Everyone Wants a Fan Brand (But Cmon...)

  This week is the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit in Vegas. I have been promoting and talking about this as have others for a while now. One of the discussions that I am looking forward to having is about fan brands. These are those brands with a following. Apple qualifies. So does Flying Dog Brewery. And Moleskine. Very often these are smaller brands with personality, an authentic story, accessible founders and brands that treasure their customers.

Fan Brand Mojo

Fan brands have an easier time of engaging those fans in word of mouth. Probably for some simple reasons:

• They cannot afford more expensive, complex marketing
• These brands are close enough to the customer that they see and feel the value they get from customer interaction
• They can see the impact of positive word of mouth amongst fans on sales or conversion since they don't have a lot of other marketing in the field
• They really like their customer
• They believe in their story

Big, mass brands - some in the consumer products (CPG) category - want that fan brand mojo. Can they get it? Dove seemed to get some with their Campaign for Real Beauty. But they are an exception. It is really hard for a big consumer product brand to trigger the same emotional involvement. It's not just that soap or frozen dinners don't have the same consideration level that a more expensive and complex product like a car might have. After all, many fan brands are foods and beverages and simple products.

No, big, mass brands fail at the fan brand mojo for the exact reasons fan brands succeed. Big, mass brands:

• Can afford big ad campaigns which may be more expensive but is ultimately easier to deploy and seemingly more predictive
• Cannot measure the impact of word of mouth (WOM) in a way that stands up to the scrutiny of the Brand Manager/CMO/CEO foodchain
• Have too much marketing in the field to know what is actually triggering conversions
• Think of their customers as "targets"

Ultimately, I have never met a Brand Manager who didn't believe the brand story. But often this is with a textbook-like commitment rather than the naive zeal of a founder. Ultimately, a big mass brand has to take an action outside their normal 'brand key'. They have to do something that is worthy of that love. Dove embraced a contrary ideal. What are other brands doing and can CPG actually achieve fan brand status?

The WOMMA Summit will feature lots of debate about what it takes to generate, amplify and measure word of mouth. One session is even titled:

"Brand Fans: Your Best Asset or a Train Wreck?"

Join us at WOMMA’s 2007 Summit, November 13-15 in Las Vegas. Get the agenda now>

And jump into the conversation now. You can see what the WOMMA conversation is by using the del.icio.us tag - wommeme.

Comments

[Alison Byrne Fields]

I feel like your reasons for why fan brands have an "easier" time engaging their customers through word of mouth give all the credit to the brand and not to the "fan," which is where I think it belongs.

You talk about the smaller brands because you think you might actually be telling someone something they don't know; you talk about the smaller brands because it makes you feel like you're in on something, that you know something that not every jackass on the street knows.

It's more fun to love a band that isn't on the Top 40. It's cooler to wear a pair of pants that everyone on the street isn't wearing too.

If it wasn't, we'd wear uniforms and sing along to the same tune.

You'll tell people about your fan brands, but you'll only tell people who you think share your tastes and values and, because you want to think you're special, that's going to be a small -- yet fabulous -- group.

[John Bell]

Perhaps the addition to my list of Fan Brand qualities could be:
- not only do they like their customers/fans but they respect them and want to give them something of value (like a brand experience worth talking about).

The power of discovery is great. That's what fuels a lot of BzzAgent's Agents.

[VeeDub]

Supporting a challenger brand with my recommendation feels like promoting a cause. The top dogs prove they don't need me by pumping out millions of dollars worth of marketing that does not resonate with me as an individual.

Much of the challenge has been in the evolution of brand management away from connecting with individual consumers and towards trendwatching and research averages. It is understandable to try to appeal to everyone, but too often they end up staying so broad and bland that they don't really create a fan out of anyone. Chances are that if no one will hates what you're doing, no one will love it either...

See you in Vegas

[John Bell]

Great comment VeeDub, couldn't agree more. That's also why marketers who want to plug in WOM to round out their advertsing media plan are often not satisfied with its performance. The interetsing companies (for me) will be those brands - mass marekt or more niche - who emphasize connecting with individual consumers over shear numbers and figure out how it scales to match their company's growth.