by Craig Bromberg
From the carny introduction of Coke to the clutter-clearing debut of the iPod, the warrior-cry of the brand executive has been “Differentiate or die.” When it comes to lifting your product over its rivals or competing in a field full of commodities, attaching personalitY to productS—branding—is the only way to get consumers to pay the premium you deserve. (Remember the classic Morton’s Salt slogan, “When it rains, it pours”?) Only one problem: consumers have caught on. In an era of long tails and mega-niches, they are increasingly wary of one-size-fits-all brands cluttering the air. Has product chatter replaced brand love? Is the anarchy of consumeR desire the new brand authenticity? We asked a panel of brand makers from different disciplines what’s going on. Their answers may just surprise you…

Joseph Jaffe
Crayon

// One day, I had an epiphany that the primary colors red, yellow, and blue represented radio, TV, and print and that when you put them together you have the lifeshare of advertising dollars. So what about the other 93 colors in the crayon box? That’s what we wanted to play with. Crayon is about life after the 30 second spot. Most advertising and marketing begins with the three primaries, and the other 93 are waiting somewhere in an expanding flow chart. We go the other way ‘round.

// Using all the colors in the crayon box isn’t just tactics, it’s about the democratizing of content creation. Average Joes and Janes always had a voice, but now the tools that are at consumers’ disposal are so profound and easy-to-use, there’s just been a spiralling of all these approaches. And now marketers want in. They want to use it as a marketing tool, but the honest answer may be that you can’t. Humans are just expressing themselves, talking and communicating, not selling or being sold to.

// The ship has set for sail and marketing is not part of it. Selling isn’t welcome but brands are.

// Context and experience is critical today, how a brand fits into our lives and not the other way round. Brands have to do something for us.

// Second Life is just one of the 93 colors, a smart way to show we’re global. Why deal with a pool of local talent when you can deal with the whole world?

// Advertising is founded on informing, persuading and reminding. But we really don’t need marketers to tell us what and how much to buy. We have Google—and each other. Persuasiveness has to take a back seat to credibility. We keep hitting people over the head and hope that they’ll submit but there’s diminishing marginal utility associated with frequency. So instead of informing, persuading, and reminding, we need to demonstrate, involve, and empower.

// You have to ask: What is the Product?
What is the Brand? And now, What is the Experience? Take Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. The community creates the market share, not the advertising. It’s the community that matters.

// A brand is only as strong as its last transaction. All it takes is one shared bad experience to take the walls down.

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