The brand as the influencer

Thought provoking post here from Paul Worthington about the role of brands in social media. The point made is that a brand’s influence is now most successfully deployed via active conversational involvement.

“In today’s world, the way to achieve this is not through bigger advertising budgets or better creative, but through involvement – first by observing the conversation and then by involving yourself in it. As a result, it’s likely that those brands with the most effective influence strategies rather than the most effective control strategies will be the most successful.”

‘Involvement’ is a hotly debated concept right now and often it’s used with a degree of ambiguity. Does involvement mean jumping in and joining discussions? Does it mean activating passion in customers and inspiring their conversation? Does it mean both? If both, how do they work together? This is an issue facing many brands keen to dive in, not sure why or how and with little understanding of goals.

For us, THE most successful impact any brand can have is through inspiring (or influencing) their customers to drive the conversation wherever they talk – particularly in social media. Having a Twitter profile is not sufficient to drive conversation unless a brand has something to say. Equally, a brand’s influence should emanate from their website too (dare I say it) as well as their products, services, stores, TV spots, packaging etc etc. 

Brand to peer and peer to peer conversation are different things. Understanding how involvement works to best effect in both areas is really crucial.

Thanks to Griffin Farley for the heads up…

Brought into the world on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.