultures of Paris runways and NYC streets.

Online continues driving core consumers towards new products from afar (www.hypebeat.com for the world) but don’t forget the ‘street’ in streetwear: some exclusivities and subcultural luxuries are available only to the hyper-local consumer.

THE 100 MILE CONSUMER

Forget ‘Can I afford luxury?’ With increased environmental and social concerns, more and more consumers could be asking themselves, Can we afford luxury?

Big cities are seeing this with top chefs tailoring (curating, again) menus to fit meat and produce available locally and seasonally. Where a luxury food market has sprouted from the soil of organic green beans grown on farms outside city limits and then sold at the Farmer’s Market in the local park for 3x times the price of green beans in the grocery store, so too might a similar scenario emerge in established luxury brands and products.

Will fashion designer Arthur Mendonca become even more popular among consumers in his home city of Toronto because he and his labor are local? Will future car purchases be influenced by the proximity of the manufacturing plant? Will vacations be taken closer to home so as not to jet-fuel the environment? 

QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

What are the "unobtainables" that your brands or products are based on? I’ll pass on that one when it comes to traditional luxury and where Web 2.0 fits into marketing them because buying online, making messages too public and SNSing with just anybody about the $52,500 Louis Vuitton Patchwork bag seem to contradict the anti-massness of luxury.

Instead, I’ll run with life-caches and life-streams as a luxury performance category.

- start with biographies of clients: income, status, life cycle, goals, social concerns

- meet the needs of clients paring down purchases and simplifying lives by helping them decide what Best Things In Life are worth holding on to or attaining

- help them create ‘most’ experiences (vacations that are the most exotic, extreme, relaxing, educational, wine & food-oriented) and ‘best’ services (financials where stocks and funds are in collaboration with their level of social consciousness)

- customize service in Luxury Offsetting for clients in New York that want to buy German cars, French wine and Italian purses but feel a need to compensate (Don’t plant any tree just anywhere - pay for Pinot Gris vines or a locally-sustaining crop to be planted in the upper New York State region of your choice) 

- dig deep into those biographies to curate those ‘most’ and ‘best’ so clients can access not only the cultural capitals of high culture but also the subcultural capitals (coolness, obscurity, localisms, underground-ness, hyper-speed taste-making, activism etc.) of the ‘low’ and ‘mass’ cultures of the street and Internet.

Top Photo: Coolhunter (www.coolhunter.net) Bottom Photo: Louis Vuittin Art Show Paris Store

The Transformation of Luxury Brand Marketing

There are many good postings to share:

André Galhardo: As “Jacques Lacan pointed out, human-beings need to learn how and what to desire. ‘Desire is the Desire of the Other.’ It is on the basis of this fundamental understanding of identity that Lacan maintained throughout his career that desire is the desire of the Other. What is meant by him in this formulation is not the triviality that humans desire others, when they sexually desire (an observation which is not universally true).

Flavio Azevedo: "What constitutes luxury becomes a wholly individual and emotional decision." Clearly the rules of luxury are not set exclusively by a few educated minds anymore. Experience is luxury. Silence is luxury. To some, not mentioning the word luxury is luxury. Very human. Not so engineer-friendly.

Bart Suichies: Luxury comes from exclusivity. Individualism equals exclusivity. So by definition, every time a brand gives room to consumers to express their individualism, it becomes an exclusive, luxurious good. This will lead to a future of consumers using their self-expression to get the luxury into pretty much any brand in their brandsphere.

Christian Briggs: If this is the case, then the current weak version of experience co-creation (which is still more like mass configuration at this point, despite its own protestations to the contrary) may give way to what I have been calling "deep co-creation," in which customers not only co-create the experience and some of the value, but the business itself (and, by extension the brand). And they will of course do this as a large, interconnected community. So in this changed world, a big part of people's meaning might come from co-creating a business and seeing it thrive.

Thanks everyone for these are great insights. So we all agreed that the very idea of ‘luxury” has changed. .  What you buy is more important than what you earn. Luxury is not a goal anymore. For many, it has become a necessity, part of our daily experiences. Although the purchases are the same, motivations are different.  While consumers are always eager to rationalize their luxury purchases, today they do so based on different value systems. Today’s luxury drivers are rooted much more firmly in personal well-being and self-satisfaction while purchases such as jewelry, watches and handbags continue to satisfy the desire and to indulge one-self and one’s loved ones.

