Chas Porter

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

This couldn't be more true.

Yeti gets it

As an interactive designer, I signup for plenty of spam emails to better understand what makes good and bad online marketing. With videos and features like this, Yeti is one of the few emails I look forward to.

Unlimited Urban Woods

Netherlands-based DUS Architects' Unlimited Urban Woods is a single tree centered in a simple box lined with mirrors on all four walls. Step inside and you're instantly transported into an endless forest. A brilliant escape from the city, it's an experience ready for the right brand to pioneer here in the states.

The Move to Brand Experience

Every time I turn on the TV I'm reminded that traditional branding doesn't stand a chance in a world connected by social media. The core problem, as I see it, is traditional brand planning is inherently skewed toward creating "our brand position", "our brand promise", and delivering "our brand message" in a slick package designed to tell you What We Want You to Believe. 

Well let me tell you, What We Want You to Believe isn't as easy a sell as it used to be.

If social networks teach marketers anything, they teach us that what we want people to believe isn't nearly as believable, or powerful, as what their friends tell them. That's why I've retired promise, position, message, and the skew of traditional branding from my practice and replaced them with a single concept, Brand Experience.

Look, marketers and messages don't make brands, people do, and what people believe most comes from their life experience and the experiences of their family and friends. It's always been so, but social networks lay it bare: as I write this, more than half a billion people are actively sharing their life experiences on Facebook and Twitter, effectively turning word-of-mouth into instantaneous media with global reach.

Unfortunately, most CMO's  don't yet understand social media. In fact they fear it, and for good reason; it's scary when your job demands results from an entirely new marketplace and you're working with partners who are locked to a revenue model that depends on selling traditional media, methods, and ideas.

To succeed today, marketers need to ditch traditional brand planning and their traditional brand partners and shift from creating "messages" to a focus on delivering a better experience that improves people's lives. Deliver a better experience and people will share that experience with the world. That's the focus of Brand Experience. It's that simple.

To sum this up and get started, ask yourself:

1. Where can I deliver a better experience? Is it in the product, on a phone call, in a retail store, at an event, or somewhere else? Consider every context and be the best part of that experience. 

2. In each context, what are people trying to do? Delivering function is the foundation on which Brand Experience is built.

3. But how can I go further than function? How can I break the familiar routine and create a heightened experience that satisfies people emotionally?

Yes, satisfies people emotionally. The one fact Brand Experience has in common with traditional branding is this: until you have an emotional connection, you don't really have a brand.

The card Steve Martin hands to people who ask for his autograph.

Traditional vs Digital: Battle for the Brand

It's no secret that traditional and digital agencies are at war over who will lead brand strategy in the future, but the battle heated up in December 2008 when a report published by Forrester Research asserted that "interactive agencies have not yet proven they have the capability to manage brand strategy." This obviously created some controversy online. David Armano of Critical Mass wrote a digital manifesto of sorts, "A Moment of Truth for Digital Agencies", and others, such as Tim Brunelle of Hello Viking, had strong opinions and ideas as well.

I have to say I agree with Forrester, but before you hang me high, let me also say that traditional agencies haven't proven themselves capable of building brands in this new age either.

I know I'm stepping into dangerous territory, but both digital and traditional agencies face challenges when it comes to leading a client's brand strategy.

First, brand strategy should start with a blank slate and neither digital or traditional agencies start there. Both agency business models depend on selling a particular tactic. Digital must sell digital, Traditional must sell print, TV, etc., and the result is a bias that influences each of their recommendations. The truth is, this battle for control isn't really about the brand. It's about controlling as much of the client's budget as possible, with a healthy dose of ego thrown in. Smart clients know this and are looking for new solutions to get around this bias.

Second, brands aren't built by messages, they're built by experiences with people, products, business processes, and, yes, messages. In this regard, digital has an advantage: traditional agencies only create messages, but digital can create messages, execute business processes, offer products (when selling an online service), and connect people. Unfortunately, brand experience occurs offline as well and digital agencies aren't yet able to think or execute beyond the browser.

So who will take charge of the client's brand strategy? Traditional agencies will likely keep control of brand strategy in the short run, for no other reason than they've had control for decades and digital agencies aren't an alternative, yet. But their influence is waning, in large part because traditional agencies haven't adapted well to the new, post-Internet marketing.

In the long run, digital agencies that grow beyond the browser will take the lead. But they could have serious competition from a new type of agency, one designed to be unbiased by foregoing a tactical, executional backend and staff, digital or traditional, that must be supported with recommendations and revenue, an agency focused solely on creating brand, marketing, and communications strategies, one designed to slot in between clients and their ad agency, digital agency, design firm, and all their marketing partners.

But who really knows. Traditional agencies could make a comeback. The down economy and staff layoffs at traditional agencies could work in their favor depending on how they choose to rebuild. But that's for a later post.