Brand Participation – How Consumers Can Make or Break CMOs
Today Zeno held a lively roundtable discussion event on the topic of brand participation and whether consumers can make or break CMOs, with an excellent attendee list from sectors including FMCG, sport, technology and music.
Our European MD Steve Earl set the scene of the discussion with an insight into how the internet has disrupted brands and the way they communicate and engage with their audiences. However the internet and rise of social media has not just driven need for engagement but how brands sustain that engagement and get value from it.
Steve asked how brands go beyond this, how do you get consumers to participate in your brand and to what extent do you put consumers in control of the brand – how do you nurture their passion without allowing them to become brand vandals.
Brands are chasing shared value amongst their audiences. They are looking for permission or membership, rather than just broadcasting the message. So is there a point at which engagement stops and participation begins? One way of looking at this is that engagement is psychological whereas participation is physical, so therefore isn’t participation just another layer of engagement rather than it’s own entity?
On this point, inviting consumers to participate in your brand comes with risk. If you are giving someone a degree of command over a brand, you have to accept the fact that you have to be comfortable letting consumers take control. But does the brand have a moral or ethical right to guide that?
One key point that was made was the danger of ‘blaming’ technology for the rise of brand participation. Actually it is the consumer psyche that has changed. Consumers feel more empowered today, they want to have a say and they want to be involved. So firstly brands need to understand what the consumer wants and the brand should react to this, not the other way around.
The debate then moved onto customisation and personalisation with many points made about the potential for disappointing more consumers than you please. Once example was Ray-Ban and their personalised Wayfarers – once you actually tried to do this, it was clear there were so few options available, the premise didn’t live up to the promise. Whereas Burberry got it right with its trench coat personalisation, driven mainly by the fact that it worked with their manufacturing and distribution process allowing consumers to truly personalise their trenches, resulting in huge levels of customer satisfaction.
Interestingly some brands are working with their retailers and encouraging them to participate with the brand, which can lead to real third party endorsement. The retailers are less likely to be brand vandals, but they will be advocates as it plays to their commercial needs too.
It was widely agreed amongst the group, that authenticity and honesty are critical to every brand and using a brand’s heritage to create trust to be seen as a real expert in your field. Brands also need to know their place and realise they can’t tell consumers how to behave; they need to let them find their own way too.
The discussion then wrapped up with the brands which are encouraging participation in a much more genuine and human way – which often comes from the consumer and it is about the way the brand reacts and participates with them, not vice versa.
These are not necessarily situations you can plan for, but it is a true marketing skill to be able to jump on the back of these opportunities and make them work for the brand. Marketing teams spend months trying to craft the most engaging and participative brand campaigns, yet it seems simplicity and remaining true to the brand is often the most genuine. This, it was agreed, is the best form of brand participation, and one every CMO wants to be known for.