Here are some further insights into luxury goods purchase behavior:

Real vs. Imaginary- Consumption sometimes operates at a level of the imaginary, but it also has real effects in facilitating the construction of self-identity. While luxury shoppers are led by rational desire to purchase items of high value and craftsmanship, eight of the ten top purchase motivators are emotionally driven.  Marketers must tap into consumers’ desires for well-being, self-concept and indulgence. The consumption of symbolic meaning, reinforced through advertising, provides the individual with the opportunity to construct, maintain and communicate identity and social meanings. Victoria Secrets is a great example of a marketer using the unobtainable, imaginary dreams of its consumers to drive sales. Beautiful and perfectly proportioned models strut down the runway and grace glitzy catalog pages to convey the notion that the company’s products can enhance—or even instill such glamour. If Victoria’s Secret products are worn by the beautiful, does the inverse also hold true? Will wearing them make one beautiful? Women scoop up the product for themselves and dazzling elegance will rub off the wearer. Ask this important question: What are your key target segments’ wildest imaginations?

Material vs. the Symbolic After a product fulfills its ability to satisfy a physical need, we enter the realm of the symbolic, and it is symbolic meaning that is used in the search for the meaning of existence. We become consumers of “illusions”. De Beers’ slogan “A diamond is forever” has been so successful in creating the illusion of “love and eternity” that a diamond is the material symbol of love and marriage. For many, the gift of a diamond symbolizes eternal love, which in itself is an elusive concept (ok not all agree). Now marketers are trying to do the same with platinum. Ask this question: What illusions does your product help consumers to create or maintain?

Social vs. the Self - The function of symbolic meanings of products operate in two directions, outward in constructing the social world—social-symbolism—and inward towards constructing our self-identity: self-symbolism. In other words, using products to help us become our “Possible Selves”. Most SUVs and sports equipment brand images are built on this very concept. SUVs have an image of being sporty, powerful, tough and rugged. They appeal to men (and some women) who may not travel anywhere more treacherous than the local supermarket.  The Hummer sold to civilians is radically different from the one used by the military, yet the brand’s image, as an enduring, robust all-terrain vehicle remains intact.  Expensive and “cool”, SUVs are popular yet practical—they hold a carpool full of kids and their hockey equipment—without saddling their upscale owners with a “minivan” image. Ask this question: What are your target luxury segments’ ideal possible selves?

Marketing of luxury goods is in the middle of a transformation. The individual must experience consumption as part of the journey towards personal development, achievement and self-creation. They are content to map their lives on a marketer’s segmentation chart. Marketing of luxury goods is evolving away from a top-down approach towards one that provides or facilitates innovations for new ideas and meanings- empowered by Web 2.0. The co-creation of brand meanings through social networks and virtual interactions has become the basis for value. This, in fact, challenges the convention view of product-centric innovation. 

Some examples invclude a social networking site targeting affluent consumers under 35 years old launched a weeks ago. Squa.re, is a members-only site offering internet protocol TV and a focus on luxury. The company behind the start-up, Square Media Ventures, which describes itself as a Web 2.0 internet broadcaster, says Squa.re "aims to bridge the online gap in the luxury sector and the affluent 18 - 35-year-old professionals market". The founders Olivier Bassil and Jeremy Genin say that the site will "move one step beyond the MySpace and YouTube generation" and will go up against other select sites, such as aSmallWorld. Bassil adds: "Leveraging social networks is a powerful sales and marketing tool. We want to help luxury brands increase their awareness among an engaged and highly influential audience." They allow members to create their own online TV channels and showcase their lifestyles with like-minded individuals with user-generated and professional video content. See you guys there in your Dolce Cabana purple jacket!

CMO Stands For Chief Meaning Officer

Here is a question …is it corporations, who by their ad campaigns ultimately determine what consumers want? Or is it consumers, whom producer must satisfy in order to stay in business? Or as Flavio puts it “Beware of the connected-consumer. For he/she will have a vote on what the next “unobtainable” will be. We want to 'co-create the unobtainable'. After all, we do this for hours in the web, everyday.” Good observations. Let’s take a look at Bart’s view (from his post this morning):

“Luxury comes from exclusivity. Individualism equals exclusivity. So by definition, every time a brand gives room to consumers to express their individualism, it becomes an exclusive, luxurious good. This will lead to a future of consumers using their self-expression to get the luxury into pretty much any brand in their brandsphere.”

