I think you are now ready for some debates. Let me start by asking you what do you think are the top challenges that brand marketing faces today?
Let me start with one, for the last 100 years, marketers had almost perfected the art and science of mass marketing. It even got better when agencies such as W+K, Chiat Day and BBH pushed the creative envelope and did some great work and as a result build some great brands. Then the internet came along and created a whole new game. There was a saying back in the 80s that 50% of advertising is wasted, we just don’t know which 50%. Today I think it is reasonable to say that 80% of advertising were ignored, and we know which 80%. So the "spray and pray" formula is not working. The explosion of various form social media is shaping the future of ad industry. ..and forever changes the very idea of “brand”.
Everywhere in the world Brazil, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, China and Japan, this new class of net citizens control the means by which to create and publish content, and to some extend determine what a brand means. Yes, brand marketers are increasingly concern that they're losing control of message, medium and meanings. Ad agencies lost the exclusive role as "official storytellers" and they have a hard time coping with the fact that they are now truly becoming “agencies”, or in another words “brokers” of messages and meanings. As Mark Ury (our guest blogger) puts it “… because brands aren’t distinct, separate “things” that ad agencies create. They’re the by-product of relationships. They are behavior.” After all, he’s probably right.
In the slides that I posted here yesterday, we kinda see the evolution of brand. From being “identity” or “image” driven to now becoming more “emotion” or “experience” driven. How do you think that will evolve next?
If brands are behaviors, how can brand marketers manage these behaviors? If not, what can be done in order to influence it? What can be done to protect your brand from negative associations? I’d like to hear your views.
