Consumers are defining brands

Brands are increas­ing­ly being called upon to take sig­nif­i­cant respon­si­bil­i­ty for resolv­ing some of the world’s most intractable prob­lems, from glob­al cli­mate change to the health of employ­ees.

Yet there is often a split between what soci­ety demands and what brands offer. “Busi­ness­es, even some that have been great­ly admired, are increas­ing­ly being chal­lenged by politi­cians and the gen­er­al pub­lic to answer the ques­tion: ‘Is your prod­uct or busi­ness mod­el – and your mar­ket­ing of it – moral­ly cor­rect?’” says Jim Pri­or, chief exec­u­tive of brand con­sul­tan­cy The Part­ners.

One recent exam­ple is when Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, two of the world’s biggest brands, were chal­lenged by the Acad­e­my of Med­ical Roy­al Col­leges – the body that rep­re­sents every doc­tor in the coun­try – over “irre­spon­si­ble mar­ket­ing” which is said to have con­tributed to the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic. The Acad­e­my called for a ban on fast-food spon­sor­ship deals.

Brands tra­di­tion­al­ly respond to such crit­i­cism, says Mr Pri­or, by coun­ter­ing the claims with evi­dence that they do act respon­si­bly.

Lead­ing busi­ness­es are work­ing close­ly with stake­hold­ers to under­stand their views

“It’s a kind of off­set equa­tion,” he explains. “Even if some things they do or make are unavoid­ably not ide­al, there are oth­er pos­i­tive things that must be tak­en into account.” This could be the brand’s role in stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my, their sup­port of social wel­fare pro­grammes or how they fund ini­tia­tives, such as the Olympics, which might not oth­er­wise exist.

But con­sumers, too, increas­ing­ly want brands to be social­ly respon­si­ble. In a sur­vey by the Car­bon Trust ear­li­er this year, 57 per cent of young adults said they would be more loy­al to a brand if they could see it was tak­ing steps to reduce its car­bon foot­print.

“It’s a big area of inter­est,” says Tom Cum­ber­lege, con­sul­tant at Car­bon Trust Advi­so­ry. “Brands are expect­ed to play a role in encour­ag­ing cus­tomers to live sus­tain­ably. From a customer’s per­spec­tive, it’s about trust.”

Brands have catch­ing up to do, he adds: “Many haven’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lis­tened to con­sumers’ inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues. They haven’t invest­ed the time or effort to under­stand the full impact of what they pro­vide.”

This is chang­ing. Lead­ing busi­ness­es are work­ing close­ly with stake­hold­ers to under­stand their views. Brands are keep­ing their ear to the ground to gauge con­sumers’ inter­ests and incor­po­rate them into their strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ing process­es.

“Retail­ers are get­ting wis­er and wis­er as to the val­ue of launch­ing line exten­sions and prod­ucts in ‘beta mode’,” says Toby South­gate, chief exec­u­tive of The Brand Union, a WPP glob­al brand­ing agency, recog­nis­ing the grow­ing pow­er of social media in brand­ing. “They can launch some­thing that isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fin­ished, using the con­sumers to test the prod­uct and give feed­back. It’s more effi­cient and cost-effec­tive.”

Stake­hold­ers are, there­fore, play­ing a grow­ing role in defin­ing a brand’s val­ues: “Today, if you’re not includ­ing con­sumers in the process, you will be left behind,” says Mr South­gate.

“Organ­i­sa­tions are used to push­ing a brand strat­e­gy at con­sumers in order to sup­port mass-mar­ket com­mu­ni­ca­tions, in the hope that some of it will stick. But the world is chang­ing very rapid­ly; there has been a rever­sal of the clas­sic brand-cre­ation mod­el. Now it’s about engag­ing con­sumers ear­li­er in the process.”

Con­sumers have become a key part of build­ing a brand’s rep­u­ta­tion. While brand strat­e­gy has tra­di­tion­al­ly been built around “com­mand and con­trol”, it is now about turn­ing cus­tomers into your brand advo­cates.

“There is a recog­ni­tion that brands are now less defined by an organ­i­sa­tion and more defined by their stake­hold­ers,” adds Mr South­gate. “The expe­ri­ence of the brand is every­thing.”

The inter­ac­tion between con­sumers and brands occurs over a wide range of plat­forms: social media, focus groups, tra­di­tion­al media and more.

“There is a fun­da­men­tal shift tak­ing place in the way that brands build rela­tion­ships with con­sumers, dri­ven by the com­bined forces of social and mobile tech­nolo­gies,” says Glen Man­ches­ter, chief exec­u­tive and founder of cus­tomer man­age­ment expe­ri­ence com­pa­ny Thun­der­head.

Cus­tomers are turn­ing to social and mobile chan­nels for real-time com­mu­ni­ca­tion with brands. Through tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, social media is now an effec­tive way for a brand to pro­vide an excel­lent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

The grow­ing impor­tance of this can be seen with recent acqui­si­tions such as Microsoft’s $1.2‑billion deal to buy San Fran­cis­co-based Yam­mer, a mes­sag­ing tool for col­leagues, dubbed “Face­book for the work­place”, which allows com­pa­nies to cre­ate a pri­vate social net­work for employ­ees, or Salesforce’s $689-mil­lion acqui­si­tion of social-media mar­ket­ing plat­form Bud­dy Media.

But how deeply can a com­pa­ny engage with cus­tomers and part­ners across these touch­points?

“While mass-media mar­ket­ing still has its place in build­ing aware­ness, brands now need to engage with today’s always-con­nect­ed con­sumers at every touch­point and in real time,” says Mr Man­ches­ter. “How­ev­er, busi­ness­es face an even big­ger chal­lenge in man­ag­ing these con­ver­sa­tions through­out each customer’s jour­ney, antic­i­pat­ing their needs and respond­ing at each step.”

The key to suc­cess is to engage with con­sumers rather than just push­ing the brand mes­sage out. “How effec­tive­ly busi­ness­es are able to do this will deter­mine who are the win­ners and who are the losers,” Mr Man­ches­ter con­cludes.

Brands are increasingly being called upon to take significant responsibility for resolving some of the world’s most intractable problems, from global climate change to the health of employees.