Define Your Social Brand

Having worked in advertising, marketing and communications for more than 20 years, I have learned a thing or two about carefully crafting images, messages and 'brand personalities.' My first career was producing television commercials back in *cough cough*.

I can remember agonizing over Coke pours on set. Beautiful acrylic ice cubes with just the right ice-like wavers. Pour after pour of Coke as the Xenon lights fired in a seizure-inducing frenzy to get the effervescence just right. 

Years later, social media offered a chance at 'real-ness' and spontaneity that was not so staged. I, like a lot of people, saw social media as a chance for brands to build a more direct and human relationship with people. The qualities of genuine conversation and active listening felt like an antidote for the somewhat overwrought finesse of brand imaging (how many times did the prop guy run in to spray condensation on the glass before we shot again?)

The idea of a brand talking with customers via their Facebook wall or twitter handle seemed to go against any notions of contrivance or orchestration. 

What is your social brand?  

I have come full circle and now believe heavily in the purpose and benefit of brand owners carefully deciding how their brand speaks, appears and behaves in social media. Managing a social brand need not include the same fanatical attention to detail as crafting "owned" messages like the aforementioned TV spots.

When we define the 'brand voice' for how a marcom team talks to customers via social platforms, we determine:

• A role - what role will the brand play via social platforms in peoples lives (e.g. entertainer vs. coach)
• A personality - what are the characteristics of the voice of the brand
• A set of principles - how will the brand behave and respond based upon what it believes 
• The brand voice (show me) -  bring it to life with examples of how a brand would phrase something and how it would not
• Brand vocabulary - tactically, we also define a 'brand vocabulary' which are a set of words we will routinely use to describe products and services. This is less about contrivance than it is trying to strengthen search engine results and connect customers with relevant content through Google. 

We are doing all of this for three basic reasons:

1. Consistency in how the brand speaks and behaves makes a lasting impression on people just like many aspects of marketing and communications. The brand becomes "known" by followers.

2. People appreciate connecting with real personality. This appears true both for the Captain Morgan's Facebook page where the voice is consistently from the playful Captain as it is for the celebrated Starbucks Facebook page where the voice feels like a friendly barrista yet I understand to be someone from their corporate  social media team. 

We must go beyond FSI (free standing insert) promotional language and voice that too many brands use as they dole out coupons and samples via their feeds. That is the functional equivalent of becoming a discount or price brand where the only value the brand can think to offer people is 30 cents off. 

I firmly believe that every brand owes it to their customers to carefully think through the qualities of their social brand. The harder part is rolling that out internally and externally on the global web such that it makes sense in Mumbai and in Cape Town and to the brand managers or communications pros behind the local market social effort.

Comments

[Jay Ehret]

Love the framework for a social brand, John. But really, this goes beyond social media, doesn't it? Your social brand is an extension of the brand experience. The social experience of a brand should match the brand in real life. It's brand continuity.

[Ian Sohn]

Ah, now I get the quick comment on my post over on the Ogilvy blog. Two very interrelated topics.

I wonder if it's worth adding "A Face" to your bulleted list of what a brand needs to determine when developing its brand voice.

By Face I mean a person. An actual person, with a name and everything. We've seen study after study over the years about customers reacting to this tactic. Though the huge risk is that the person becomes bigger than the brand; and when they leave the company they take their fans with them.

[Steve]

Overall, good post, John.

Ian, have you ever followed Comcast or eBay motors? Both of these brands have been praised for their social media response and they both allow their social media response teams to use their own persona when responding to consumers/customers.

For Comcast, they use their "real" names and frequently intermix personal tweets with business tweets (i.e. "I am signing off for the night" or "I have big weekend plans"). While it certainly adds that personal touch and show that the tweets are not made by bots looking for keywords, as a consumer, I don't really care about the person who is responding. I don't want a relationship.

When people follow brands, it is usually because 1) they got something when they followed the brand (a sweepstakes entry or an offer), 2) they have a problem and didn't want to seek out traditional channels for resolution or 3) the content the brand offers is valuable (tips, information, helpful videos, etc).

In any of these cases, they want content on their terms. They don't want a relationship with the individual representing the brand and likely doesn't even want a relationship with the brand itself beyond what they want to get back from the brand.

We absolutely recommend to our clients that brands display their "brand personality". While the individuals responding and posting should have fun, it should be within the limits of what people expect from the brand.

No matter the medium, the brand should be the star - not the individual.

Just our opinion.