Brands Create Customers

An article that every brand builder should read is Branding Youth in the Totalitarian State in Design Observer. The article is based on Steven Heller’s new book: Iron Fists: Branding the Totalitarian State.

The article raises all sorts of interesting questions about the relationships between propaganda and brands, and on the “totalitarian” nature of brands themselves.

1. Are brands a form of propaganda?
2. How are brands different from propaganda?
3. Are the best brands “totalitarian” in concept and in execution?
4. Is every brand builder a closet fascist, inventing a new world order for customers?
5. What are the strategy downsides of brands conceived and executed as propaganda? What other brand models could disrupt them?

I’ll tackle these questions bit by bit in coming posts.

Two brand models: containment vs liberation

As part of this discussion maybe we can assess different models of brands, among them a persuasion or propaganda model, and a contrasting liberation model. A persuasion or propaganda model would try to shape customer thoughts and feelings so as to contain customers, to keep them in place so they continue to be “loyal” to the brand and purchase the product.

In contrast, a liberation model of brands might aim to free customers to be more proactive for themselves, on the premise that greater sales will flow from a more proactive culture, where customers are active players in product development rather than a passive audience. (This model assumes a company can lead by innovation into a proactive culture, and that can be a very risky assumption.)

Two previous posts along these lines:

• Managing the brand agenda for customer growth
• Some brands go medieval on their customers

Totalitarian brands—and brand builders

To a certain extent, every brand builder has a totalitarian mindset. (Yes, admit it.) We conceive of a “total” unified and integrated brand experience where the brand identity is carefully composed and actively expressed. We make sure that every symbol, slogan, color, theme, touchpoint, etc. is set forth to maximize the brand effect. Behind every logo is a torchlight parade.

Personally, I tend to be a super-totalitarian in this regard, but I always have to ask myself: does this approach leave sufficient room for the customer? Since we’re trying to build the brand through the customer, shouldn’t we also focus on building customers themselves so their freedoms can create new markets for us?

Limits of a totalitarian brand strategy

Some questions: Can a brand be too totalitarian? Does a totalitarian approach create passive customers who are a dead end strategically? Can we build a totalitarian brand from the bottom up? Does a totalitarian brand just hold customers back? Or can it set them free?

More to come.

NOTE: See also the Youth under fascism site, which is the source of the poster above.

In an editorial, today’s New York Times takes issue with political forces attempting to change the American brand from one of freedom and opportunity to a brand of fear.

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.

An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. . . .

The politics of identity

There is a real brand identity issue here, too: the possibility that “America” is being subdivided into opposing nations of “Us” and “Them:”

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

In recent years we’ve seen how politicians can create and exploit public fears to fracture a national identity for narrow political gain. The results are often devastating to the public and the brand.

“Pragmatic and welcoming”

In many ways the US Constitution defines the American brand. To use a phrase from the Times editorial, that brand is “pragmatic and welcoming.” The Constitution creates a platform of freedoms and rights that enables citizens to make the most of their opportunities, using their initiative and creativity. In many respects, that’s the American Way that sets the US apart. We’re a platform for achievement in a world where too many national brands are little more than ginned up identities used for public control.

Brands as collaborations

It seems to me that the strongest “country brands” are collaborations, where people are on the same page because they’re writing it together. These are places of vibrant culture and adaptation, where tradition becomes a platform for the new. Some elements are frozen in time and kept as static “icons” (often for the tourist trade), but the national brand itself floats upon a living, breathing culture, one that’s encouraged to grow.

Harvard Business Review has published an online case study on authenticity, called Authenticity: is it real or is it marketing?

The case is mostly about identity, rather than authenticity per se, but it’s worth a read.

“Authenticity” can mask deeper problems

In general, I’m always skeptical about discussions of brand “authenticity” when they extend beyond matters of legal provenance. Generalized concerns about authenticity often mask deeper problems of brand identity, character and customer creation. They also typically frame brands as “media” and as a subset of marketing, which can limit brand innovation. Finally, authenticity debates usually focus brands on a static company “essence” when what most brands need is an existential approach predicated on joint customer action.

Brands designed to enable new customer freedoms avoid authenticity problems ab ovo. Building a brand community does the same. Brands designed as stylized sales stimulants will have authenticity issues up the wazoo—as would be expected.

Creating customers: a most authentic strategy

As I see it, companies with strong programs to create customers rarely have authenticity problems. Such brands can leverage company character, and can lead by example—always the most “authentic” customer creation strategy. It’s only when a company lets itself be led by media campaigns that its fundamental character takes a back seat, and things can fall apart. Campaigns that try to sell “authenticity” are doomed to fail, just like campaigns to “shape brand perceptions.”

When your brand has been reduced to a “perception,” your authenticity is reduced to a campaign. Customers see through the hype, and go elsewhere.

A worthwhile look at one aspect of these issues is Dana Thomas’s Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster.

Hat tip: David Weinberger