• by Michael Megalli , March 3, 2008

The Internet is impacting all elements of business and society. As markets change, the practice of branding must change to remain relevant. We must look for clues for how innovative marketers are using the power of technology to change the ways they build their brands in this shifting market.

Chaos
Often times we experience change as chaos. This map of the "current state" of the major Internet players is published on a regular basis by a group of designers in Japan (http://informationarchitects.jp). As clever as this map is, it's a crude representation of the real complexity-a state that is changing from day to day. Change has been particularly tough on marketers, and yet there has never been a more exciting time to build brands.

Online?
One of the biggest challenges we all face is to change our perception of words like "Internet," "web," and "online." As marketers we tend to be very channel-focused - we want neat labels to organize our initiatives and the channels that we use to deliver our messages. And yet, these dualities are inherently limiting. It no longer makes sense to talk about "online branding" versus "offline." This is about Branding.

Control
The biggest challenge for brand marketers in this age of change is to reconcile themselves to the idea of having less control over their brands. We must ask whether "brand management" has become an oxymoron in a context where brand messages are often delivered by constituencies outside of traditional branding roles- customers, partners or even competitors. Brand consistency is still important, but all brands have effectively become works in progress-betas.

In this new world, brands are about a dialogue rather than a controlled message, they are about conversations rather than campaigns. An essential distinction is that brands need to evolve continuously rather than in bursts of change followed by prolonged periods of stasis.

Ford
Thinking about the loss of brand control, it's useful to look at an example of a company that tried to force control and ended up doing it real harm. The Black Mustang Owners Club put together a calendar to celebrate its love for ... black Mustangs. While one might think Ford Motor Co. would embrace this group of brand enthusiasts, in fact it slapped the group with a cease-and-desist order, stating that the calendar violated Ford's trademarks. This is a bewildering decision that clearly demonstrates the risk of a 1.0 approach to brand management in a brand 2.0 world.

P&G
Proctor & Gamble has always been great at listening to consumers, identifying unmet needs and delivering innovative products. Since 2006, P&G has enlisted 600,000 mothers of children younger than 19 in an online dialogue on its VocalPoint web site. Focus is on "connectors" - women who talk to more women than average on a daily basis. They get The Inside Track weekly newsletter, coupons and product samples. One example of how this has driven product innovations: Mothers talking about how hard it is to get kids involved in doing their chores led to the positioning of Dawn Fun Foam and ideas for how to get kids more involved with helping around the house.

Unilever's Dove
P&G's competitor, Unilever, has been using a viral video campaign to reposition Dove. The Campaign for Real Beauty is set around online videos directly taking on the beauty industry and the message it sends to young girls. One, titled "Onslaught," is set to the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown"- Here it comes! -and shows a girl being barraged by images of sexed-up models. A great example of the power of having a strong point of view and associating it with your brand. The site has had 5 million visitors and 10 million viewers of "Evolution" on YouTube. "Talk to your daughter about before the beauty industry does." Many companies have tried viral videos, but few have had the brand impact of this work for Dove.

Facebook
The Wacom Bamboo tablet is a consumer version of a product graphic designers have used in their work for years. To build awareness and demand before the holidays, Wacom ran a contest on Facebook to get people to submit computer art. The top 150 submissions would receive free Bamboo tablets. Within a period of weeks, Wacom received 9,000 entries and 500,000 votes. This is a testament to the viral impact of the conversations that happen on Facebook. Of FB's 60 million members, 60% log in daily, 85% log in at least once a week and 93% log in at least once a month. They spend an average of 19 minutes a day on the site.

Dell Ideastorm
When Michael Dell returned to "fix" the company he started, he faced a major reputation shortcoming in both the product and service perceptions. Under his leadership, the company launched a new kind of conversation with its customers, which it calls Ideastorm, in February 2007. Five days after launch, the site boasted 1,384 ideas that have been voted on 122,388 times and generated 2,189 comments. Today 8,500 ideas, promoted 584,388 times, 60,260 comments. Dell is actively listening to customers and is showing them the impact of their suggestions in actions that the company is taking. This includes selling at Best Buy, selling and supporting Linux PCs, dealing with privacy concerns and launching a Product Red computer came out of the site and promoting it during the Super Bowl.

Salesforce.com
Many large corporations struggle to reach small and mid-sized businesses with products and messages that are relevant and compelling. Salesforce.com, a notable survivor of the dotcom era, has been able to build a nearly cult brand following among these hard-to-reach, skeptical audiences by creating a dialogue with its customers, using findings from this dialogue to improve its products and creating best-in-class thought leadership and educating users. The most interesting thing about Salesforce's dialogue is that even though its is the consummate online company, it has built this conversation in the real world ... in an ongoing road show where users are invited to interact with the company and its product developers.

Domino's Pizza
Dominos Pizza is synonymous with 30-minute delivery. Rather than try to re-invent this value proposition -organic? authentically Italian? more flavors? - Domino's worked to cement this positioning in the minds of consumers with an online tracking tool. You can literally track your pizza to within 40 seconds of its location on its route to your door. And you can get all of this information on your cell phone.

Conclusion
The Internet has changed everything. It needs to change the way that we think about building and managing brands. Today marketers must view their brand as a work in progress. Your brand should be a clear idea, expressed in a variety of ways. Be willing to publish your drafts. Establish a dialogue with your customers because they care about a brand will engage with it in surprising ways. To encourage engagement, be willing to give up some control, especially since you have already lost control. Be willing to listen to the market in new ways as there are unprecedented ways to learn about the market if you know where to look And don't be afraid to experiment -the Internet is a forgiving medium.

Michael Megalli is a partner in New York-based brand innovation firm Group1066. He brings strategic problem solving experience from clients, including Microsoft, IBM, Gartner, Readers' Digest, Dow Chemical, Caterpillar, and the Boston Consulting Group, among others. Before forming Group 1066, he was a Senior Consultant at the strategic branding firm Siegel & Gale where he was responsible for the creation and implementation of branding and internet strategies.