Brands Create Customers

Every practice—including the practice of brands—benefits from a clear vision of where it’s been, and where it’s going. It carries a picture of its own evolution. Ideally, this is a vision that’s short and sweet and memorable, one that encapsulates past and present, and points (with some logic) toward the future.

The three eras of brands

At the present time I see brands unfolding across three eras. In broad brush-strokes, this is a progression that starts with brands as mark, makes a huge transition to brands as media, and now looks toward brands as means. These are not exclusive phases, of course. Each phase carries over into its successor, and still maintains a presence. At some point, though, the fickle finger of zeitgeist flips a switch and we find ourselves in a new epoch of brands.

What’s important for brand builders is that we’re now reaching the end of media-based brands, a storied age tied to the heyday of mass media itself. That age is winding down. It will be a monumental change from that era to the rise of brands as means, where brands serve as tools and “enablers” for customers. This will be an age of brands as personal (digital) applications.

The current transition will take at least a decade to play out. It will happen in bits and pieces. Brand marks and media-based brands will not disappear. But I think they’ll play reduced roles in the years ahead.

Now for some comments on each phase:

First Era: Brand as Mark

This was the first era of brands, beginning several centuries ago, when the defining mark was the brand. The mark was a unique and distinctive name and/or symbol originally burned into wooden barrels or boxes, identifying the maker and/or purveyor. Marks live on as trademarks, logos, labels, packaging, and certain visual and symbolic product properties, including design.

Second Era: Brand as Media

Powered by mass media (newspapers, radio and TV), this was the era of brands as messages and communications about the product, reflecting the belief that such communications often deliver more brand value than the product itself. Media-based brands ran circles around marks that could not create new layers of meaning (and emotion) beyond their symbols and signs. What counted in this era was the “brand idea” and its attributes communicated to the passive “consumer.” As mass media now begins to fall apart, hugely talented ad agencies strive to resolve inner contradictions to keep the old model afloat.

Third Era: Brand as Means

In the emerging “means” era of brands, brands become personal applications that enable customers to do more and to be more. They’re product potential X customer potential. Brands will run wild with digital innovation. Through digital technology they’ll be smaller, faster, more powerful, more portable and more personal, a combination of second skin and sixth sense. There are glimmers of this era in Apple’s iPod and iPhone, in the build-out of Google’s online applications, and in the Web itself. In the era of brands as means, customers are no longer a passive audience. They’re part of the brand team, as innovators and collaborators.

What about “brand experience”?

Brand builders today go to great lengths to optimize brand experience, so one might ask how and where “brand experience” fits into my formulation. Here’s my current answer: If a brand experience treats the customer as an audience, then that experience is part of “media.” However, if a brand enables customers to experience things on their own, then that experience is part of “means.” In other words, passive experience (audience) is “media;” proactive experience (participation) is “means.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 6:13 am and is filed under Creating Customers, Brand Fundamentals, Brand Building. 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.