Who Owns the Brand?
ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — It happened again. Another super-popular app has been excommunicated from our existence because of a battle over brand.
The most recent brouhaha is around the fabulous Scrabulous (I must say I was an addict), an application found on Facebook that mimicked the game Scrabble®. After months of asking the Scrabulous creators to retreat, Hasbro finally threw down the legal gauntlet and forced them to take down their software. There was a revolt — thousands of people felt they owned the game and Hasbro had no right to take it away.
And then there was Tris, recently pulled from the iPhone platform for similar reasons, thrown into the growing pile of extinct apps. Tetris Company argues that Tris violates its copyright and trademark laws, as it was a pretty exact replica of the original game Tetris. Again, loyal users are speaking their displeasure in volumes.
Outside the online world, the airline industry is raising the ire of consumers over charges for things that used to be free. Just the other morning on National Public Radio I heard this question: Do the airlines own the airlines or do consumers?
Who owns these brands? Is it the corporations or is it the consumers who use them? Is this a genuine question, or is this absurd?
Consumer vs. corporate ownership
Some say that the consumer owns the brand and that corporations need to learn how to be brand stewards on behalf of consumers. They argue that, in both app cases, the corporations could have honored their brands and their consumers by outright purchasing the apps. Not only would they keep hold of the user base, they would also keep a positive brand image.
Both corporations, obviously, failed or chose not to do so.
Others contend the corporation owns the brand, and consumers are just beneficiaries. Was it the consumers who dreamed up American Airlines or the board game Scrabble? At one point in time the inventors were themselves consumers (and technically they still are if they’re alive), but now they are also the owners of brands. It’s their idea, their sweat, blood and tears that bring us the Apples, Fords and Googles of the world. Without brand inventors, what brands would we have? It would be a consumer’s desert out there. And that’s not even getting into the legal questions (which are boring, anyway).
So how can we even legitimately ask if consumers own brands? And where does that question, that feeling from consumers come from?
Is it a sense of entitlement among consumers because, now more than ever, we have a say in nearly everything, thanks to the social media and Web 2.0 push? Just because we may use or even evangelize a brand, does that give us a right to feel like we own the brand?
Power to the people (but not ownership)!
I say kudos to the brands that give us the feeling of power that we own it — they’ve found their niche and have produced a spot-on product. Consumers don’t deserve ownership in a brand merely because they use it anymore than they can demand ownership in a store simply because they buy goods there.
But I do think brand owners have a responsibility to listen and respond to their consumers. I’m pretty close to a populist — power to the people! Give them forums to voice opinions. Starbucksideas.com did it and did it well.
If consumers feel like they own the brand, great, use them! Take their complaints and make things better. Take their ideas and grow where you didn’t know it was possible to grow.
But whatever you do, don’t give in to the idea that the people, the consumers, really do own the brand.
Who owns the conversation?
But this begs a question that, as far as I can tell, never comes up in these debates. Central to the argument of who owns the brand is the conversation about the brand. Who owns that?
Not mass advertising, surely.
Now, before my friends at the mass agencies start speaking their displeasure in volumes, let me state right now I am not suggesting killing mass advertising. Mass advertising is hugely successful and absolutely necessary for any well-rounded company. However, mass advertising is not and will not be, for the next few years at least, a platform for conversations. It is a one-way communication stream.
That’s where direct marketing comes in — we own the conversation. And if we own the conversation, then maybe we own the brand as well.
Perhaps what makes a brand most powerful is when the people who enjoy it, who consume it, also feel participation in the conversation. Some brands do really well at giving their customers the feeling that they are actually part of the brand. This feeling can be perceived or actual. As I mentioned, the case of Starbucksideas.com is a good example of actual participation by customers in the brand.
A hippo or an elephant?
Of course, you aren’t guaranteed real participation simply by setting up a suggestion box. Real participation comes when the consumer feels engaged, respected and truly listened to.
Companies that want to maintain and grow their brands should be doing so by conversing with their customers. So where traditional marketing used to focus on voice, a more modern approach is to focus on hearing. A conversation isn’t a monologue, after all. It’s a two-way affair.
My feeling is that traditional mass advertising, and much old-fashioned direct marketing, has acted like the hippo, with a huge mouth and tiny ears. The marketing of the future will be better suited to the elephant, with huge ears and a tiny mouth.
If we marketers can’t create more brand value by growing bigger ears, then we may deserve to join Scrabulous and Tris on the extinction pile.
Reader Comments.
- Pingback from Linkdump | ettf.net
You need to read this (from my afpr.com blog); http://bit.ly/4FshUl
The post talks about a company whose products were built out of 100% consumer input. When we get to Web 3.0, you will not only market WITH your consumers, they will tell you what to market to them!
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