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The Consumer As Brand Manager

Written on
Aug 30, 2007 
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Unbound Edition  |
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The Consumer As Brand Manager

brand2.jpgThe cultural discussion about the consumer is sweeping across business and reshaping everything from product development to marketing strategies. Fundamentally, this should be seen as both a good turn of events and as nothing new at all.

Smart businesses have always known “the consumer” is who really matters. Rephrase this as “start with the end in mind” or “follow the money,” if “the consumer” seems a mystery somehow. You get the point: happy purchasers…who are profitable…and drive word of mouth…and grow your business…are not an accident. They can be developed. Doing so upsets and undoes corporate agendas, executive hubris, outdated marketing and control-obsessed brand managers. Again, this is good business, and we have the proof of it.

Putting the consumer “front and center” is complex; and, as the phrase suggests, two separate acts. To put the consumer at the “front” indicates that we are “consumer focused”; we see them first. To put the consumer at the “center” means that we are “consumer centric”; they are the core of our business, and we are in service to them. To succeed with this “front and center” approach, companies must have a capacity for being of two minds – two viewpoints – at once. Not an easy thing to do, especially in command and control cultures that demand often thought-free – and thoughtless – execution of cookie-cutter plans.

Companies that do not get this fail laughably. Seeing the company as “us” and the consumer as “them” leads to the absurd efforts of Coca-Cola, and its corporate-cool “lounges” in malls and fake blog posts. Or to Wal-Mart’s back-to-school social networking site, which apparently exists to tap into kids’ unmet need to congregate, connect and chat based on their common love for “everyday low prices.”

Are two of the biggest companies in the world stupid? No, of course not. But they do think like corporations, not consumers. Ideas like theirs come to life with plenty of research, to be sure. They will defend them with a simple phrase: “We asked the consumer!” (via focus groups and online surveys, surely). So did the designers of the modern Edsel, the Pontiac Aztec.

Asking consumers is one thing. Listening to them yet another. Having a sustained conversation with them something entirely different. The companies winning today know how to have the conversation; they know how to research and market in real time. They know that being consumer centric is what sustains them; they don’t “ask” and “listen” just when they need to advance a new product pipeline. Involving the consumer for your purposes is not the same as operating your company for their benefit (and loyalty).

Consider these examples. The iPod was not born out of focus groups; it opened and led a market by solving an intellectual property issue for an intransigent industry being assaulted by techno wiz kids. Procter & Gamble did not develop Starbucks, though the company had arguably the best consumer data in the world on coffee with Folgers in its portfolio of brands. Ebay was seen as a junk-filled venue for small time criminals upon launch (at least by those who did not get that it was a new mercantile exchange and entrepreneurial engine). So why did these work so grandly?

In each case, the consumer is the brand manager, fulfilling very traditional brand management functions in entirely non-traditional, real time ways. All iPods looks the same, yet no two are alike. The consumer determines the creative content. Starbucks offers thousands of drinks never printed on any menu board, making them on-demand. The consumer determines the product mix (and decided the company would sell far more milk than coffee, end of day). Ebay controls nothing but servers. The consumer determines both inventory and pricing model.

Creative content, product mix, inventory, pricing: all under consumer control. It is no one way street, however. This consumer control gives each company here constant, real-time data. As moods shift, as culture moves, so does consumer behavior. These companies are constantly relevant, respected and recommended not because they check the pulse of the consumer, but because the consumer is their pulse. There is no “us” and “them.” Instead, there are the Apple, Starbucks and Ebay communities.

Not surprisingly, the three companies here are among the fastest growing and most valuable brands in the world. These brands have been accepted and adopted as cultural currency, not corporate intellectual property. When Coca-Cola’s consumers managed its brand via Mentos and YouTube – bringing back to it the authentic joy, play and community the brand has lost – the lawyers lunged into action. They thought they were protecting the company’s trademarks, yet failed to realize that the intangible assets of the brand – the value of the brand – live with the consumer already. There are trade offs, to be sure.

Companies behind the times or out of touch will complain that these examples don’t apply to them. They are in manufacturing. Their business is more complex. With those excuses, they are saying the consumer does not really matter; that the company knows better. That’s one option. Companies that get it – and that will win tomorrow – will solve these challenges.

Ask the team at Toyota’s Scion division how easy it was to build completely customizable cars for a generation that demands personalization. Or ask Target how easy it was to extend its “design for all” claims all the way to the consumer. Guess who is designing the next line of products at the world’s hottest retailer? Yep. The same brand managers who changed the company’s name to Tar-jay.

Patrick T. Davis is CEO of Patrick Davis Partners, the national brand strategy and management consulting firm he founded in 1996.  Mr. Davis advises Fortune 500 companies nationwide, and sets the strategic direction for the firm’s network of offices in Atlanta, New York, St. Louis and San Francisco.  He is also the publisher of Unbound Edition.

Compliments of UnBoundedition.com





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