Brands Create Customers

Doc Searls recently set forth some very interesting theses for a new market model he calls “The Intention Economy.” (Think of it as a more clueful Attention Economy.) Doc focuses on the customer’s “intent to buy,” rather than the seller’s need to persuade the customer to buy. In Doc’s analysis, this “demand side” intent to buy is what best defines the nature of a market.

Doc says:

The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don’t need advertising to make them. The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don’t need marketing to make Intention Markets.

And he later adds:

The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just “branded” by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.

This raises an excellent question for those of us in brands: What would be the proper role of brands in an Intention Economy? No one in their right mind uses the term “branding” anymore, or advocates “branding” programs, but what are the constructive options?

Happily, there’s no need to develop a new theory of brands that can support the Intention Economy. We already have one, as outlined here.

Creating Customers
What we need to do is find ways to align brand practice with the intentions of customers. Brands that deliver customer freedoms, and that enable customers to achieve more, and be more, will have a head start. In fact, if the purpose of your brand is to “create customers” (sounds like a blog title to me!) you are already geared to go. And your brand practice doesn’t have to wait for customers to overtly signal their intentions before you act. You can use your creative juices to lead customers into areas they might otherwise never discover. You can help them develop latent potential, or latent modes of value.

Consider yourself the customer’s “intention antenna.”

For reference, here’s our core definition of brand:

Brands are avenues of value innovation in a creative engagement between companies and their customers.

To that we can add this corollary for the Intention Economy:

Your brand is how you intend to advance the customer.

I’ve stated previously that every brand builder’s mind should burn with the question, “What is holding our customers back?” The above definition of brand as customer-driven intent frames the answer to the brand builder’s question. (It assumes, of course, that you intend your brand to advance your customers. A few brands do the opposite, to their own detriment.)

Brand Intent

Your brand intent will determine the scope and structure of your brands and the content of your brand programs. It will shape your internal and external operations. And it will determine, to a large extent, what you can achieve in concert with your customers. Going it alone, in traditional marketing fashion, is no longer an option.

Customers will judge you by your brand intent.

They will sense it the minute you step into the room. No matter how many symbols, slogans and personas you have at your disposal, your brand intent can’t be masked. Bells and whistles? Pffft. Lofty vows? Pffft. Blockbuster image campaigns? Another pffft.

In the Intention Economy, brand intent is an equalizer. You get credit for what your brand is trying to do for the customer, even if your product (for the moment) falls a bit short. Customers can sense the brand benefit beyond the product proper. They know intuitively that the brand intent mirrors their dreams. Open source software is a prime example. The humblest and homeliest open source program that’s intended to grant users more control over their lives can rack up levels of loyalty that a traditional software house could never achieve while spending millions in conventional marketing campaigns.

The spectrum of brand intent covers a wide range, from positive to negative. Here is a sampling:

Types of Positive Brand Intent

1. Free the customer to do more, and to be more
2. Grow the customer to a more proactive state
3. Sharpen customer perceptions
4. Intensify customer sensations
5. Spark customer imagination

Types of Negative Brand Intent

1. Control customer behavior
2. Restrict (dumb down) customer thinking
3. Create passive “consumers”
4. Replace reality with make-believe
5. Create customer dependency

We’ve noted elsewhere that the essence of brand is collaboration with customers. If you design your brands along those lines, the Intention Economy, or any similar model, should open a world of opportunity.

For more perspectives on Doc’s Intention Economy check out Stowe Boyd, Phil Windley and John Hagel.

REVISED 4.6.06 TO FIX FORMATTING IN IE

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 8:03 am and is filed under Creating Customers, Fundamentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.