Everyone Is Small On The Internet
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Bud Caddell came up with this great way to describe what we do at Undercurrent. Please feel free to pass these around, or to create your own.
(Click on the image for a full size version)
The idea that brands have some kind of monolithic control over how they are perceived in our digital world is obsolete. What your brand means is defined by status updates, hyperlinks, and blog posts; not by the 3 Core Traits written on page 25 of the Brand Bible that your million dollar branding agency wrote for you. How your brand is perceived is now defined by the ways people interact with your brand; not by your shiny new logo. Your brand no longer has the ability to define the context in which it is experienced; now brands have to play in the arenas created by their audience.
The sooner that your brand embraces this new reality, the sooner you can start having fun again and start earning a little love.
(Click on the image for a full size version)
The idea that brands have some kind of monolithic control over how they are perceived in our digital world is obsolete. What your brand means is defined by status updates, hyperlinks, and blog posts; not by the 3 Core Traits written on page 25 of the Brand Bible that your million dollar branding agency wrote for you. How your brand is perceived is now defined by the ways people interact with your brand; not by your shiny new logo. Your brand no longer has the ability to define the context in which it is experienced; now brands have to play in the arenas created by their audience.
The sooner that your brand embraces this new reality, the sooner you can start having fun again and start earning a little love.
3 Comments:
Like these. But question? Small compared to what? To the internet? to the content out there? To the number of people who control the conversation? To the volume of messages? Or to all of them? Thanks for posting.
edwardboches
Hi Mike
Thanks for giving me the pleasure of being on the receiving end of this link:
” Your brand no longer has the ability to define the context in which it is experienced; now brands have to play in the arenas created by their audience.”
I love the articulation! :o)
And replying to the comment by Edward, I would say that small is in relation to thinking that your size gives you the right to decide what you represent in the collective minds of the consumers.
There has never been “brands” as we have interpreted the term for the last decades, finally the transparency of our digital conversations are making it really hard not to admit to that.
Best Regards
Helge Tennø
I like it too. And the size thing, to me, means that they're young, new and don't know how to act. That's being small again. What Helge says is probably true, in another sphere they can buy themselves domination (on air waves, buses and finally minds). BUT we shouldn't forget that the online world, if we do make the distinction, lives with the offline (still). So the traditional thinking about size giving you a right, because there's something in that, will still exist. And unfortunately, when that cost so many more million dollars than what you need for online work, it's also probably going to be driving strategies and ideas. Which is of course one of the big hurdles.
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