By Flemming Wisler, Futureorientation december 2006
Move your company’s license to operate out to the people: improve your image in ways your competition cannot copy and acquire goodwill that can buy forgiveness in crises.
Over the last 20 years, work with image and branding has become increasingly important and increasingly difficult. As the Internet has exploded, we have gained almost perfect knowledge about the companies that are behind the brands we use. We communicate on the net as never before, and our judgment is harsh when we feel cheated or used by companies and institutions. Rebellion thrives. Branding is gaining new significance and is moving away from control and staging toward cooperation and involvement. The soft revolution is underway.
Naomi Klein published No Logo in early 2000. Just months later, the “Battle in Seattle” practically shut down the summit of the World Trade Organization and ushered in the anti-globalization movement. No Logo became the manifesto that helped explain the rebellion against the “corporate world,” and at the same time became a wake-up call for companies’ self-perception and branding strategies.
The events of 9/11 and the war against terror came to overshadow the rebellion, but the critical interest in large corporations and brands has continued to grow. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in January 2006, a survey showed that confidence in the media, governments and large companies was the lowest since 2001, when the survey was first conducted.
The job of cultivating the company’s reputation and image has therefore gained greater and greater significance. But the development of the Internet has undermined mass media’s ability to reach the masses. Branding is no longer mainly a question of buying positive attention.
Web 2.0
The Internet is now in its next big revolution, often called Web 2.0. Over the last two years, a flood of new applications combined with increasingly faster broadband, and a new generation of users with a desire to share knowledge, has made the net increasingly user friendly and, not least, more social.
The World Wide Web has gained a new cross dimension that lets users build local and international network groups with common goals and interests in just hours. These function completely outside authorized players and official bodies. The tools are the mobile phone, wikis, blogs, instant messaging, VoIP and podcasting, and their effectiveness sets completely new standards.
Web 2.0 has reached epidemic growth. At least 55 million blogs exist – probably there are millions more – and a new one is created every seven seconds. Most are private reflections about the vicissitudes of daily life, but a small percentage are published by dedicated fans of all possible products and services. Even a small percentage of 55 million is a lot, and creates an enormously powerful group of opinion makers and NGOs. These people and groups often cultivate brands as part of their daily life – positively or negatively. With their large readership behind them, they have clear expectations of being heard and respected.
Because you deserve it
The time is long past when branding and image were questions of buying or acquiring time to talk, then going into stealth mode with spin and tactics when you get caught in some scandal.
The perspective is that every company or organization of any size must, in the coming years, expect to have its own panel of well-organized users watching closely from the sideline. They will passionately follow and discuss your products, announcements, campaigns, investments, results, service and not least innovation. Innovation is something the brand enthusiast will want to be involved in, something Microsoft has shown in its pioneer work with the developer’s forum Channel Nine.
As brand, therefore, you will increasingly have the image that users believe you deserve, not the one you hope to acquire through campaigns and PR.
Business model #1: Social Branding
- Meet customers and users where they are on the net: in the blogosphere. Listen to and participate in the conversation through corporate blogging.
- Invite knowledge sharing and feedback between communities on the net and your own staff and development teams.
- Open up to adjustment and individualization by allowing access to products before they are finished.
- Recognize that you don’t own your brand – the people who use it do. Invite their participation in branding, marketing and launches.