O.P.E.N. for Business: The future of branding in a web-made world

This article is excerpted from The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World, by Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, available March 2008. See www.theopenbrand.com for more information.

If you’re still clinging to the comforts of the brand-made world, maybe you didn’t get the memo (or the IM...or the text message) about the web-made world. The web-made world has turned the brand-made world on its ear. It’s less controllable by brands and more creatable by consumers. Consumers own this space; brands are only visiting. That is, unless they engage richly, deeply and meaningfully with the new online consumers who are now running the show…

The open source software movement was the first indication that our consumerist society would not be conducting business as usual online. New behaviors—creating, sharing, influencing—are becoming widespread enough to blur forever the roles of producers and consumers, everyday and elite icitizens, traditional authority figures and the new truth tellers and taste makers.

Consumers are no longer satisfied simply to shop online but desire the multifaceted relationships with brands that they have with each other. Faced with wholly new patterns of social influence, the growing ineffectiveness of traditional advertising—not to mention reconciling the social aspect of the web with e-commerce—marketers are in need of fresh strategic direction.

Get O.P.E.N.

In a web-made world, “open for business” doesn’t mean what it once did. In fact, it now means “never closed.” But we think today’s brands need to go beyond the traditional hours-of-operation and instead hang out a sign that proclaims them to be truly O.P.E.N.

Before the internet, consumers had little say in, or influence on, product development, merchandising or marketing—they had almost no way to interact with companies. Today, consumers have the web as both amplifier and audience, and are eagerly sharing their thoughts about products and brands through a wide range of user generated content tools, from ratings and reviews to blogs. Marketing money still talks, but now so do your consumers—to you, to each other, to the whole web-made world.


O…is for On-demand.

Today’s consumers want—and often get—whatever they’re seeking “right now.” The timeline of desire to decision to purchase to acquisition is now condensed to a fraction of the old standard, fostering an immediate, intimate connection between brands and consumers. This is particularly true for e-commerce brands if they want to capture the hearts and wallets of today’s quicksilver consumers.

P…is for Personal.

Not all old-school brand learnings should be tossed aside: In fact, now, more than ever, brands need to make a personal connection with consumers.

Just as it was before the web proved itself a serious channel for brand-building and sales, the online landscape remains the province of the people, not companies. People online leave behind traces of their unique personalities, preferences and behaviors, both through passive clicking and surfing, and active partici-pation and sharing. These vast realms of identifiable, unique individuals negate the old idea of target markets broadly bucketed by age, gender, income or education level. That’s why, to be open, a brand must get personal—not with one market of many but with many markets of one—building relationships through constant consumer dialogue and effective cross-channel profile management that bring the brand closer to each consumer’s real-time needs, wants and expectations.

E…is for Engaging.

Brands once competed for consumers’ mindshare by pushing out mass market messaging they thought would appeal to their audience. Now, that audience has taken the stage, and brands must share the spotlight with creative consumers whose long tail of personal narrative, niche expertise, and mixed media productions can make a standard TV spot look static and self-absorbed. Marketers must develop content that is immersive, participatory and relevant in order to earn a place in the social web and consumer conversations. The old days of pushing pre-made marketing and advertising out to a broad demographic are gone. The new game in town provides fun and easy tools for online users to pull, and then produce, the experiences they’re seeking.

Interactivity is key to deepening consumers’ emotional connection with a brand, so open brands must provide meaningful and engrossing experiences that foster consumer relationships online—and off.

N…is for Networked.

A single consumer has exponential brand potential when she goes online. She has a potential lifetime value, as she always has, but she also has viral value as she engages with her various online communities. Open brands become part of social networks by marketing to the niche of communal consumers who interact with other, like-minded consumers online. Though niche marketing is hardly new, the exponential network effect of online world of mouth marketing is. So the more the brand works the network, the more the network works for the brand.

Why O.P.E.N.?

The future of branding is open. Brands that ignore this reality do so at their own peril. It is an unstoppable movement acknowledged by no less than A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, the largest mass marketer of our times. Lafley challenges: “Consumers are beginning in a very real sense to own our brands and participate in their creation. We need to learn to begin to let go.”

The open brand is first and foremost an advocate of consumer participation—leveraging the power of communities and networks and inviting the consumer to influence the brand and co-create its future. It seeks often chaotic progress over carefully controlled perfection and makes room for consumers in the decision circle.

While some of today’s top brands may continue to succeed by staying their current marketing course, it’s only a question of time before the chinks develop into full-blown fissures. The closed brand will be overwhelmed by the passionate, powerful consumer who wants her brands open or not at all.

Are you dangerously closed?

Some features of a great brand will never change. These include sharp, distinctive design. Carefully packaged messaging and carefully messaged packaging. Innovative products that meet the needs of a changing audience and brand experiences that have lasting emotional resonance with consumers—a sense of belonging, where ownership is membership.

But for today’s consumers, community-by-brand-association is not enough. Now, before, during and after a product purchase, consumers are engaging directly with each other through blogs, ratings, reviews and other interactive forums. They’re sharing opinions, riffing off of each other’s creativity, and seizing control of the messages that brands once generated and propagated. The internet is fast replacing brands as the portal to membership in coveted communities; as a result, products are at risk of becoming mere accessories of, rather than the keys to, belonging.

For brands to survive this relationship shift, they need to engage with this new breed of tribal, online consumers on their own turf by creating, supporting, supplying, inspiring and fostering those communities that have the closest affinity to their brand experiences. In other words, get open.

Copyright © 2008 by Resource Interactive

About Resource Interactive

Resource Interactive is one of the nation’s preeminent digital marketing agencies, helping Fortune 500 companies thrive in the evolving internet economy with award-winning digital strategy, creative and technology solutions. Known for its revolutionizing consumer insights, leading edge interactive design and technological innovation, Resource Interactive is ranked among the top twenty independent interactive agencies in the nation.

Unique in the industry as female-founded, owned and operated, Resource Interactive has grown over its 25-year history from its first marketing relationship with Apple to ongoing partnerships with clients such as Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Wal-Mart, The Coca-Cola Company, Victoria’s Secret, Sherwin-Williams and L.L. Bean, among others. For more information, visit http://www.resource.com/.

Authors
Kelly Mooney has been a consumer-centric marketing innovator for 20 years, and is President of Resource Interactive. She co-authored The Ten Demandments: Rules to Live by in the Age of the Demanding Consumer (McGrawHill, 2002) -- one of the first marketing books to showcase the consumer's perspective. A popular blogger, frequent keynote speaker and expert commentator, her perspectives have been covered by media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune, Inc., Fast Company, USA Today, Time Digital, People, CNN, CNBC, CNET, CBS's "The Early Show," Nikkei Business (Japan), Vente à Distance (France), and Capital (Dubai).

Dr. Nita Rollins is a multidisciplinary thinker and Innovation Consultant in the Resource Interactive R&D Lab. She is the author of Cinaesthetics: The Beautiful, the Ugly, the Sublime and the Kitsch in Post-Metaphysical Film (2008), and of articles for Design Management Journal, New Design (UK), Innovation: The IDSA Quarterly, Internet Retailer, Cinema Journal and Wide Angle. She earned her Ph.D. in Critical Studies from UCLA's Department of Theater, Film & TV, and has served as Research Fellow at the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the University of Paris III.

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