Phrases that are both clever and true can also be dangerous. Here's one: 'Brands only exist in the minds of consumers.' Very clever and true, which is why it has become something of a marketing meme, passed on, copied and pasted, captured in PowerPoint charts and rehashed in blogs. It's a phrase planners use to upbraid marketers who, they feel, are seeking to exert too much control over their brand's identity in a world where consumers increasingly make the running.
That context is the first reason the phrase is dangerous: your guard is already down. Who wants to be thought a control freak, out of touch with the times, an analogue marketer in a digital world? Never mind that few marketers ever really felt they were controlling - more just influencing; today, it is consumers who determine brand usership and create brand narratives. Caught between the self-evident good sense of the clever phrase and the fluidity of the new consumer culture, marketers find themselves softened up for some altogether more specious assertions.
At the extreme end of things comes this injunction from Alex Wipperfurth, in his influential book, Brand Hijack: 'Let go of the fallacy that your brand belongs to you. It belongs to the market.' Citing the success of Red Bull, Dr Martens and Krispy Kreme, his ultra-modernist manifesto counsels marketers to 'lose control and resist the paranoid urge for consistency'.
It is a view that finds endorsement in the concept of 'negotiated brand meaning', proposed in the work of heavyweight academics such as Professor Douglas Holt and Professor Mike Beverland. It implies finding common ground with consumers by constantly adapting brand meaning to reflect their latest patterns of use, cultural ideologies and narrative trends.
The example Beverland gives is Converse, whose ubiquitous appeal in music and street culture has been achieved 'despite' having only ever been promoted in its authentic role as a basketball shoe. That's changing now, though, with special-edition lines like its AC/DC sneaker.
You can call that negotiated meaning; you might also call it a mistake. Consumers come to brands like Converse for authenticity, and although they might prise usage norms away from those dictated by heritage, that doesn't necessarily mean they want the brand to recognise this.
Understanding how your brand is consumed and changing your ethos to accommodate it are different things. Following is following, even if it is your own consumers taking the lead. Those who seek the real thing may well move on. No big deal to them, of course, but a potential big loss to the brand.
Here's a rule of thumb: never negotiate with anyone who has a great deal less to lose than you do. Brand management has to take account of all kinds of commercial realities about which consumers give not a hoot - portfolio management, for example, with its responsibilities to keep brand meanings distinct and bounded. Follow the consumer and who knows where you'll end up.
Good brand management was never about control but always about influence, and that should not be given up lightly. It's analogous to your own professional reputation, which exists only in the minds of other people. It might reside with them, but it matters more to you, so you will take great pains to influence it in the direction that best suits your long-term interests. Your brand deserves nothing less.
Helen Edwards has a PhD in marketing, an MBA from London Business School and is a partner at Passionbrand, where she works with some of the world's biggest advertisers.
30 SECONDS ON ... CONVERSE
- The brand was founded in 1908 by Marquis Mills Converse, a rule-breaker with an instinctive marketing brain. He could see how sport captivated the imagination of young people, regardless of social status.
- In 1917 Converse launched the first performance basketball shoe, the All Star, and recruited a young player, Chuck Taylor, nicknamed 'Mr Basketball', to sell them.
- The high-topped sneaker became part of the leather-jacket, blue-jean uniform in the early days of rock'n'roll, but the brand continued to emphasise its expertise in sport. In the 80s it launched 'The Weapon' shoe, which became a favourite of college and professional teams.
- Nike bought Converse for a reported $305m in 2003 and announced that the brand would expand into 'lifestyle categories' - to the alarm of hardcore fans who felt that the new ownership 'may suck the cult out of a classic'.
- In 2009 Converse launched its Rock Collaborations line, featuring Pink Floyd, Ozzy Osbourne and The Who.