Brand signal vs. brand noise
When you’re managing a brand, you always want to know how much of your brand is signal, and how much is simply noise. This signal to noise ratio is a good indicator of the effectiveness of your brand platforms and programs. Lots of signal is good. Lots of noise is not so good.
Use the right brand model
The first step in identifying brand signal and brand noise is to use the right brand model.
Old-school brand practitioners who still model their brands as “communications”—like some kind of broadcast beam—might be tempted to send the customer a survey: “Hey, do I sound cool or crappy?”
Unfortunately, this approach has two drawbacks:
- Brands aren’t “communications”
- Customers won’t understand the context, and will give unhelpful responses
For our purposes, then, the traditional “message model” of brands is a non-starter.
What counts is what the customer does with the brand
For signal to noise assessments, I prefer a different brand model, as illustrated above. In my view this is much closer to the way brands succeed in the real world. As shown, the brand is the violin, and the customer is the player. (Hope you didn’t think it was the other way around! The notion of the brand “playing the customer” gets things absolutely backwards, and explains a lot of wasted brand dollars.)
What we want to discover is what the customer does with the brand. Does he or she make music, or a dreadful howl? The effective brand “signal” or “noise” comes from the customer, using what the brand provides.
The brand is a tool for customer expression
The above model comes with several sets of parameters:
- The brand is a tool for customer expression
- The brand has the potential to add value to the customer’s life
- Signal vs. noise is a result of brand/customer interaction
As noted above, the value of your brand lies in what the customer does with it. If the customer consumes your brand and promptly forgets it, your brand is effectively static. If your brand is out of tune, worn out or worn down, customers will grind out a few discordant notes and stop playing, relegating you to the attic. If your brand supercharges your customer’s life, opening new avenues of expression, then your brand is really rockin’.
The brand as enabler
In this model we can see that the brand is an enabler. This contrasts with other brand models which conceive the brand as a message, a controller, a prod, a godhead, or an illusion. Being an enabler gives you tremendous freedom in leading customers where competitors can’t follow.
And since we’re modeling brand interactions, we can add several observations about the duties of the brand. Within this model:
- It’s your job to teach the customer how to play
- It’s your job to suggest new tunes
- You are not so much a “conductor,” as you are a “toe-tapper in residence.”
- The purpose of this brand/customer interaction is to attract new listeners, and new players. The point is to get them all making music with you.
The value of this model is that it makes it easy to distinguish brand signal from brand noise. You can tell how well your brand is doing by listening to the customer
It’s that simple.
Brand signal is music that makes a market
Using this model, I define brand signal as music that makes a market. It’s music that’s good for your business, not some waste-of-time ditty. And it’s good for the customer, too. The music you make with customers should send competing brands to the back of the stage, if not into the frigid alley outside.
How can you tell if what you hear is music—and not an ear-piercing screech? Well, you’re in brands because you’re smart enough to know. You’ve got creative chops. Expressive chops. And customer chops.
