brand management

Free Your Brand

My favourite quote of the day:

“…Old Spice parent company Proctor & Gamble exhibited incredible bravery in allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision.”

I love this quote because I think that is the future. Companies must start easing up on the tight controls they’ve historically had over their brand. If you need to control every word that is spoken and written about your brand – forcing writers to submit every word they write for scrutiny, you’re doomed. Not to say you should let writers run wild with your brand, but creativity is so quickly quashed when the pen can only write one of 12 “approved” words to describe a product.

Honest exchange, meaningful engagement and worthy interaction in social media comes when speed (aka: real time) is a part of the equation.

Picture this: someone poses a tough question on Twitter to a company (well, hopefully a *person* with a name and a head shot, representing that company). Two days pass and no one has responded. It’s not because the tweet wasn’t noticed. It’s because the person managing Twitter for that company needs to get approval on the response before they can post it. In the meantime, the person who posted the question has grown increasingly frustrated and is now bad-mouthing the company due to the lack of timely response. It even starts to appear that the company is trying to ignore or dodge the tough question.

It may be the most counter-intuitive to let up on brand control.. but the wild success of the Old Spice online campaign proves that if you’re brave enough, and trust enough, it can pay off in ways you never imagined.

If you disagree – let me hear it.

FYI: the quote came from here.

Erin.

Tags: brand management, branding, engagement, interaction, Social Media