There’s been a lot of debate lately about the effect digital will have on branding. Will digital change the science of branding as we know it? Can the same principles apply?
The thing that keeps catching my attention however is the underlying confusion about what digital even is. Is it a medium? Is it a channel? Or is it just this black box with magical powers to make or break your brand?
It seems to me that before you can enter a debate on how best to brand in digital, you better figure out what digital is. As recently as yesterday I was talking with a colleague and referring to digital as a channel. But I’ve had a change of heart and in perspective. I think that calling digital a channel is our first mistake. Digital is a spectrum. In fact it’s a full-on universe.
Bear with me. This will all make sense in a moment. Or it won’t. But take a ride with me.
You and I grew up in the traditional universe – let’s call this the in-person universe. Dialogue took place in-person. Transactions took place in-person. Friendships were formed in-person. Marketers first reached us in-person. Signs at point-of-sale, ads in newspapers.
And then the airwaves were discovered and marketers could reach out to us from the great unknown – via radio, and then via TV. The advent of the telephone allowed us to be connected one-on-one at a distance.
Fast-forward to now. There is a whole new set of airwaves. We can’t see the poles and wires that connect us in this virtual space but yet here we are, more connected than ever, in real-time.
Remember Second Life? Remember how we were both intrigued but also somewhat saddened by the idea of people wanting to live a totally different life in the virtual world? Well Second Life may have been the extreme but the truth is we don’t need some fancy, avatar-filled universe to bring us to life online. We’re already there. And it’s no game. The evolution of our digital selves is real – it’s just that a whole lot of us consumers haven’t quite realized it and a whole lot of us marketers still haven’t quite figured out how to harness it.
Case in point. If you have an email address you have the outline of your digital footprint. And for the most part this is not a passive existence. People interact in this universe, they transact in this universe. And almost everything they do here they do differently than they do offline.
Why? Because we as companies know more about our consumer’s digital selves. We have more information about them. And therefore we provide them with an experience that is almost automatically more customized. And it’s 24-7. And it’s almost always more on their terms than ours.
So how do we harness this universe? And, to get back to the “burning” question of the day, how do we brand there?
Well, you’ll be a step ahead if you let go of the notion of digital as channel. Re-ground yourself in the idea that digital is the second universe that your brand has to live in. And familiarize yourself with the channels in that universe just like you did with the ones in the universe you grew up in. Banner ads are billboards on the (oh lord) information superhighway. Social media platforms are the high school cafeteria, the airport bar and the yearbook. Websites are the newspapers and televisions and coffee-houses. You get where I’m going.
So get acquainted with your surroundings. And then do what you do best. Get to an idea that delivers on your brand and business insights, understand who your target audience is AND how they behave in the digital and traditional worlds, and then choose from the channels available in each to best deliver your message to them.
And that’s my two pennies.
