[Digital branding] Consumers can break your brand

One of the most important messages coming through here today from the speakers is that consumers are more powerful than ever before and that consumers can make or break brands online.

Consumers can do what they want to your brand online: they can even destroy your brand… and many have (Google: ‘Kryptonite bike locks’; ‘Dell hell’). They can also make your brand (Google: ‘Stormhoek wines’) for some of the best case study examples, mentioned in almost any online or social media presentation… globally!

So what are you going to do about it if it happens to your brand, as a brand manager, marketing manager or ad agency? Do you have a strategy?

Having what Mike Stopforth calls an ORM (online reputation management) strategy is the second most important point here today – even if you have banned Facebook at work, use your secretary to send your emails, still don’t know how to operate your VCR and have never read a blog, people are still talking about your brand online. Whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not.

The consumer is in control online (as I’ve quoted for the 100th time and maybe it will start sinking in at some point to our marketing readers) and they will decide what’s important – and talk about it, and rave about it and rant about, and tell all their Facebook friends, other networks, online friends internationally in other social networks – and quite frankly anyone they can. Nah nah na na nah.

But all is not lost.

You can harness this collective intelligence online for the good of your brand too by learning to use these powerful ‘social influencers’ online. And the good news in South Africa is that marketers still have time to upskill and formulate strategies before broadband access reaches our shores and Internet usage – whether by computer or mobile phone – goes stratospheric.

The problem is, however, as Warren Griffiths from Gloo put it, is that generally marketers don’t understand Web 2.0 and are hoping it is just another fad so that can get back to doing more ads that no one watches because of PVR, distributing coupons people don’t use and ignoring their consumers online. “If we as marketers can understand the medium, we can use it very effectively. We need to change the way we reach our customers and how we communicate in that space,” Griffiths advises.

And he knows what he’s talking about – Gloo’s ‘Lonely Finger’ campaign for 5fm last year won them a Grand Prix and Gold Loerie and set benchmarks in online campaigns for brands in South Africa.

It’s all about collaboration. Even if you feel you don’t have the time to do the proactive social media thing right now online, you at least need to have a reactive strategy.

In stress/anger management the shrinks often talk about ‘to engage is to enrage’, learn how to turn the other cheek, yadda yadda… With social media, not engaging with your consumers may enrage them further. So listen, talk back and above all, maintain the most important code of ethics on the blogosphere: be honest and transparent at all times.