Is losing control of your brand a good thing or a bad thing?
We are used to operating with the idea that we have to protect the brand. How do we lose control of our brand so that our customers have a role in shaping our brand as much as we do?
Well, we know that your brand is not what you say it is, but what everyone else decides. Social enables you to influence your brand and engage where and how others want to talk. You can identify and engage influencers and unleash your employees as a “digital army” by building with customers and convert them to brand ambassadors
If you use Social Analytics to identify needs in the marketplace for specific products, features, or process enhancements by listening and this could allow you to tweak your brand value prop. Leveraging crowdsourcing to engage employees, partners, and even customers in innovation discussions increases the number and sources of new ideas; but also enables the best ideas to become more visible and mature through collaboration.
I LOVE having brands be leveraged by clients is great — and I don’t think that it is anything new. Companies now orchestrate and can shape the brand not based on what we are selling but on their character, their interactions, their experiences.
Check out our IBM CMO Jon Iwata!
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/62205426]