The Branding Panic of 2009

Social media is making some organizations nervous. Undermining the traditional principals of outreach, it destabilizes a commonplace notion that branding emphasizes messages more than actions.  While upstart bloggers and new-agey techies muse about trusting the crowd to define an organization's identity, communicators worry about losing control of their brand.  With such a loss, they fear, may come a disintegration of focus and purpose.

I do not believe that new forms of online communication will lead to the demise of associations or private enterprises, but it sure will change them.  In fact, engagement with the crowd offers the potential for making organizations work more harmoniously with their mission.  Because information is instantaneous and plentiful, public perception is increasingly reinforced not just by what organizations say, but by what they do. 

We hear much angst over the prospect that the perception of friends, business associates and acquaintances will overtake the organization's ability to project itself as a visionary, creative, centered and even cool entity.  Indeed, it is valuable to recognize that vision of the crowd may are as clouded and colored as our own.  With that in mind, we can find the essence of new marketing in the balance between we and they. Truly authentic conversations live in the center of the new marketer's playbook.

For years, marketers and branding specialists have extolled the virtues of understanding the needs, wants and interests of those they serve.  Today we have vastly improved tools to to do just that. In the corporate world, Unilever, Kraft, Starbucks and many others have used online outreach and engagement to better understand their customers, provide better customer service and improve their products.  In the Associations world, ASAE continues to reach toward the crowd to improve member services.

But promoting organizations in the digital age does not end with the crowd.  Conversations have more than one side.  The organization's contribution is particularly important because it provides a unifying influence to reinforces a crowd's purpose.  The trouble, in bygone days, was that organizations could out-influence others in the conversation by saturating the press with media messages and press releases. Occasionally, a faint echo could be heard in reply.

Today, the ability to communicate broadly, quickly and inexpensively has made conversations between organizations and individuals more balanced.  Blogs, content rating systems and social networks have given individuals a greater voice.  With a greater voice has come the potential for greater scrutiny.  Communication messages are still important, but organizations must -- now more than ever -- back-up talk with action. 

The potential for balanced conversation has influenced the shift toward a more holistic approach toward promoting the interests of organizations everywhere.  Pushing an organization's values from the press release into product development cycle, customer/member retention activities, fund raising, marketing and more, online communications technology makes our customers into watchdogs, product developers, quality assurance specialists and advocates in a way that was never possible before.  But despite the hype of technology visioneers, the power of these innovations lives not in the crowd but in our authentic conversation with it.