Advertising commentator Bob Garfield (@Bobosphere) and Doug Levy (@douglevy1), CEO of IMC2 (@imcsquared) and its blog the relationship era, have written an extensive article in Advertising Age (@adage) that encourages brands to “stop viewing purchasers as conquests. They are members of a community, prepared to adore (or the opposite) not just your stuff but the inner you.”
Welcome to the Relationship Era. Say goodbye to positioning, preemption, and unique selling position. This is about turning everything you understood about marketing upside down so that you can land right side up. This is about tapping into the Human Element.
Begin with a simple experiment. Type “I love Apple” into your Google search bar. You will get 3.27 million hits. If you type “I love Starbucks,” 2.7 million hits. Zappos: 1.19 million.
“I love Citibank” gets you 21,100. AT&T Wireless: 7,890. Exxon: 4,730. Dow Chemical: 3. Out of 7 billion human beings, three! Just to put that into context, type “I love Satan” and you get 293,000 hits. Now consider that in the past 12 months, Citibank, AT&T Wireless, Exxon Mobil, and Dow have spent $2 billion on advertising. How's that working out for them?
The methodology here may not be especially rigorous, but the results dramatize two immutable facts of contemporary marketing life:
1. Millions of people will, of their own volition, announce to the world their affection for a brand. Not for a person, an artwork, or a dessert but for a product or service. Congratulations. People care deeply about you.
2. Whether you like it or not, your brand is inextricably entwined in such relationships. If you were to type in “I hate Exxon,” you'd get 2.16 million hits – not counting the “I hate Exxon Mobil” Facebook page. Though people are listening less to your messages, it doesn’t stop them from thinking and talking about you. And each of those expressions of like, dislike, ardor or disgust has an exponent that reflects the outward ripples of social interaction.
Read this in full and read the book Winning in the Relationship Era: A New Model for Marketing Success (online pdf version) (also see "Social Media Is About Cultivating Community, Not Corralling Cattle"), then contact us (@smrsault) to help you set your “relationship era” branding and marketing strategy for 2012.
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