“On the other hand, one could also argue luxury brands should never empower consumers, as that (not being able to personalize your brand) would create an unobtainable in itself.”

This deceptively simple question has been at the heart of debate between marketing scholars and practitioners. The success of marketing lies in its ability to embed meanings in brands and products. This suggestions leads to the important conclusion that meaning does not necessary emanate from the material or functional aspects of products or services. Consumer understandings and experiences of what are seemingly objectives properties are simply “culturally constructions” and often comes from "conversations". Today many of these conversations are happening in a vitual environment and cultural constructions happen a lot faster and are more global in nature. Brands have symbolic meanings in all cultures and societies. Marketers need to induce the consumer with a preference or to pay a premium for luxury brands that are sometimes (somtimes) more mass produced similar quality products. And now, the power to induce is shared by the consumers.

Once markets believed that to mobilize meanings it means owning and monopolizing through media channels of meaning creation. Nike, for instance, does not aim to attract particular meanings to its products; it just needs to attach the swoosh to any person, place or event that is granted cultural value in the world of sport. Mercedes Benz does aim to attract particular meanings to its range of automobiles; it just needs to have its logo to be seen in major events of golf of tennis where cultural value is being granted.

So that brings us the conclusion that a CMO should really be called the Chief Meaning Officer. How many CMO out there that truly understands what we have discussed the last couple of days and their marketing team is fully equipped for this new job of "co-creating meaning with customers?" For sure, traditional ad agencies struggle so much and many are stuck in the 80's advertising paradigm. How many of them have the right mindset and tools to sell the “unobtainable”?

Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass Week 3 - Luxury Brand Marketing

Since we have great momentum on the debate on this subject, this is the perfect time to introduce next week's module - Managing Luxury Brand. The topic of "Brand Meaning" is particularly relevant in this industry and so we can carry on our debate and see these ideas through the lens of luxury brands. This has always been one of my favorite subjects and one of my most populars among my keynotes.

The natural evolution of all luxury concepts is from class to mass and it started to accelerate 8 years ago. Although the very definition of what is a "luxury" brand is open for debate, I believe that it's being expanded. Luxury is first adopted by the affluent and wealthy and inevitably translated and reinterpreted down to the mass market. So today's luxuries become tomorrow's necessities. Luxury marketers need to stay out in front of the luxury consumers, discovering new and different ways to give expression to the luxury consumers' desires. New technology creates new luxury needs and business opportunities, such as HD-TVs, iPhones and other electronic gadgets. Changes in fashion, too, are a way to continually reinvent luxury, so today's colored diamonds are hot. But to assure the greatest long-term success luxury marketers need to connect with the luxury consumers' inner-emotional lives and create new products and services to meet those needs.

Bear with me here. There’s another way to explain what’s happening is that the imbalance in our current spending patterns which perhaps may be viewed as a market failure caused by consumption externalities: (In English please?) Basically, in a little economics here, the fact that greater consumption by a group of people actually imposes costs on others. An important advantage of this explanation is that it is grounded in the very same theoretical framework that animates the beliefs of the most ardent defenders of the status quo. When one family's spending decisions impose negative consequences on others, Adam Smith's invisible hand simply cannot be expected to produce the best overall spending pattern. The good news is that if consumption externalities lead us to work harder thereby improving productivity, spending more improving this consumer-driven economy, and save little and helping the explosive growth of credit card and personal finances companies (and the now mortgage problems), that's what it is. Brand is a core part of any capitalist society.

While all these sounds good, we need to watch out for a new breed of consumer: the middle-aged ex-yuppies who, finding himself surrounded by too much stuff acquired over the years, decides to simplify life. Out will go conspicuous consumption and a trophy culture. These advanced luxury spenders will buy more ephemeral, less cluttering stuff: fleeting, but expensive, "experiences", not heavy goods for the home (although Wolf and Sub-Zero kitchen is still nice and considered must-haves). This is great for those who work in the digital space as there will be lots of opportunities to design "life cache" services ( here is a million dollar idea here) or as our friend David Armano at Critical Mass puts it, "life streams" and these life streams need to be captured and preserved in roder to create meaningful experiences.

The most interesting concept to explore here is “Desire vs. Satisfaction”. This presentation here is about 6 years old with some minor updates when I talked to our clients on this subject. I have presented this in Spain, Germany, NYC, Boston and San Francisco and this is the slide (slide 53) that my audiences find most interesting. Brand advertising often provides gratification and recodes a commodity as a desirable psycho-ideological sign. In fact, it feeds the desire to sometimes the unobtainable.

