In my recent post “Great Idea, Wrong Brand,” I highlighted the negative publicity encountered by Chevy Tahoe in response to their viral marketing campaign.  In so doing, I had hoped to temper marketers’ enthusiasm for consumer-generated media.  Max Kalehoff, in a post on his own site, points out and seeks to correct my Luddite views.  I encourage you to read Max’s post in its entirety because he argues his case with passion, but, equally, because he does so with intelligence and deep insight into the evolving world of consumer-generated media.

I would summarize Max’s post as follows:

1. Consumers have always been in control. Our encounters with brands shape our relationship with them and sometimes ignite passions for or against them.
2. Consumers now have more control than ever - to speak out, and to influence brand intregrity, dispersion and mutation.
3. Before engaging in viral marketing, marketers would do well to understand what ignites passionate feelings for a brand.
4. Chevy’s ultimate problem was not that they underestimated the number of their brand detractors, but rather that they underestimated the negative coverage the proceedings would get from the mass media.
5. Chevy should get credit for acknowledging the negativity rather than hiding it, just as a person who admits his mistakes is more loveable than one who purports to be infallible.

Well, perhaps now would be a good time to admit that I made a mistake!

With reference to point number three, I should have cited Millward Brown’s forthcoming Point Of View on the subject of Word of Mouth (WOM) which suggests that listening is the first step to successfully leveraging WOM (I will add a link to the POV shortly). Listening to what people are saying about your brand will help you understand what ignites their passion and therefore how you can successfully engage them in the future.

Otherwise, I absolutely agree with the first two points that Max makes, and did not mean to imply otherwise in my original post.  I cannot really comment on whether Chevy anticipated the subversive actions of SUV-hating environmentalists better than they anticipated the negative press response, but surely both had a potential negative impact on the brand? My sense from reading the press is that Chevy did underestimate the negativity of both, and sought to put a brave face on it, but that is clearly open to interpretation.

This discussion has caused me to reflect on the role of marketers and consumers in co-creating a brand. One thing I have learned as a market researcher is that most people are unable to imagine a world other than the one they know.  That’s why we have to show people rough concepts and prototypes in order to get feedback on possible new developments.  The vast majority of people can only react to a brand or ad idea, they cannot create one. 

But creating change is vital if a brand is to evolve and grow.  A brand which fails to grow will likely stagnate and die, as previously ardent fans wander off in search of something new.  In order to evolve, a brand must push the boundaries and challenge the existing status quo. But this rarely happens as a result of undirected consumer action or feedback.  Rather, marketers must envisage a future and test whether people are receptive to it.  The same holds true for marketing communication.  Only by challenging existing preconceptions will a brand create impactful advertising that shifts perceptions rather than reinforcing them.  The trick is to do so in a way that makes your current customers enthusiastic partners in the process, not treat them as passive dupes. 

Max suggests that people do not strike up long-term relationships with people who proclaim themselves superior. True, but neither do they strike up relationships with people who seem to have no opinions at all. Brands that seek to ignite passion in their customers must state what they stand for, not just blindly react to popular opinion.

To use a sailing analogy, I believe that a brand marketer is like the captain of a merchant sailing ship. The captain cannot govern the tide, winds or shoals, but he can leverage the tide and wind in order to avoid the shoals and deliver the cargo quickly and profitably. My original post simply sought to suggest that each brand should properly assess the conditions before setting sail in the seas of consumer-generated media, not that they should stay safely anchored in the harbor. Brands that already have a loyal customer-base, like Red Bull, are going to find consumer-generated media easy sailing; others, perhaps like Chevy Tahoe, are going to make heavy weather of it. In the latter case it will take all the marketer’s skill and experience to avoid the rocks.

Max closed his post with an invitation to collaborate with him to make a viral video commercial for an unsuspecting brand that we both adore. This idea brings back some very scary memories of when Gordon Brown produced his own ads - does anyone remember the one featuring a naked woman on a rug? I think we better discuss this in a bit more detail before I follow my old mentor down that path!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 4:19 am and is filed under Brands, Creative, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page