May
25

Healthy conversations – how customers and brands work together to achieve more

“Marketing professionals used to be the high-priest gatekeepers, but now we can all have a direct relationship with the Almighty Brand.”

This quote is from Grant McCracken, author, anthropologist and consultant, who describes this consumer involvement as a kind of branding Reformation, in the Free Advertising article appearing in the NY Times Magazine.  ”The era of the brand that’s blandly constructed and hopes not to offend anyone – to be pleasant – that notion is really dead”, he goes on to say. 

And why do consumers want to be a part of this co-creation. “Because they can,” McCracken says, “as both the technological tools and the knowledge of advertising grammer are now widely dispersed.” 

Citing a number of brands that have sought out the participation of consumers, McCracken also exposes the downside of this strategy. When G.M. solicited input in online ad-making for its Chevy Tahoe, many people responded with anti-S.U.V. messages. 

Still, I believe, a healthy conversation. 

 

 

Related Posts:

3 thoughts on “Healthy conversations – how customers and brands work together to achieve more

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>