Three Ways To Build a Brand In The Disruptive Era

Geoffrey Colon is host of the LinkedIn video series Culture Jamming which explores the intersection of marketing, tech, popular culture and business culture, co-host with Cheryl Metzger of the Disruptive FM podcast and author of the book Disruptive Marketing.

I have read hundreds of articles about "branding" here on LinkedIn the past few years and I dissect them all. There is a huge divide now in terms of what a brand means anymore. So while we debate if the term social media means anything while pondering what the media even is, maybe we should be asking what the terminology and behavior of a brand is. Many brands are very knowledgeable on how they are navigating the changing brandless world, adopting decentralized models and being much more open to user generated content that doesn't follow brand principles. Others are pondering how they will remain relevant as they move into the next decade where cryptocurrencies, Blockchain and cognitive services will reshape how we engage with one another and how companies will even operate.

Too many brands approach the world as if new forms of communication that are public facing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), private (Slack, Skype, Facebook Messenger, SMS) or allow for content creation or manipulation (Photoshop, Adobe Premier, GarageBand, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Canva, Over) didn't exist or more correctly, only exist for the reason of amplifying their narrative and message.

Brands looking to tap into how to adopt a strategy that is relevant to the new normal would be best to understand we operate in a world that is not just social by design, but remixable by design.

Any customer has the ability to co-opt/recreate/reconfigure your brand messaging to mean something to them personally and share that with others in public or private. This can take the form of ridiculing it, meaningfully enhancing it with a personalized slant or responding to it in a way that provides a unique new point of view and continuous evolutionary dialog.

In a world of digital overload, we forget that people talk to other people and we spend a lot of time saying things about brands that you wouldn't like (like, um, how much you stink at what you created yourself in the first place to do).

So how should brands approach the world because of these evolving capabilities and behaviors?

1. Own a category or a vertical - Brands in the past would launch with fanfare, logos and imagery about them. But customers don't care about that. I laugh when the brand police say, "Hey that's the wrong font you're using." It's as if they think the customer cares about things they are paid to keep in order. People have stuff they need to get done, problems to solve, people to meet and want to know how you fill this void. Furthermore, if you help with 150 people (why this number? I'll explain in point 2) in a beta in this category or vertical, they will be your strongest sales force ever. If you can't be number one or number two in a category or vertical ("We're the Uber for X," domestically bottled microbrew, revenue sharing social network), find or create another category or vertical or pivot into an area that has less competition than the abundance of solutions you may be going up against.
2. Don't worry about appealing to the masses - Brands would launch and still do with the mass market in mind. But this is a mistake. The masses are hard and difficult to scale to in this day and age and with personalization at the forefront if you grow from 1 to 1 billion in one year, how do you personalize the product for every customer? The last thing brands need is to grow fast and then face major churn. It's better to slow with sustained growth and this happens when you reach those 150 people who then tell 150 people who tell 150 people who tell 150 people. Famed anthropologist Robin Dunbar noted the most social contact we can maintain is 150. Other studies have shown businesses that grow past 150 employees usually have problems businesses under 150 do not have. So noting this, brands would be smart to build things they know will be picked up via word of mouth and travel from 150 people to 150 people in an exponential growth pattern. Furthermore, if you launch and 1 million people are your target audience do you really have a target audience? If everyone is your market, then no one is really your market.
3. Branding in the conventional sense is a waste of time - Think about how you keep delivering for that core sales force who are the users of your product. Branding is a side effect of consistent association. To push or message about your brand with the failure to deliver will sink you faster than you can say Titanic. This is where we have to relearn everything we think we know about branding. Put a good product with a good business model first and a rabid but fanatical and small user base that grows slowly over time and a good brand will follow. Brands could learn a lot from musicians. Bands that grow up to really change how we experience the world usually started out with 150 people in some sweaty dark room playing tunes that those rabid fans loved so much, they had to tell others about that band. You know those artists. They are now legends but include everyone from The Beastie Boys to Notorious B.I.G. to N.W.A. to No Doubt to The Clash to Nirvana to Liz Fair to PJ Harvey to Sonic Youth to Public Image Limited to Public Enemy.