Branding isn’t your company name.
It’s not a tag line. It’s not a logo.
Branding is just another name for creating a perception.
When marketers ask, “How do we want to brand this product?” what they’re really asking is how they want their audience to think about that product once it comes to market.
A brand is a promise. It’s an expectation of an experience.
The company and tag line and logo and brand colors only exist to call that experience to mind.
Brands can meet that expectation, exceed that expectation … or in the worst cases, fall short of that expectation.
(By the way, the word product can easily be swapped for service, or blog, or newsletter, or any number of things marketers promote. The underlying concepts remain the same.)
Volvo’s name is synonymous with safety, which makes it the quintessential consumer example.
Cisco’s “Human Network” stands out among business-to-business brands.
Cisco makes products that make it possible for people to be connected, no matter how far apart they may be, geographically. ~ Forbes
The Red Cross is a bellwether among nonprofits, with a brand that literally means help is on the way in times of crisis.
The very essence of brands doesn’t lie within your brand colors or site design, even though those are important.
The essence of a brand lies within its meaning. And words have meaning. Words matter.
Volvo’s meaning wasn’t derived from its logo, or even its product design, but by the constant stream of product reviews that published the data on crash tests year-in and year-out.
The brand was built, over time, by third-party validation communicated through third-party content. What other people said about Volvo created the meaning of that brand. The advertising Volvo did just reinforced that meaning.
The rise of user-generated content
Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, is now famous for having said,
Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.
As marketers, we try to convince customers and prospects to generate content about our brands. In other words, to talk about us. To create a Volvo-like experience where the meaning of our brand comes from how others perceive us.
How do we inspire people to generate content? To talk about us on Facebook and Twitter, to increase our audience?
Increasingly, we inspire our customers with brand experiences and by publishing our own content.
The uninitiated customer is no more inclined to mention a brand than talk to the shy person tucked quietly in the corner at a cocktail party. If we want our customers to engage us, or our products and services, we have to contribute to the conversation.
Content is currency
Today’s web is an endless 24/7 cycle fed by content and social actions. In this cycle, brands are realizing that content is currency … ~ Bryan Rhoads, global content strategy, Intel
Content is currency — something we trade for our audience’s attention.
That currency becomes more valuable every time it’s shared by someone other than ourselves.
Those shares might be validation. There might be debate. There might be disagreement.
It’s our job to create content worth sharing. How it’s shared isn’t up to us.
If you take a look at this infographic, created by PRWeb, you’ll see an array of content marketing options — each with its own balance of difficulty and value.
(Click here for the full-sized infographic.)
Click here for the full-sized infographic
Your job is to figure out what types of content are most valuable to your audience — and most likely to be shared. And then to gather the resources to produce the best content you possibly can.
‘No Comment’ is a failure
Every smart crisis communications professional knows that “no comment” creates a vacuum where everyone — except the person or organization in crisis — will be able to shape the conversation.
The applies in content marketing, too. We can commit to an active role, by publishing content worth talking about … or we can abstain and miss the opportunity.
How about you? What experience are you creating with your content? What promise are you making?
Let us know in the comments.
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About the Author: Frank Strong is the director of PR for Vocus. Get more from Frank on Twitter and the Vocus blog.
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