BrandSimple | BrandDigital: The Blog

Instead of hanging out on my own blog site these past few months I’ve been hanging out in a number of other online spaces, blog and otherwise, doing research for my new book, BrandDigital, which I hope will demystify this potentially mystifying marketing space. In order to help others make sense of the digital territory I’ve had to make sense of it for myself which has meant, in part, creating personal profiles on a couple of the online networking sites of which there are many, LinkedIn, Ryze, Friendster, Spoke, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and EntreMate, to name just a few. Since beginning my book less than a year ago the number of these online hangouts have continued to increase, some supposedly more business oriented than others, some skewed to a somewhat younger demographic, and some promising to keep out the hoi polloi ( Aren’t we all hoi polloi online?). But in my perusing I’ve found that these sites are all pretty much the same and breed the same sort of behavior: As soon as you post your profile you have hundreds of people who want to ‘friend’ you; you run into the same ‘friends’ from site to site; it takes an inordinate amount of effort to keep your identity consistently updated across sites; and these sites can be incredible time suckers. In fact, whenever I log onto one site or another I think about one of the many interviews I had in preparation for writing my new book. This particular interview was with Phil McIntyre, an online marketing and production veteran who told me about a viral marketing initiative he created. It was a spoof of YouTube called “PhilTube” which, in the style of “The Office” parodied life in the digital-office age. In one episode the Phil of PhilTube calls out manically to his secretary “Hold all my calls. I’m blogging!” Even when told that some major mogul, a la Donald Trump, is on the line, Phil yells, “Not now – I’m blogging!”

Well, as I try to keep track of my all my online identities along with all the online identities of my ‘friends’ it’s occurred to me that sooner rather than later there’s bound to be a shake out. Social networking sites are becoming commodities. There isn’t one of them that stand out as offering something that much different or better than any other. As a branding professional I can tell you that this spells trouble. The best brands are those that set themselves apart by representing something relevantly different than their category equivalents. Or, as Bob Pittman, founder of MTV and now a partner in the Pilot Group, told me during another interview, “The best brands make the stuff we already do easier, more convenient or more fun. If you can make it better for me I’ll integrate it into my life. If you can’t, I won’t.”

As interesting as these online networks might seem now, they’re going to become tiresome, as commodities do. And, as much as we’d like to think we can, we can’t really keep track of four or five separate online lives and have enough time left for an offline life. One of these sites is going to recognize this. The brand of online networking site that does, that makes it simpler to integrate the activities of maintaining our personal lives online and makes it easier, more convenient and more fun will be the one worth holding the phone for.

I love NBC’s 30 Rock. It’s a great television show. Given that it airs when I’m either helping my kids with homework or getting them ready for bed, it was easy to download from iTunes and watch it on my schedule. Note I said “was easy.” It’s not all that easy anymore. As a matter of fact, NBC has me in pause mode. You see, earlier this fall NBC teamed up with the Fox network and a number of media companies like MSN, AOL and Comcast, to create Hulu, an online brand that aggregates content from a number of places. Hulu is in beta right now, but the idea is that viewers would have to go to Hulu to download their favorite NBC or Fox shows. This is neither intuitive nor smart when it comes to reinforcing brand loyalty. Having viewers jump through this Hulu hoop creates an unwelcome EXTRA stop between brand and user. If they must control distribution and don’t want to pay Apple anymore, they should do it on the NBC.com site like ABC.

ABC has made the wise branding choice to reinforce its relationship with viewers by directing them to ABC.com for downloads. I don’t have to think twice about how to watch ABC shows on my schedule. It’s easy, it’s smart and it’s intuitive. ABC shows - ABC.com. Search made simple. No jumping through hoops. I like that.

Building a brand is hard enough today what with so many brand choices and so many media choices. The idea is to make things easier for consumers, not more complicated. NBC is risking its well-respected brand name by having an intermediary brand host its shows. It’s created a step between me – an NBC advocate – and my interaction with its brand. This Hulu hoop doesn’t rock.

It’s interesting how quickly you can get mentally thrown back to an embarrassing moment in your life you thought you’d buried forever. This happened to me a couple of days ago when I was talking to someone about the role social networks play in building brands. It was during this conversation that I was jolted back a couple of decades to a party in Los Angeles that was hosted by a friend who had worked in advertising but was now in the film industry. There I was, a young ad guy surrounded by beautiful people who were discussing things film people discuss in that intense short-hand only those in the know know. I desperately wanted to fit in and given that I knew nothing about scripts or production deals nor did I have a part to offer in a film, I started to make up personas for myself. In one conversation I was an astrophysicist working at NASA. In another, I became a marine biologist even before George Costanza claimed to be a marine biologist. Little did I know that film people know their whales from their penguins. Long story short and segue to my point, I was found out in a flash and went back to New York dragging my phony personas behind me.

This tragicomic episode abruptly came to mind when the person I was talking to about brands and social networks likened this online scene to a party. Before you even go to the party, he said, determine who’s going to be there. Once there, listen to what people are talking about and what’s meaningful to them. Once you’ve assessed this, if you’re going to talk, say something relevant. Your goal is not to get noticed simply for being disruptive. More important, we both agreed, was that for branding to succeed in a social network, it’s critical that the brand remain true to its persona. For instance, for a venerable financial brand to come into a 20-something online space and start behaving like a 20-something would immediately make the brand appear less than credible. If you’re a venerable financial brand, behave like one. Just make sure to offer up financial advice meaningful to a 20-something crowd. Your goal is to earn trust, not scorn. There’s no room for opacity or disingenuous behavior at online branding parties. People will sniff you out and likely snuff out your brand on their next blog or IM in an instant. Bottom line, if you’re thinking about taking a branding initiative to a social network, make sure you know who’s going to be there, what they’ve been talking about before your arrival, and how you can engage in the conversation in a way that’s meaningful to them – and to your brand. If you don’t do this, more than likely you’ll appear to be nothing more than an inexperienced ad guy trying to be something he’s not.