Battle of the Brands

We always find David Armano’s work compelling and on the money when it comes to conversations and thinking about BRAND.

His recent post on his personal blog – Battle of the Brands is so topical right now, and I wanted to pick up on some of the concepts raised here.

David writes about the increase in employed, often senior people spending more and more time on social media and creating and communicationg their own ‘personal brand’ through channels such as twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their own blogs…and what this means to ‘The Corporation’ and Corporate Brands; hence the Battle of the Brands.

David speaks in detail about the examnple of Scott Monty; who is a pretty well regarded Social Media junkie, who has built a very distinct personal brand online through the use of social media and commentary via his blog.  Scott has also recently been hired by Ford.  So where to from here?

Scott Monty has received plenty of criticism, and many of his followers or audience have asked “how can Scott remain transparent, and how can Ford let him continue to promote himself over and above Ford?”  Scott speaks about his role and ‘his brand’ as it applies to the Ford ‘brand’ in this video and he explains;

“We’re not interested in advertising on social networks—we’re interested in getting in there and interacting with people”

 

And if Corporations are simply a collection of people and individuals, then isn’t this what Corporations should be all about – interacting and engaging with people?

This intrigues us at Buzzle…and is central to our belief that EVERYONE in an organisation is and needs to be a MARKETER!

Given the recent turn of events, prospects and customers alike demand more human and personal interactions – it is the human elements of your brand that will endear yor corporation or organisation to your prospects and clients.

David Armano invented the term brandividuals which goes part way to explain the connection between the individuals and the corporations and organisations they work for.  We call this the Connected Brand and mostly see good from this notion; more people will bring meaning to their work, organisations will recruit more purposefully, and customers will be served by employees who CARE about what they do and what they represent!

For organisations – this is our point…EVERYONE in your organisation is a MARKETER.  If your customers or prospects don’t know, like or understand your people, then you will have NO chance of them knowing, liking or understanding your organisations (i.e. engaging with them).

We talk about the ‘Rules of Engagement” in the Corporation 2.0

• Communicating (listening and talking),
• Inspiring (energising, involving),
• Supporting, and
• Engaging

The Scott Monty example is the tip of the iceberg…organisations who recognise that people have an identity and a network outside of work which they engage with, and that these very same people are prospects and customers will prosper in the coming years.  Those organisations that believe they own the individual and that only work related networks are of any value may find the current climate a little testing…now is the time for these organisations to ask themselves ‘WHAT ARE WE SELLING?” 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Battle of the Brands (socialmediatoday.com)
• Innovators in Social Media (businessweek.com)

Tags: David Armano, Facebook, Ford Motor Company, LinkedIn, Scott Monty, Social network
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Leadership. 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.