• by Peter Leeds , September 11, 2012

Long ago, when everything about the web was shiny and new, there was a sense of excitement; of mystery. Even the people who practiced the dark arts of the Internet were enigmatic.

On the agency side, there were pros from the ‘print’ world trying to apply their old marketing tricks the new media, and young bucks who had grown up using Commodore 64s to explore Archie, Gopher and USENET. 

And then there were clients. With product to move, KPIs to hit and a rapidly aging set of marketing tools to work with, they were game for most of what the agency folks were selling. Together, they pushed the commercial web forward and, in so doing, pulled much of the developed world online. 

Of course, a lot's changed since the heyday of corporate web sites and inflated IPOs, and nowhere is that more true than on the brand side. The rise of web technologies, social media and mobile platforms has made every client a user—posting, Tweeting, blogging, checking in and commenting on the world around them. Like everyone else, they're more connected than at any time in history. Which means they no longer need to wait for market studies and campaign analyses to find out how consumers really feel; they can just log on and see for themselves. Just a few minutes a day on social media networks, Google Analytics, Radian 6 and other tools can tell them all they *think* they need to know about what people like—and vehemently dislike—about their product or service.

Is this feedback loop flawed and prone to misinterpretation? Yes and definitely. But that’s not really the point. By using the same online tools as their customers, clients are more informed and self-sufficient than ever before. They’re also better equipped to understand the myriad ways technology can be used to build preference, consensus and community. Which, from an agency’s standpoint, makes for more interesting and thought-provoking engagements in which we need to defend our big ideas rather than waste time explaining why Twitter matters. 

But there’s a downside to this evolution: Technically savvy, socially switched-on clients tend to play fast and loose with their brands, expanding their social footprints and creating engaging new experiences without regard for the cumulative — potentially negative — effect, i.e. the slow, steady erosion of brand integrity. It happens when unwanted messages get pushed to people for whom privacy is paramount; when shameless plugs appear in otherwise innocuous conversation streams; when geo-tracking tools serve up irrelevant suggestions; and a host of other situations we couldn’t have foreseen a few short years ago. Each one undercuts customer trust and has the potential to do irreparable harm to brands. 

To avoid it, clients need to disabuse themselves of the notion that ubiquity is the same as branding. It’s not. Branding is branding. And doing it right requires a strategic, coordinated, sustained effort to win customers’ trust. 

It’s evolutionary.

Peter Leeds, founder and principal, Gabardine