In the wake of Marketing Magazine’s Ritson’s backlash against 21st century ‘You-centered’ branding, I think it necessary to defend ‘you’. Ritson’s article, 2 weeks ago, took a pot shot at the new strategies behind Vodafone, T-Mobile and Yahoo, all of which are currently advocating the power of ‘you’ in deciding their futures.
You control Vodafone.
The customer is always king. A galling rule I learnt some time back whilst working in shops and waiting on tables. And an important one too. The age of the all powerful, dictatorial conglomerate is over. Equally so, is the age of the ever accepting consumer. In an age of anti-corporatism (think No Logo), online social media and an ever shrinking world, people want to feel like they have some sort of ctrl.
Two years ago, Cadbury bent down to collective consumer pressure, via 14,000 Facebook users, to reintroduce Wispa. Since the brand relaunch, Cadbury’s share of the UK confectionary market has increased to a staggering 3%, with Cadbury shares doubling. Not surprisingly the brand, now Britain’s favourite chocolate bar, is being kept permanently leading to the reintroduction of Wispa Gold earlier this year. A flop for ‘you’?
P&G have also recently announced their allegiance to ‘you’. In a bold move, they’ve begun to trial feedback forums (Amazon.com style) on some of their brands’ sites, giving consumers the opportunity to voice exactly how they feel about P&G’s brands. A risky move no doubt, however, the intended result is to give the impression of not only a more open company, able to take criticism on the chin and respond to it maturely, but also use it as a fascinating base for inspiration. Whether P&G determines the trial a success or not, the end result will most certainly be interesting to see.
But ‘you’ centred branding is not a new idea. Cathryn Sleight, Coca Cola’s Marketing Director, commented on Marketing Week earlier this year, that Coca Cola has always used full consumer feedback and a ‘you’ centred approach to their branding as a base for inspiration, leading to the introduction of Diet Coke.
Ritson argues about the danger of brands trying to follow everyone and every idea consumers put forward, resulting in brands looking and offering the same things as each other. However, equally as a ‘you’ centred approach to branding and development is about working with consumers to understand their wants, it’s equally not about following verbatim EVERYTHING consumers say they want. It goes without saying that this would lead to a Bubble Car à la Homer Simpson.
‘You’ branding needs to be understood carefully as an insight into what a brands’ consumers are currently thinking and saying both about themselves and about the brand. It should be used as a basis for inspiration, for ideas to be taken from there. The drive for differentiation forces brands to sit up and be more creative. Differentiation can no longer be about being ‘less bad’ than the next brand. Differentiation should come from how consumers’ wants can be interpreted from this base of inspiration. However, ideas generated from this need to then be realigned according to what each company can offer, their own cultural values and background.
The results from all of these brands’ ventures into ‘you’ branding in the next few years will be interesting to see, and have potentially huge impact for other consumer brands as a whole. What is clear, however, is that failure to act at all on consumers’ feedback will result in a text book style ‘Marketing Myopia’.
Perhaps now is the time to say ‘the consumer is dead. long live ‘you”.