It’s Not About You. Or is it?
Last week, Kathy sent me this article from Branding Strategy Insider, “The Danger of You Centered Branding“. The author makes some strong points and calls out some brands who have:
“… repositioned themselves around being whatever you want them to be. Vodafone is spending millions declaring ‘Power to you’. Yahoo! is proclaiming: ‘There is a new master of the digital universe. You’.
“Meanwhile, T-Mobile is launching its myTouch smart-phone by asking consumers to imagine a ‘one-of-a-kind phone for your one-of-a-kind life’.
“‘We are about you,’ say these brands. ‘Whatever you want, that’s what we are.’ It’s very ‘co-creative’, ‘empowering’ and all the other things 22-year-old marketers crap on about.”
Alrighty then. Tell us what you really think.
“Unfortunately, it’s not going to work, because when you don’t stand for anything, you get eaten alive by competitors who do.
“It also won’t work because, in my opinion, it bores consumers. … When Time magazine tried the empowerment approach in 2006 and declared that its ‘Person of the Year’ was You – complete with a reflective cover – it sold poorly compared with editions from earlier years with specific people.”
Could be.
It’s tough to take a shot at Time magazine for correctly acknowledging that consumer generated content is going to be what Joe Biden might call, “a big deal worth taking note of.” Sure, maybe the magazine didn’t sell well, but four years later it’s hard to say they were wrong.
“You are extremely important” is a marketing message that does very, very well. But, he is on to something.
37 Signals (the company behind Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, etc.) famously tell their customers “No” all the time. As software programmers, they consider themselves curators. They’re not going to add a feature/painting to the program/museum just because the public demands it.
This ethos works at 37 Signals and they have carved out a niche for themselves that their competitors can’t touch. (Next time you’d rather watch an interesting biz lecture instead of television, watch this and to a lesser degree this.)
But, in my opinion, concluding that consumers are bored by brands that are focused on them is an overstatement. Are some? Sure. And they’re the type that love 37 Signals.
But are the vast majority of consumers used to being able to customize, personalize and bejewelify products to their overly pandered-to ego’s content? Yup, and they’re the masters of their digital universe.
He does make a great point, that brands risk losing their identity if the only thing they really stand for is being whatever “you” want it to be.
“Saying you will be whatever the consumer wants is very different from knowing what they want and delivering it.”
Amen to that, and I would add it means knowing what they want and deciding whether to say Yes or No.
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