Advertising feeds the desire to achieve the often unobtainable unity of the self with destabilized meanings, images that separate commodities from their original intended use and offer the opportunity to reconstruct a self by "purchasing meanings" in a Do-it-yourself fashion. Desire exists in the gap between visual / languages / symbols and the unconscious. Desire does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary desire desires desire. Images are often so desirable that things hardly satisfy. Humans have a natural ability to want, desire, aspire, yearn, and long for. Any attempt to diminish this natural desire I believe is counterproductive, frustrating, and so improbable it borders on the impossible. Some people desire desirelessness with such a passion that it actually increases their ability to desire. What we do we become stronger in, and these people yearn so much and so often to have no more yearning that their ability to yearn becomes astronomical. Postmodern consumption is inextricably linked with aspects of sexuality, both conscious and subconscious. Desires are being constructed through linkages between consumption and the human body. Visuals will continue to be the most powerful tool because they never satisfy. Calvin Klein, Diesel, Gucci and Abercrombie and Fitch built and maintain their brands based entirely on this concept. “Meaning” is created through continuous search for links between identity (social) and the self.

Ask this important question: What are the unobtainables that your brands or products are based on? Let’s hear it from Bart, Andrew, George, Morgan, Sarah, Mark, Andre, Peter, Josh, Jenny or Flavio? Also we have lots of friends visiting this site from Critical Mass, IDEO, Ogilvy, AKQA, Blast Radius, Razor Fish and W+K, I want to hear your views. Enjoy the weekend!

Social Networks, Sub-cultures and Brand Meanings

Very interesting thread this week. Morgan, I know this topic is your cup of tea as an anthropologist. Your analysis is both precise and well grounded when you wrote that the social network generation is a new breed of subculturalist. And just as subculturalists were the creative class of brand dissemination and modification and alteration and transformation in the past, so too will the SNS crowd be in the days ahead.

My take on what is happening out there is really the results of the following trends: The first one is the relentless commodification (and virtualization) of all areas of social life (to your point including sub-cultures). It is the essentially the marketization of a large variety of sub-cultures and its micro-behavior. Examples such as today’s married women are more devoted to employment and like many large corporations begin to “outsource” their work. Such as hiring baby-sitters, lawn care providers, private tutors for their children and grocery delivery etc. Same situation when we "outsource" our other activities such as storing photos and finding the right product advice through the use of the internet (although we don’t have to pay directly for these services as they are subsidized by advertisers). So less and less of our daily life is produced at home, but rather more and more of what we consume is commodified (and delivered through the networks). The commoditization of sub-cultures largely due to consumer participation in social networks and other consumer generated content sharing. This commoditization of daily life is slowly occurring in many areas whatever we can imagine including health care, learning, dating and even marriages. The production of news, popular culture, sports, entertainment is also increasingly commodified.

Twenty years ago, the public good aspect of many industries including TVs, newspaper and book publishing, fashion and luxury goods and personal services co-existed with the need to crate shareholder value. Today, a couple millions of citizen journalists are making a big impact in the media industries. No aspect of the modern social life is immune from these forces. “Personal style” or “Personal taste” or “Individuality” has become a hot market commodity. Many companies have capitalized on these trends. Branding has moved up to a corporate level as well as down to an individual level. Everyone these days need to care about his or her “personal image” or “brand’ whomever you are. Styles are being identified, reflected, re-mixed and manufactured. Hip-Hop moved from inner cities to suburb and back again, as a marketed commodity. Even our deepest personal connections are increasingly dominated by market transaction. They happen through surrogate motherhood, sale of one’s DNA, sex, private jets or holiday homes all available as timeshare, or the commercialization of spirituality (watch faith channel). The result of this is we become more desperate to socialize the profane consumer world around us, worshiping celebrities, rock stars, designers and brands (at least not politicians thank God).

Well, because life is generally boring (not all of us will agree with this) and work is not exactly empowering (at least for 50% of us). Brand helps create some sense of purpose and is compensatory in nature. If work is empowering, life is meaningful and people will lose interest in high-consumption lifestyles. De-marketing will happen. Until then, a brand’s role is to help to create meanings in everyday life through commodities. I hope this provides a good wrap up on this exciting topic. Love to hear your views.

Two particpants sent photos and ask me to post them. First one is from Andrew and the other from George. Thanks for sharing. Enjoy!