Share the Brand
Scott Hauman, VP Strategy + Planning

We all remember the famous quote from the movie Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come." That line's significance still resonates with today's marketing managers and brand leaders. It means much more than simply filling consumer voids, especially if you explore who is "building it." If you can tap into the creativity of your brand's fans, raise their interest and inspire them to action, you're guaranteed long-term success - it's called sharing the brand.

The days when corporations pushed their products and ideas on consumers are long gone. The strategy of extending product lines to satisfy every consumer desire with a single flagship master brand is dying out. Toyota realized this early on and launched individual brands that spoke directly and distinctively to specific segments through Scion (urban youth) and Lexus (executive luxury and performance).

Today, consumers want to play a part in shaping the brands they admire. Many strategies and trends have emerged that are paving the way for the new face of marketing, centered on sharing and shaping: user-generated advertising, viral marketing, blogging, online consumer ideation groups. Successful brands realize that if you don't invite your fans in, they'll become fans of something else real quick. The stats on YouTube say it all.

The rewards of sharing your brand are connection and loyalty. When companies invite their customers to participate, they send a clear message that they value customers' opinions as well as their business. Examples are all around us: M&Ms invited consumers to vote on new colors, Jones Soda lets customers choose their bottle label designs, Converse allows users to design their own shoes online.

Well-known brands are even letting their customers develop advertising for them. Super Bowl advertising is now centered on consumer-generated spots, all conceived by amateurs. Companies such as Chevrolet, Doritos, and the National Football League are letting go of the reigns. Doritos and the NFL boosted their ROI by allowing Internet users to vote for their favorite commercial prior to being aired. This guaranteed that those users were making an emotional connection with the material and becoming actively invested in the brand.

Ford is doing some interesting things, especially with their Where Are The Joneses (www.wherearethejoneses.com) project, which ended last year. It was a web-based, improvised sit-com, updated daily, partly written by its viewers, and delivered to people via a vast range of social media channels: Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and others. The great thing is that Ford's involvement, in terms of marketing push, was very minimal.

Corporate brands are not the only players taking a swing at this trend. Local, regional, and national media outlets are finding new ways to engage their audiences through innovative sharing tactics. ClickonDetroit.com (Detroit News) and Mlive.com (Ann Arbor News) incorporate Web 2.0 file-sharing widgets that let users post any news story to their profiles on Facebook, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Google, and Newsvine.

Print media outlets are also sharing their brands with consumers by enabling them to comment on articles, debate with peers, and contribute to the overall coverage of news. Freep.com (Detroit Free Press) allows visitors to post and review comments to each news item, set up custom user groups, and gather RSS feeds. Most major dailies, including several others in the Detroit region, offer a "comment on this story" feature where visitors can post their thoughts on specific news items, which in turn provides an intimate and useful look at how the news is consumed.

Conversely, more and more social media outlets are providing fodder for journalists. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, and other online network portals offer a glimpse of what's really on people's minds to traditional media outlets hungry to break the next big story.

As we place a greater emphasis on engendering consumer interest and loyalty by opening our brands to consumers, we've seen how deep an impact they can make on the stories covered by the media and the questions journalists ask, their influence extending to such important forums as the presidential debates.

Customer-engaging initiatives are feasible not only for big brands and major media outlets; small businesses in Michigan can learn a lot from these strategies on how to differentiate themselves and retain loyal customers. And it doesn't take an extravagant marketing budget, either - organizations and companies of all sizes simply have to remember these key tactics: invite, listen, and share.