Be Us OR Be Who They Want Us to Be?
It’s a simple question easily answered by brands in the past. Be Us. Be true to our brand everywhere. It’s comforting. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve done. It’s even better (nearly necessary) if we can find great (measurable and effective) ROI. Be us in every place we can control (everyplace we care about) and trumpet (force) our message. In fact, there really was no provocation to the question of who to be. Be Us! Be stable, confident, tastefully arrogant. Hail to the brand.
The question is real now. The unsolicited opinion and desires of the customer for what they think and what they think a brand should be is manifold in most cases, public and easy to access. Should brands be “true” to who they think they are OR should they be who the people they want the kind favor of think they should be?
It’s a current struggle for many as the assumptions of what is possible and best practice for a brand are changing all around. The messaging and communication landscapes have proliferated, time-shifted, gone geographically agnostic and become ubiquitous effectively to the degree of infinity. Tons of stuff that once worked either doesn’t or works quite differently. So now what? Does this change how a brand behaves and therefore influence it’s identity like moving to a new culture would?
I think on one hand, yes. On the other hand, no. Where do you see the lines?