We all know that Coke is more than a sugary brown liquid
designed to ruin your teeth and remove paint from your car. In fact, it's a lifestyle, it's a friend, and most important, it's a brand! As marketers, we know that one of the keys to
establishing loyalty to our brands is building an emotional connection between our
brands and the general public. We know that
the connection with Coke is built on Happiness; Apple is on Imagination; Nike on
Inspiration; and Facebook on Wasting Time.
And Lord knows, developing the brand essence which serves as
the core of the connection does not come easily or cheaply. Budgets are decimated as tons of quantitative
and qualitative research are digested and regurgitated in support of extreme
hypotheses. I remember several brand
building exercises where we theorized if our brand was a celebrity, who would
it be? If it were a car, what model
would it be? If it had a voice, how
would it speak? For example a toilet paper could be perceived as speaking in a voice that is bold, confident, strong, and unafraid.
Brand Conversation
The longer we spoke around our long tables and
the more we spent on research, the more we believed in our mission. And I’m not saying this was a bad thing. The most successful brands today including
the ones I mentioned up top have succeeded in winning a place in customer’s
hearts and minds as a result of their voice.
Those of us who are old enough will always remember Mean Joe Greene
throwing his jersey at “the kid” in support of Coke and a Smile. And the “once played” 1984 Apple Ad which
fought Orwell’s vision of uniformity with one of individualism is one that
still haunts many of us. Both were responsible for giving their brands a voice or a
personality to which consumers could connect.
The Voice of The Brand. The Brand
Voice. It gave us marketers a seat at the
table and something substantial to be proud of especially since we couldn’t make
it through the advanced finance courses in grad school.
The voice says, "Drink Me"
But somewhere along the way… likely with the advent of
social media… we may have started taking ourselves too seriously. Through Twitter and Facebook, these voices
were suddenly empowered to actually speak…and to do so several times a
day. As marketers, we had to give them
something to say…something that would remain true to the essence of the brand,
something that would connect with the consumer, something that would
resonate. We even talk about
conversations with our brands. And
consumers (God bless them) have bought into it.
Coke and Nike have over 3 million Twitter followers while Disney has
over 4 million.
And we ourselves are
drinking our own Kool-Aid. A recent
story in Advertising Age noted that brands were conspicuously quiet regarding
the introduction of Caitlyn Jenner.
Seriously, have we arrived at a point where we expect our brands to
intelligently opine on today’s controversial headlines? And do so in 140 characters or less?
Ah, such a brut !
Well I took it to heart and I asked my deodorant what it thought of this whole
Caitlyn Jenner thing and what it had to say was not too flattering. Oh well, what do you expect from a Brut? Anyway, you can take away my marketing creds, but if
you want opinions on Caitlyn Jenner or any other current topics, ask your
mother, your clergyperson, your coworker, or even a random old guy on the
bus. Those are the voices we need to hear and these are the emotional connections we all need to build. And if you want to have this conversation
over a Coke or even do it while chatting on your IPhone, more power to you.
In 1997, when my kids were all under the age of 5 and I had
watched more than my share of purple dinosaur videos with them, I was inspired
to write a 1,500 word piece called “Thank You Barney, And Happy Passover, Too.” If I say so myself, it was a sweet inspiring
story about how as adults, we neglect to say the” pleases” and “thank yous“ that were currently being taught to our children by their imaginary
video friends. I explained that holidays
such as Passover, with their own imaginary friends and symbols helped reacquaint
us with the lessons of humility and appreciation that we had forgotten from
childhood.
At the time, I didn't post the story to my blog since the term “blog” had
not even been coined until later that year. Instead I made paper copies of the story and
mailed it off to over 50 Jewish themed newspapers across North America. (I figured that if nobody in the United
States would publish it, at least someone in Canada might be willing to show me
some consideration.) As it turned out, however,
my piece did get accepted by The Detroit Jewish News for publication in their
holiday issue and I received a check for $50.
I even screamed, “I’M PUBLISHED, I’M PUBLISHED,” while waving the check
in the air. I was very impressed with
myself and to this day, I still have five copies of the browning newspaper buried in my basement.
As I look back at my first professional story, I appreciate
how smart and effective the publishing system was back then. My place in the literary pecking order had
been defined and established by a series of editors or gatekeepers who actually
judged me based on the quality of my writing.
If I wanted to move up from Detroit Jews to Chicago Jews or even New
York Jews, I had to write better. Taking it further,
if I wanted gentiles to read my work, I really had to step it up. Such were the barriers to entry.
Flash forward 18 years.
If I had written the piece this year, I simply would have put it up on
Blogger, perhaps rereading it once or twice for typos before hitting the post
button. I would have tagged the hell out
of it with every term ranging from matzo to dinosaur, shared it with my fellow
Dad Bloggers where we would engage in a virtual daisy chain of mutual links
that would actually ensure my story would show up in places outside of
Detroit. Shortly thereafter, I would
post it on my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pintrest pages. And
guess what? It would get read and I
would convince myself that I was a writer.
Taking it further, my story would be part of a smorgasbord of other blogs, memes, lists, opinions and new content which was published that day. And together, our army of wanna be writers and photoshoppers would
compete with stories from The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington
Post –presenting an alternative to the stories that really matter and those
that shape our common wisdom and experience.
You see, thanks to the internet, everyone can be a writer and everyone
can be a publisher. And if you have a
cat, you can be a video journalist. And since everyone can be a publisher or a videographer,
there are no editors to judge whether your article actually meets meaningful standards. There are no gatekeepers to reject you from
every publication except for one in Detroit.
All you need is a publish button and your words are out there. With some knowledge of Search Engine
Optimization and social media, you can even find yourself an audience.
In fact, viral news outlets such as BuzzFeed, Reddit, Memebase specialize in the lists, memes, and snarky chats that have become the cyber equivalent of fart jokes and Mad
Magazine. What’s worse is they are
giving the quality mainstream media a run for their money because while their
investment in infrastructure and socially sourced material is minimal, their
content is being gobbled up by those that have come to appreciate digestible sound bytes rather
than something more substantial.
When I was in the 4th grade, we would read the NY Times once a week during social
studies class. I will always remember
the lesson when Mrs. Hinton taught us how to patiently fold the paper so
we could read it in crowded places. She
explained that it took significant effort to read what was inside The Times, but it was
worth it.
Later in life, I always had a
good feeling when I would ride the subway and see rows of commuters folding the
newspaper like Mrs. Hinton taught us as they absorbed the stories and issues
that came alive in the pages of The Grey Lady. People would talk about what they read. And they would remember it. Today, our reading habits are so
fragmented that thoughtful discussions among friends and colleagues has been
replaced by casual sharing and liking.
Circulation is way down for The Times and they are involved in a fight for survival. Meanwhile my blog has reached 6,000 pairs of eyeballs which is how things are measured these days. It’s nice to be read and I appreciate your eyeballs (I really do) but I miss a time when being
published was really something special.
