How boring brands can generate healthy conversations through social media

Let’s face it. Most brands aren’t the kind that people love and can’t wait to talk about.

But as a Forrester report – Social Technology Strategies for “Boring” Consumer Brands – points out, the key with these “boring” brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won’t talk about your brand.

According to Josh Bernoff, study author, “the trick is borrowed relevance — creating an application that’s about your customers’ problems and then tapping into that application. Building around customers’ problems means you can accomplish goals including generating research insights, energizing fans, getting customers to support each other, or even crowdsourcing your marketing. But no matter the objective, the key is to recognize that you’re creating a long-term asset, not an advertising campaign.”

Examples of brands that tapped into this borrowed relevance concept, by making the experience all about their audiences and not about them, include P&G’s beinggirl.com (which I recently wrote about), Liberty Mutual’s The Responsibility Project and American Express Members’ Project.

What other boring brands have leveraged this concept and therefore did become more important and talkable?