Is Your Brand Ready To Get Dirty? Don’t Go Social, If The Answer Is ‘No’!

It’s important to realize that the moment a Brand steps into the social media, it should be ready to get a bit dirty. It should be ready to mingle with diverse people and get some of their dirt on its polished untouched body and transfer some of its glitter and fragrance to others.

The irony is that the Brand Marketers want their brands to stay shiny and consistent and want that brand guidelines should be strictly followed -“we don’t like red, we like only Garamond, our English should be impeccable and we should be visualized as Batman.Our logo should appear on every image and we can’t laugh on a joke!”

When you create communication for TV, you have the liberty to focus on brand guidelines-largely because you are firing a one-way communication and want to brain-wash a consumer with repeated and consistent messaging.

However On Social media, the Brand needs to collaborate, interact and communicate with audience-it’s both ways: and mind you no one’s interested in discussing which Bollywood heroine bathes with Brand X and how Brand Y Tea can refresh you from inside. The brand wants to discuss and collaborate? Then it should talk about how it can add value to its audience on social platforms, reciprocate, curate or create topics that interest them, and how it can create opportunities for collaboration.

When Amitabh Bachchan came to Kapil Sharma’s show, the content of the show didn’t change to become more aristocratic, gentlemanly and suave; instead Amitabh Bachchan-the brand- gelled with the usual content of the show keeping his brand promise (larger than life entertainment) intact. Net, net they both altered themselves a bit. Flexibility and fluidity is the key.

Our own experience shows that Brands need to invest in creating better connect with audience by having a fluid strategy so that they can react in real-time and impact a large spectrum of audience by speaking their language, their tone and talking stuff that interests them.

Let the Brands lose their religion and recreate themselves in the vision of the customers.

As Scott D Cook, Director P &G aptly said and it has a powerful implication: “ A brand is no longer what we tell consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other what it is.”

At dotConverse we have seen this at Lemp Brewpub & Kitchen and we are witnessing it live on other accounts as well. We leverage these learnings with our clients and hope to become better day by day.