Note: The following is a repost from the Horn Group Blog.
I was recently asked the following question:
How are user-generated content and online social networks (aka Web 2.0) likely to affect brand communications in the future?
It’s a great question and so I thought some about it. Here’s what I think:
To understand how social media affects branding, you first need to understand the history of the web in both social and commercial terms. What people often forget in today’s “Web 2.0” world is that the internet, prior to its commercialization—we’ll call it “Web 0.5”—was all about community. Prior to the first commercial browser, or even the first browser period (NCSA Mosaic- if i remember correctly), we had Usenet. Usenet was (still is actually) a protocol for users to discuss topics online. Huge communities comprised of millions of users used this system to discuss everything from technology to art. When Tim Berners Lee (out of CERN) created the initial set of protocols that still serve as the basis of the world wide web, his idea was simply to create a means for users (mostly academics) to communicate and collaborate easily with one another. Again, this was all about community and social interaction over networks.
The next big evolutionary phase of the Internet, let’s call it “Web 1.0,” represents the commercial phase of the web—media centralization and e-commerce. This is the dot.com boom (and bust), where large companies sought to commercialize the power of the Internet. Many were successful (Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Dell), and many more were not. The Web, which had been decentralized and non-commercial, became dominated by centralized commercial interests. In much the same way large media conglomerates control mainstream media, the web became dominated by just a few sites, creating a one-to-many communication and media platform, with little opportunity for communication among users. You bought stuff or read articles, but you didn’t participate.
If Web 0.5 was about community and Web 1.0 was about commercialism and media centralization, then Web 2.0 is about community commercialization. Meaning the monetization of user generated content and media disintermediation. So what we really have is a return to the community-based ethos of yesterday but commercialized through various (though mostly ad based) monetization strategies.
For brand managers, PR pros and marketing execs, the biggest concern is losing control of the message and brand in a Web 2.0 world. While the power of social media is incontrovertible – does it represent an opportunity or a threat for marketers? The only way to explore this is to understand what exactly makes a great brand because the question presupposes that there was control to lose in the first place. A brand is any entity searching for popular appeal. A brand can be a person place or thing; the great cities of the word are brands; artists are brands. What makes a great brand? What makes one company or product so much more successful than another? Is it innovation that makes a great brand? Not really. Is it quality? Are the best products the best brands? No. A great brand establishes a belief system; it creates a community of like-minded individuals who believe in the product.
This notion of control – that thing that branders are so afraid of losing – it never really existed. Brands have always been shaped by word-of-mouth – it’s just that now, through the Internet, the speed at which it happens has been increased. Companies need to deliver what they promise or they won’t survive – before the Internet, a company could get away with a shoddy product for a while before everyone learned the truth. It took a while before you heard if something was good or not. Marketing, especially advertising, is great at creating awareness– but belief requires community and peer validation. So from a branding perspective, social media is an incredibly powerful means of quickly creating a strong brand. But only if the product itself is actually good and people like it.
Branding in a Web 2.0 world means authenticity and transparency. It means delivering on your brand promise. It means admitting mistakes. It means the end of spin. And it means the consumer wins.