Mike Arauz is a strategist at We Are What We Share
For brands on the web: if I don't see your sources (what you read, watch, and listen to) and which things you think are important enough to pass on, then I don't know who you are.
As I was trying to hash out what's special about branding for the web yesterday, Nick's comment sparked this thought. In this digital world we live in, our identity is increasingly defined by the information we choose to share, and what that information reveals about our sources of information.
We each have an ever-growing river of information coming at us. Blogs we read, links passed to us by our friends on Facebook and the people we follow on Twitter, Youtube channels we subscribe to, websites we've bookmarked, podcasts, etc. We constantly tweak and carefully curate this collection of sources. All of this information comes flooding in to us day after day, and we choose to pay the most attention to the things that are most important to us. With the ease of a mouse click, and perhaps a few keystrokes, we can pass it on to any number of people through any channel we want, i.e. email, a blog, social bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook.
This is the structure of web communications. We get to know people on the web through this same behavior. We observe what information and links they choose to share and we observe where that information came from. And by doing this day after day, we begin to get a sense of who that person is (and how much we like them).
The same rules for cultivating your online identity apply for brands. In a poster, bill board, or even TV commercial, it's enough to leave the audience with a feeling. If you're lucky, they might learn something, too, but most of the time all you can accomplish is affecting an emotion. If that emotion is powerful and it sticks, then you've done your job. But, if you approach web marketing the same way that you approach traditional advertising, you will be ignored. A brand can't define itself on the web simply by sparking a fleeting emotion, whether it's through a 5 second banner experience or even a 5 minute microsite experience.
Sharing information has become so fundamental to constructing and recognizing identity on the web, that without a continuous stream of outgoing information demonstrating what's important to you (beyond your product!), your audience will never know who you are.
As I was trying to hash out what's special about branding for the web yesterday, Nick's comment sparked this thought. In this digital world we live in, our identity is increasingly defined by the information we choose to share, and what that information reveals about our sources of information.
We each have an ever-growing river of information coming at us. Blogs we read, links passed to us by our friends on Facebook and the people we follow on Twitter, Youtube channels we subscribe to, websites we've bookmarked, podcasts, etc. We constantly tweak and carefully curate this collection of sources. All of this information comes flooding in to us day after day, and we choose to pay the most attention to the things that are most important to us. With the ease of a mouse click, and perhaps a few keystrokes, we can pass it on to any number of people through any channel we want, i.e. email, a blog, social bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook.
This is the structure of web communications. We get to know people on the web through this same behavior. We observe what information and links they choose to share and we observe where that information came from. And by doing this day after day, we begin to get a sense of who that person is (and how much we like them).
The same rules for cultivating your online identity apply for brands. In a poster, bill board, or even TV commercial, it's enough to leave the audience with a feeling. If you're lucky, they might learn something, too, but most of the time all you can accomplish is affecting an emotion. If that emotion is powerful and it sticks, then you've done your job. But, if you approach web marketing the same way that you approach traditional advertising, you will be ignored. A brand can't define itself on the web simply by sparking a fleeting emotion, whether it's through a 5 second banner experience or even a 5 minute microsite experience.
Sharing information has become so fundamental to constructing and recognizing identity on the web, that without a continuous stream of outgoing information demonstrating what's important to you (beyond your product!), your audience will never know who you are.
Monday, January 19, 2009
|
6 Comments:
You've really moved this on.
There are very few organisations that I know of who invest in sending out a "continuous stream of out-going information demonstrating what's important to you (beyond your product!)"
It's counter-intuitive to the 'normal way of doing things', i.e. investing in campaigns about your product/service as and when you need to.
I, for one, would love to see an RSS feed by Nike that was a stream of stuff that their staff were interested in that had nothing to do with their products, or even sports...
Does something like this exist already?
"we are what we share"? or "we (make ppl think) who we are by what we share"?
one can be a total douche in real life, but online one can also carefully craft their persona, continually push 'flavor of the day' content out, and raise their hand and engage in every conversation, one can think that, that person is a really cool person to hang out with.
It's all Confucianism pps:
"Social harmony—the great goal of Confucianism— results in part from every individual knowing his or her place in the social order, and playing his or her part well"
I still don't know why the western world is starting to adopt these rules (I'm trying to find out) but they are...stay tuned
great post mike. the only question that remains is how do brands do this? what does this look like for brands as opposed to people?
i only ask because of my cynicism about brands trying to hard to act "human". put another way, "your brand is not my friend", as the saying goes ;)
Dino, did you see this post?
http://tinyurl.com/cx43v6
Basically says that brands should 'do stuff' worth talking about i.e. create a service/platform/wkdly funny ad on youtube that you can share with your friends, not just try and insert themselves into the conversation.
Big difference in a brand being your 'friend' and a brand actually creating value for you.
saw that post, of course i agree with gareth. no one is denying that brands should be interesting, useful and valuable (or some combination of the above).
but this is not the same as being your "friend" or sharing things the way a friend might, and that was what i was responding to (and what mike's post is about from my understanding).
Post a Comment
<< Home