Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Ben Edwards is continuing to talk about branding here at the Blog Business Summit.  (If you didn’t read the full last post, by the way, check out the link to the video here.  It’s the funniest thing from IBM I’ve ever seen, but then, I’m old enough to remember when the mainframe was HOT.) 

He says when brands fail us, when their products and behaviors no longer help us project our own identies, we punish them.  He’s quoting the Interbrand/BusinessWeek global brand studies (subscription may be required):

Since 2000 -

Gap has lost 31% of their brand value

Sony has lost 29% of the brand value

Kodak lost 63% (and Ben asks, where is Kodak on Flickr?)

Ford has lost 70% of the brand value

And as brands engage with social issues, brand insecurity may be worsening.  He makes examples of BP’s claims of new energy, and yet how there are more and more probes into their messy mining of fossil fuel.

So what has changed?

People can create and share brands themselves. Audiences of all kinds discover communities of interest and publish the brand to each other.  Ideas about a brand can be generated by anyone, to anyone.

Ben did a quick study of the top 20 brands on YouTube, and people are: 

• celebrating your brand
• mocking your brand
• mashing up your brand with other brands
• making your brand perform strange and unnatural acts

And they’re having fun with it.

We can listen better - there’s never been a good opportunity (beyond focus groups) in traditional media.  With new media, we have an enormous wealth of opportunity to listen.

We can create and share the brand with them - if it’s that sort of brand… Most brands should be about sharing - he used McKinsey and The Economist as brands that may not be shared (these Gods are human? may ot play well…)

By listening and sharing, we have a shot at making our brands more secure and more healthy. 

Don’t segment your audiences.  Nurture a brand where employees and customers and other constituencies can relate to it the same way.  Brands are the most secure and healthy when the stories we tell about ourselves are the stories we live and breathe in reality - and here’s my favorite quote of the morning,

“All corporations are naked now, and if you’re going to be naked, you’ve got to be buff.”

Provide employees with the means to tell their own stories about the brand, and in their own words.  Tink of your experiences flying - how differently do you think of Jet Blue and Southwest from American?  It’s their employees that make the difference, and that’s how consumers experience the brand.

Listen.  To what employees are saying about the brand, to what customers, partners and suppliers are saying about the brand…  then, go back to the drawing board when you have to…

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