We no longer own the brand

An Invasion of Armies Can Be Resisted But Not An Idea Whose Time Has Come - Victor Hugo

Study any large brand such as Coca-Cola or Nike and you’ll find an organization awash with legal eagles, marcomms and defensive IP arrangements. Why? Because ownership and protection of the brand has been historically a critical success factor in their growth.

Yet the effectiveness of their defense has also created a rigidity which is restricting these companies in moving forward. As Coke sales remain flat, upstart competitors such as Jones Soda are able to slowly erode their established youth base by allowing the consumers to partake in shaping the brand long term.

Jones founder and ex CEO, Van Stolk, comments CEO Stolk states

“This is not my brand. This is not our soda. It belongs to the customer”

Relaxing internal communications control on branding has enabled Jones to foster a spirit of cooperation between itself and the consumer. By 2007, it had received over 500,000 photo entries to its ongoing campaign to encourage teenagers to post their pictures to appear on the label of the soda.

The 2% selected infer real social status on those selected in the form of bragging rites amongst peers.

Quoting one teenage consumer on the 43Things website

“i haven’t drank jones soda in a long ass time but i’ve always loved those pictures on the front. I’d love to get one put on the bottles one day!”.

In an already highly competitive market place, Jones Soda has demonstrated 30% compound annual revenue growth with top line predictions of $100m by 2008.

Internal processes represented the biggest challenge for brands in allowing consumers to shape the brand message (in 38% of brands), according to Forrester 2006. Second was management buy-in (34%). The lack of ability to measure its impact on sales was only rated at 3% suggesting that long held belief that dialogue building marketing approaches with young consumers weren’t measurable was untrue.

One reason why long term dialogue building marketing techniques such as blogging are particularly challenging is the internal framework they must negotiate before being made available to the consumer. According to Harris Interactive data from 2006, 77% of senior executives surveyed stated that their company should have corporate policies to address the writing of blogs sanctioned by the company, suggesting a widespread lack of clarity in internal marcomms directives as to a) whether or not blogs are permissable and b) encouraged.

Defensive strategies may prevent short term decline but not the inevitable. The record labels may claim victory on the court room steps as they parade the latest consumer criminalized for file sharing, yet the PR war for this industry has been lost as both artists and consumers leave en masse. From EMI to Microsoft, brands now understand that, regardless of who occupies the legal highground, the consumer will always vote with their wallet.

As Hugo remarks, the time has come for brands to loosen the unnecessary controls on communication that prevent employees from creating dialogue with consumers.