You just handed it to the community
I don’t have answers… but I sure as hell have a conclusion based on experience.
When I designed and built for a living it was all brochure sites, control & throwing money at ideas without much consultation and seeing what stuck. Rarely did anyone, say something ‘failed’… failure was never one persons fault. The Marketeers did their thing, the Designers did their thing, the Developers did theirs, the PR was spun, the advertising was all there… yet the customers, looked at it and went ‘Meh’.
Now it’s all “share ‘this’ and share ‘that’… get in their spaces, be present, join in, show we’re still here… micro-sites may have died, but we can still have a page on Facebook, if only we brand it up! It’s gotta look like us, otherwise how will people know?”
Has anyone put this timeline together yet? The visual brand is dying on it’s arse… Not only is it being diluted across a zillion social spaces, it’s the last thing that we’re still trying to control like it’s 1994. Does the consumer really care, they are interested in who is helping, being friendly, building relationships and doing good things (either in the community the consumer cares about or outside in the real world)
Companies are hanging on to the visual identity because we haven’t the foresight to gamble on what is next on the horizon. Well, maybe the intelligent few, which I consider you lot to be part of, may like to consider.
Lets consider that no-one can be bothered to visit your precious website, the traffic dies down to a dribble, a purchase is made on someone else’s space like Etsy or Amazon or a Facebook shop were you have almost zero control of your branding visuals. Conversations and dialogue is what cements relationships with the lovers of your business. The branding has reduced to an avatar and a ‘www’ that is barely clicked… a /facebook is much more favourable.
What now? Where’s your investment?
If I make someone laugh, am I a comedian? Maybe. If I make 100 people laugh, probably. If I stand on a stage in front of 5m people and no-one laughs, am I still a comedian? No. I have given myself a title based on the relativity of my community. The day that community isn’t impressed or decides to call me a ‘fool’, I am forever labelled as such.
Is that scenario possible for a brand? We’ve already seen evidence of the visual aspect of a Brand being diluted to an avatar on a Facebook page, what happens if the only thing we have left, our ‘voice’, is lost too? The general consensus these days (social media powers employees to engage with communities and fuel business) means that the brand will need to be injected into pure dialogue we use to qwert our way throughout the Interwebs.
Staff will need language courses. I kid you not. Marketing will be handing out brainwashing exercises to keep us in check, whilst HR will be scouring the Web and communities to hire the best advocates that are already branded in their dialogue. We will be hiring based on the understanding of why the company exists, what it stands for and the ability to echo that understanding in social spaces.
The power of the written word doesn’t seem to have disappeared with all this influx of dynamic content… if anything I’m still just as ticked off by an advert in video form as I was by an animated gif… and I had to build those ugly things for a living.
Sure, MacDonalds creates ads for various demographics of it’s customer, but how many of us can afford to do that? The more personable the Web and respective communities become the more we will have to face the fact that text in the form of a comment or tweet will have more impact (long-term) than any brochure, billboard poster, TV ad or website design… those things get redesigned all the time anyway. The only consistency is the logo… and we even replace those if it’s deemed not working.
Employee’s on the other hand… and when I say employees I mean the future employees that love and endorse a brand like they would their own kids, will stick around until they die. Branded for Life. That is what we’re all seeking. Skateboarders all over the world brand themselves with the logos of the companies they love and die for. Search out Santa Cruz, Independent or Thrasher tattoos… evidence that a brand has truly got under the skin of its users. For those that realise the look means fuck all, they will succeed in the future and are probably on their way to succeeding right now.
For the rest of us, what are we hanging on for? Pride? A pay packet? Or are we defiantly in denial? Because we sure as hell aren’t being as effective as we could be. How many of the brands have you been involved with, have the customers gone out and got themselves a tattoo of the company logo, knowing that the only thing to remove it is a laser, flames or maggots? With exception to Apple, I believe not many of us can be proudly associated to this level of branding.
Branding is here to stay. But jeeez, lets see it for what it is and start planning to get it under people’s skin, by being good and great and friendly, helpful and amazing. Yep, some people will never be interested in your business offerings, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stand up for what you believe and damn everyone else.
Me? I’m waiting for the time when I find such an incredible accountant or supermarket that I want to get their logo literally under my skin.
How do you feel about the brand, where is it going? Are you annoyed at the limitations of social spaces to brand them how you want? Are considering a redesign because your impact is ‘Meh’? What’s your story? Don’t sit on the fence, I don’t want you to ‘like’ this, I want you to pick holes in it, laugh in my face or resonate with me. Bring it on in the comments.
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