The new job of a Brand Manager is to facilitate conversations & community

“What we really need is a mind-set shift…that will make us relevant for today’s consumers. From ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships.” — Jim Stengel, Former P&G CMO at 2007 AAAA Conference

One of the most glamorous parts of a Brand Manager’s job has always been creating television advertising. In fact, it ranks up there as one of the top reasons many became marketers in the first part. After all, creating a television advertising campaign was something you could be proud of. It was something that others would see and congratulate you about. It was the part of your job that your mother would actually understand. And arguably most importantly, creating a breakthrough advertising campaign was the single best way to grow your business. If you could orchestrate an effective advertising campaign in the hearts and minds of your consumers, you could guarantee your brand success for years to come.

Recognizing the power of advertising campaigns, Bob Garfield and the folks at Advertising Age published a list of the Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the 20th Century. In doing so, they used criteria that included:

1. If it was a watershed, discernibly changing the culture of advertising or the popular culture as a whole.
2. If it itself was credited with creating a category, or if by its efforts a brand became entrenched in its category as No. 1.
3. If it was simply unforgettable.

The list included such memorable campaigns as Nike “Just Do It” (#4), DeBeers “A Diamond is Forever (#6) and Burger King “Have It Your Way” (#24). Interestingly though, only three of the campaigns in the Top 100 were created after 1990 (Got Milk, This is SportsCenter and Coca-Cola’s Always).

Even in 1999, this should have been a sign that times were changing.

Consumers were growing tired of fancy TV advertising campaigns and were beginning to tune them out even years before DVR’s started to penetrate households. So while the leading advertising publication was celebrating the past, consumers were starting to look towards the future. The glitz and glamour of orchestrating traditional advertising campaigns was starting to tarnish.

“Though consumers may be adept at tuning out traditional, top-down marketing messages, they’re proactively using technology to conduct their own brand research to decide whether or not to pursue a relationship…In addition, whether spurred by a user review, a Google search, a brand site or a mobile application, technology has created multiple entry points to engage with a brand. And although it may be hard for marketers to predict that entry point, it’s a safe bet the interaction will be digital. In fact, consumers’ first interactions with brands are commonly through digital technology.” — Bob Greenberg, AdWeek

If the time of orchestrating carefully managed advertising campaigns is coming to an end, what will fill the void? The answer of course is digital and the ability it creates to facilitate conversations and community. In the new world, Brand Managers will play the role of a moderator in the brand’s community. These communities will help us co-create our brands while we incorporate their voices into brand-building activities to communicate a balance of performance and emotional attributes.

“Brands have to look at themselves as offering a service to consumers. What you do as a brand is going to be more important than what you say. In the world of Mad Men, the brands were the ones that told the stories about themselves. In this world, the best brands let the consumers tell the stories — and they talk back.” — Nigel Morris, CEO, Isobar

A change in who tells the story

For the past 65 years, brands controlled the storytelling. It was easy to push messages to people because we had a captive audience sitting in front of the TV. And people put up with our commercial interruptions because in return they received entertainment. But now, thanks to technology, consumers have taken back control and they are the ones telling the stories about our brands. A new breed of Brand Managers recognize this fundamental shift and instead of fighting it, they embrace it. They are joining in the conversations and using those conversations as the foundation for a community around their brand.

This requires a different skill set for today’s Brand Manager. In the old world, we were trained on managing our agencies, writing creative briefs and evaluating communication ideas (ie TV spots & print ads). In other words, we were really good at telling other people what to do. But thanks to the power shift driven by digital, we need to stop talking and start listening. And once we have learned how to listen, we need to strike up a conversation. The shift is going to be in how we have that conversation. We can’t show up at the party and just talk about ourselves and why we are special. Instead, we need to let consumers talk about what they like and express their feelings. Even better, we need to let consumers tell each other what they think without us interrupting.

The story they tell each other will be more credible and more believable than any story we could ever hope to tell them through advertising.

Take for instance the case of Innocent, makers of what they call “little tasty drinks.” This is a company that is built upon the concept of facilitating conversations and community with their consumers. As they tell the story of their founding:

“In the summer of 1998 when we had developed our first smoothie recipes but were still nervous about giving up our proper jobs, we bought £500 worth of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a little music festival in London. We put up a big sign saying ‘Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?‘ and put out a bin saying ‘YES’ and a bin saying ‘NO’ and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the ‘YES’ bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned.”

Since that fateful weekend in 1998, Innocent has continued to make their consumers feel as if they have a vested interest in the company. In fact, Innocent does everything they can to make people feel like employees of the company rather than just consumers of the products. Take for instance these examples of Innocent facilitating conversation and communition:

• Every year Innocent hosts an AGM (known as an Annual General Meeting to big companies…or A Grown-Up Meeting to Innocent fans). At the AGM’s, hundreds of passionate Innocent fans have the chance to learn more about life at the company headquarters. They spend the day talking about the business, letting the attendees vote on recipes to launch and even answering tough questions about carbon footprint. At the end, the AGM is a celebration of the Innocent community.
• In December 2008 the company enrolled the “wisdom of the crowds” in their traditional” advertising when they reached out to their fans through the Innocent News e-mail newsletter. In the newsletter, Innocent asked fans to look at rough versions of ads and “Vote for your favourite, or tell us that you think they’re all rubbish and that we should do something with a dog dressed up as a sailor on a trapeze.”

But have these efforts to build community translated into a successful company? Well in 2008, the company was selling over 2 million smoothies a week and had a 72 percent market share (according to IRI in August 2008). Sounds like a brand can succeed without orchestrating expensive advertising campaigns.

Innocent is just one of many companies leading the change in how Brand Managers need to think about building brands. The fact is that all of us need to understand that building a successful brand in today’s world means playing by a different set of rules. It requires us to embrace facilitating conversations and community like never before. It is a change that won’t be easy for many, but will be necessary for all.

Originally published at www.hardknoxlife.com on December 15, 2009.