The People Formerly Known as Your Customers

“The people formerly known as your audience, or the people formerly known as consumers, are now participants in the process of building your brand.”

[David Sifry from blogs as leading indicators, The Economist]

You are not in control of your brand anymore, those people you thought about as targets, audience, or consumers (all words I have a problem with) are now content creators, critics, collectors, joiners and even influential spectators.

They have an influence over the development of your brand. Your brand is personal to them.

How do you invite them to the conversation? You want to learn how to listen to those sentiments and ideas that make up your brand perception and reality in the marketplace.

There is also the other side, your brand needs to have a core attitude that embodies what your company stands for.

This is beyond humanization, it's about putting a face and a personality on your business. Today, we don't just buy a product or a service anymore, we buy how that product and service makes us feel.

How do you enroll yourself in the conversation? Learn how to listen to your own voice. Make that represent the intent and attitude of you brand in the marketplace. What kind of proof, measurement, plans do you need to participate?

Comments

[Mads Kristensen]

I would argue that people are...people. Always have been and always will be. The industrial society and its associated marketing machinery just allowed us (meaning the marketeers) a few decades to escew this balance.

This reminds me of the now classic phrase "Markets are conversations". It was in the medieval ages, and its coming back in a much bigger way thanks to the tools now at our disposal.

In terms of dealing with that? Authenticity and honesty would be my bet. Question is whether thats a trait that have been lost by business in the consumer society? Will be interesting to watch.

[Luis Sandoval]

A short but sweet post on businesses and their interaction with their "customers." I find it fascinating the power we, as connected individuals, have in the business world nowadays.

I just wrote an article myself two days ago on www.bloggin-ads.com regarding how word of mouth on blogs can really effect a business and the power they can also have for change.

The industry will change, some quicker than others, but I feel a vast majority will continue business as usual and one of two things will happen:

1) The businesses will lose money to their competitors who have opened up their ears and listened to the conversation of the people.

and/or

2) An individual with more social thinking will have to replace the old hierarchy and work to turn the company around, but that will just take longer because most of these CEO's sit on their thrones for a long time.

Only time will tell how long it will take some of the more established to get the message.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mads - the Web and many of the current tools are giving individuals real power - inside and outside organizations. The PR impression today is made by everyone in the organization, not just the PR group. It will be interesting to see how things develop.

@Luis - the observations you make are very realistic. I have seen many a business continue on the road to perdition to the very bitter end. It was (almost) easier to insist on preserving the way things were instead of learning to do things differently. I wrote in a post last week about the evolution of business that many do not calculate the cost of not doing.

[Tim Brunelle]

I recall Legos employed some rapid customer/fans to help redesign one line of their product offering. Aside from them, what other brands have literally hired their customers?

Part of what you're suggesting, Valeria, is perhaps a permanent, official seat at the table for consumers/customers inside a brand. An outsider-in role?

Hmmm. This sounds like a good blog post!

Thanks again for such inspiring writing, Valeria.

[Karen Hegmann]

Hi Valeria

Interesting discussion. I particularly like your comment: "Today, we don't just buy a product or a service anymore, we buy how that product and service makes us feel."

Last week, I wrote a post that came to a similar conclusion. I read a review about a book by New York Times Magazine columnist Rob Walker called "Buying In." One of Walker's conclusions is that meaningful objects are rarely chosen through rational means, but through narratives that we generate about ourselves in choosing a particular product.
Once we sell ourselves the story, it isn't hard to get other potential "spectators" involved with your brand.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Tim - monitoring the conversations happening in the marketplace is not enough. Marketers and communicators now are exposed to what people think about their brands, yet often they do not have enough clout inside an organization to transfer that knowledge in a way that is actionable by the business. How about making the conversation transparent to the whole business? How would the management group feel if the whole employee base saw how the company's products and services were perceived and received in the marketplace?

@Karen - that was the concept behind Seth Godin's "All Marketers are Liars." Such a difficult title, such a good idea! In fact, we talk to the people who share a worldview with our product through the way that it makes them feel. Hugh MacLeod popularized the concept of social object for the thing (concept all the way to physical product) that allows us to have that conversation - and narrative in our heads. We do buy a story of us. Good hearing from you!

[Paula Thornton]

A brand is a shorthand to personal meaning and experience. People have always 'owned' the brand in that sense. It's the business that is just now coming to the realization (only many are still in denial).

[agent m]

Personally,I think its great that consumers have a role in brand perception. It's like nicknames- you can't give yourself one because you like the sound of it. You earn one, bad or good, through public perception.

Certain companies and products would rather waste millions on creatives "branding" them as the choice of mothers, dentists, "the next generation" instead of using (mostly free) tools to hear it from a mother or dentist's mouth directly. And when they do adopt new media practices, we see, too often, the exploitation of these tools or half-hearted attempts.

Don't get me started on how big ad agencies are "embracing" social media tools. This site hits the nail right on the head- www.adagencysecretformula.com

[Peter]

Poor communication, blind, mismanaged expectation, lies, denial, contradictions, confusion, behavioral inconsistency , lost relationships and manipulative.

The brand of the modern corporation is authentically human.

Impatient, demanding, conceited, unappreciative, disloyal, flaky, rude, narrow minded, radically acquisitive, opportunistic, lazy and intolerant of all human failing.

The brand of the modern consumer is authentically human.

But over course, if you hold a dollar it's OK to be authentically human.

But, If you want my dollar you must be cured - your human failings defeated - your brand authentically super human.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Paula - you made me reflect upon the origin of the term brand, a mark of ownership. Except for it has many owners and different meanings today.

@Agent m - I cannot disagree with anything you say. There will be stretched budgets, greedy people, inexperienced professional, etc. That crates plenty of opportunity for those who choose to educate, learn, share in a way that is not self-serving ;-)

@Peter - when I read your comment on my iPhone I could not make sense of it. The layout here helps. It would also help if companies stopped trying to be perfect and started being remarkable.

[Peter]

Valeria et al,

Why should companies be remarkable? Why do we care if a company provides poor services, wastes money on poor strategy, loses employees or is unattractive.

Why must we convert companies to "our" brand of modern capitalism.

Why don't we care about unappreciative consumers and consumption.

[Nathan Snell]

@Peter- An interesting twist on authenticity for companies and consumers. As I understand, you're saying being truly authentic,in a human manner, means having a number of failings. But that customers actually want a company that isn't authentic, because they want the company to be perfect and deliver all the time, etc.

But I think there's a bit of an error in that, one that coincides with your question to begin with. A brand doesn't need to be authentically superhuman to be authentic.

I think authenticity leads to a brand's personality, it leads to a company that has a face. Having a personality and a face doesn't mean you're without error or that you have to be. Look at Apple. They've built a personality behind their brand, and they're not perfect. The launch of their 3G phone proves this. Do they get ridiculed for not being perfect? Sure. But its their personality that saves them from it.

If anything, I would argue that being authentic opens up the option for a company to be able to make more mistakes. It let's them say "we made a mistake and we're sorry, but we're people like you so bear with us."

[Peter]

Hi Nathan,

My "argument" is, as you put it " we're people like you so bear with us".

We all know it but some how refuse to accept it (unless of course contrition is part of your brand).

But its more than this. We want to change corporations and convert them to a "purer" form with less sins of humanity - authentically superhuman ( perhaps consumers are reaching back to a religious tradition)

Whilst all the time the human failings of the consumer go largely unobeserved and unchecked.

This seems a strange basis for a conversation let alone a healty relationship.