The evolving relationship between brands and social
The way we build brands and develop businesses has remained mostly stagnant, says Gerard Crichlow, Global Planning Director for Unilever at MullenLowe London. But with social media, we've entered a new world, which calls for a new approach.
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A lot has changed since the days of John Willshire’s Fireworks and Bonfires framework, which referred to the relationship between advertising to gain attention, and social content to keep the coals of that attention burning.
We've exited the era of disruption and entered a new era of interactive collaboration and creative chaos.
But many organisations haven’t really evolved beyond it. In the 12 years since his helpful analogy, the pace of cultural and technological change has only intensified the relationship between advertising and social media.
We've exited the era of disruption and entered a new era of interactive collaboration and creative chaos. In this new world, the way we build brands, create memory structures, develop new products and services and ultimately sell to audiences, has changed.
Above: John Willshire, Head of Innovation at PHD, said that while advertising is a firework, social media is a bonfire.
A quick reminder
Advertising as we know it was born of industrialisation in the 20th century, which was predicated on scale and reach to get products in the hands of as many people as possible. In this construct, attention was concentrated across a few channels (TV, radio, print, OOH), and products were designed to appeal to the broadest set of cohorts as possible (Ford’s Model T, Coca-Cola’s red can, McDonald’s Big Mac).
As Seth Godin has said, “if you appeal to everyone you risk becoming mediocre by default”.
Today, many big organisations still invest their spend in these 20th century channels to gain the attention of the masses but, as Seth Godin has said, “if you appeal to everyone you risk becoming mediocre by default”. As much as it’s disputed, social media provided people with the opportunity to align their preferences with their spending power and, suddenly, attention became more networked and distributed and no longer was it as easy to gain attention and sell those same standard products. Personalisation became much more important.
To adapt, brands - in addition to running advertising campaigns - became editorial publishers and media entities, creating engaging, snackable content of varying formats and lengths. Along with social, brands had the ability to target, test, learn and ultimately fail faster to truly understand what people wanted. Instead of building brand platforms from the top-down, you could start from the bottom (social) up if you were keen enough to pay attention to the signals in culture.
True communities pull you in with engaging, customised content based on shared interests beyond commerce.
As a result, brands no longer need to disrupt people’s attention with big, bonfire moments. Instead, appealing to their interests with more coals to stoke the flames of a never-ending fire has become much more important in staying relevant to their consumers. Many brands go wrong when they create branded communities selling products during a campaign lifecycle, often starting from scratch with each new campaign; but branded communities are not true communities - they are a moment in time. True communities pull you in with engaging, customised content based on shared interests beyond commerce.
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Above: LEGO is the brand with the biggest subscriber base on YouTube, but it pales into comparison with some non-brand-related channels.
A shifting in building brands
The traditional way of building brands, which starts with creating a product, developing a brand around the product and then finding an audience, has shifted from selling products first to building and nurturing communities. Zoe Scaman, the fandom and creator economy advocate and Founder of strategy studio Bodacious, summarised this shift brilliantly in her presentation to the IPA [below].
The most innovative community builders tend not to be brands.
This approach is no secret - it’s been hiding in plain sight. The most innovative community builders tend not to be brands. If you look at YouTube, for instance, the brand with the largest amount of subscribers, LEGO, tops the list with 12.5M subscribers. Compare that to T-series, a Bollywood music channel that has 183M subscribers, followed closely by PewDiePie, a content creator/influencer with 110M+ subscribers.
Brands should not hope to compete for attention by selling.
Brands should not hope to compete for attention by selling, instead they should lean into building currency with their consumers in new ways - like entertainers and content creators who are foregoing traditional brand building practices for more dynamic approaches, whilst building 21st century companies and business models. As Scaman points out, the new model starts first with audience > brand > products but, “the difference here isn’t only that the model is reversed, it’s that it’s also no longer linear, it’s looped”. Enter the flywheel model.
Above: Zoe Scaman's presentation to the IPA about building and nurturing communities.
WTF is a flywheel?
The flywheel is essentially a blueprint of your business’ ecosystem, showing all the products, customer interactions and potential markets that merge to form your brand’s business. It’s not a static, linear model; it’s dynamic, often complex, and shows how the interrelated pieces of your business, audience, and brand work as a whole. Understanding the customer experience is essential to making the model work.
To truly standout to consumers today, companies have to do more than amass followers and create branded communities.
Many influencers today intuitively understand this model, and many of today’s most innovative companies are using it to expand their customer base and grow their brand (Amazon, Roblox, Fenty, Peloton).
Above: Lil Nas X is the first major artist to host a virtual concert in Roblox.
Brand power
To truly standout to consumers today, companies have to do more than amass followers and create branded communities. The true power of a brand begins with audiences first and is grounded in the consumer experience and creating value for people beyond the sale to make true cultural impact.
Lil Nas X’s recent album release is a great example of this. In February 2020 he teased new music to his fans to be released on a date that doesn’t exist (February 30). He then followed that up in November 2020, becoming the first major artist to host a virtual concert in Roblox, the game creation engine for teens. And then, in April 2021, he trolled the internet to launch one of the year’s biggest singles so far, Montero, Call Me By Your Name.
Social listening and audience participation is at the core of the consumer experience and, when combined with a brand’s point-of-view, drives real power.
One of the most impressive live experiences I’ve witnessed this year is from Gen-Z superstar Billie Eilish. Her concert during the pandemic was a masterclass in blending XR technology with the art of a real concert experience to deliver a stunning visual spectacle. The live experience featured pre-show trivia questions for fans, special guest appearances from notables like Lizzo and Steve Carell and a merch store powered by Shopify. She created a visual world her fans could experience while entertaining and informing them to vote. Whether you were a hardcore fan or a casual one, there was something for everyone.
If done authentically, people reward company’s efforts with their dollar, loyalty and continued fandom of the brand. Social listening and audience participation is at the core of the consumer experience and, when combined with a brand’s point-of-view, it drives real power, opening up new opportunities to create additional products and services, and can open market opportunities.
