The dialogue between consumers and Brands

 

The Brands have become close, have moved closer to the consumer, and consumer has come closer to them. It is a mutual rapprochement but asymmetrical.In the current market environment, with new models for providing Internet connection at any level, any relationship is, almost by nature, asymmetrical.

 If we had to make a synthetic retrospective of the developments, as users, have had our relationship with Brands and content on the Internet, we could establish very clear 3 periods:

•  The Age of connectivity. It was the beginning, those early years when we discovered that a computer, a strange thing called a cable modem and plugged into the phone jack connects us with a new world. The era of connectivity was time to discover, time to see. Time on which Brands and consumers experienced in the new medium.

• The Age of content. And here we are to understand “content” in the broad sense.Content is any information posted on the Web. The age of content brought the web, portals, search engines, chat rooms, personal pages… brought variety, biodiversity, a huge amount of valuable information, another huge amount of information completely useless. It brought a bit of interactivity, a return path, in response, gave a small but valuable voice to the consumer before the Great messages Major Brands. The age of the contents was time to learn, time to select. A time in which Brands spoke and the consumer listened to. A time of control of the message by the Brands. An environment in which they could model and modulate its image, its presence and reputation in the digital world. Or at least that’s what many Brands believed.

• The Age of Relations. It’s time that we live now, where everything revolves around a verb: to share. To generate and to share. To  observe and to share, to analyze and to share. Thinking and sharing. Experimenting and sharing. Nothing makes sense if it is unshared. They are born and develop social networks as a major phenomenon of the moment. Blogs take command of generating content on the Internet. The internet user, the consumer, the user, ultimately, the customer is in control and decides. La era de las relaciones es tiempo de compartir, de opinar y escuchar a otros consumidores. The age of relations is time-sharing, and listening to opinions of other consumers. It’s a time to approach Brands without fear, with demand constructive and above all with contrasting approaches and commented with others. Brands no longer have control, are consumers who do. Brands have gone from implementing strategies to have as much control as possible over its image and reputation, to aspire to generate a certain influence on opinion and consumer habits.

We have moved from the connectivity and content to this relationship. We went to see and to hear, to understand and to share.  We have moved from control to influence. We are, therefore, a new status quo. Brands must work hard and should do differently as they did traditionally, so that its image and reputation have a positive hollow in the minds of consumers. Confidence is the key.

A trust that is worth its weight in gold, and is not a metaphor. The confidence that consumers express and show towards Brands translates into Dollars their value, and if we accept that trust is an intangible, also accept that the dollar is something far more tangible. Take concrete examples, this is the value assigned by Interbrand at 3 Brands world enjoying the highest confidence among consumers:

• Coca Cola: 73 Billion Dollars
• Microsoft: 70 Billion Dollars
• IBM: 53 Billion Dollars

We have not wrong, the values are expressed in billions of dollars. Les dejamos unos segundos para que se repongan…. We leave a few seconds to reflect about…. We insist that these numbers refer only to the value of brands depending on the confidence that consumers will show, there are no asset valuations of the companies or securities, stocks or securities or goodwill; are the expression of confidence in money given by consumers.

 The article by Anna Brown, from the company Locum Destination Consulting, is a very informative reading about the power relationship / trust / influence between the client and Brands. Consumers give confidence, consumers have the power. Brands who earn their confidence are notorious Brands, valuable and powerful, we could say, but the reputation as both the value and power are not eternal. The consumer, consumers, customers and not customers, the market understood as a set of people who are related to Brands and tell their experiences, they are the ones who have the power. In other words, we have the power.

We are all Trademarks, with our image and our reputation, and in the world of Web 2.0 and social networks, the more participatory you are, the more you express and more ideas and contents you share, bigger and better will be your reputation and, usually, greatest your credibility also. This common denominator environment applies equally to people for Brands, whether local or global, large or small.

Until recently, in the Age of connectivity and in the Age of content, Trademarks had enough “show”, “displayed”, “advertised”. But now we are in the Age of relationships and everything no longer serves, now Brands must learn to “talk” to establish relationships to “human scale” with people… What do difficult and interesting challenge, not you think? ?