Tag: identity

  • Brands, Identity and Consistency

    So, Google+ kindly consented to host brands and organisations on the platform (announcement) and immediately gave examples of pages already available. These include Pepsi, WWE, Burbery and so on. The typical ways most brands have approached their new Google+ page is to use the features of the network (mostly Hangouts) to reasonably good effect, in addition to using the platform for content distribution and in a few cases, even displaying their employees. This last one was an interesting use case and has potential, I thought, and better than Facebook’s fanpage Admin version.

    When I read the announcement, I immediately thought of brand identity. In the initial days of Google+ launch, the circles feature that allowed users to compartmentalise their different identities created a little flutter. It helped that, at that point, Facebook’s options for achieving the same ends were pretty well concealed. The visual identities of the brands on Google+ remain consistent with other online and offline platforms and so far, so do the tone and activities.

    I have a different identity for different sets of people I deal with. Work, Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Twitter connections etc. How I behave with them and what I share with them varies too. (though there are overlaps)  I thought about this from a brand’s perspective. My relationship with a brand is different from the one that another person has. (use cases, context etc) And if I do have to share this relationship, what I’d share and the way I would share it would also vary among my own different audience sets.  In a world where the consumers are moving towards a fluid identity, do brands have to consider one too?

    In the real world, brands sometimes tweak their identity according to geography. This was reasonable and worked fine in an era of mass media. With the internet, the whole world would easily see the changes across geography. And the end consumer could ask questions too. He/she even expects the brand to communicate like a human. If we consider different networks as different geographies, with peculiar consumption patterns (of information, for starters), does the consistency that brand currently focuses on become a constraint? Considering that different platforms have different advantages and are used for different objectives, how fluid can the brand and its communication be, on the web and off it?

    until next time, identity crises

  • Identity & Equity

    I read two quotes in a completely unrelated (to this blog) context – Ashwin Sanghi’s “Chanakya’s Chant”, a work of fiction – but was intrigued by the perspective when I saw the ‘brand-social’ domain through this ‘framework’.

    The quote to start with is the one by John Wooden “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

    In the days of (only) traditional media, (if given the money) both character and reputation were relatively easier to establish and maintain because the number of publishers with significant reach were limited. Which leads to the second quote – from Winston Churchill “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion”

    And then came the blogs, social networks and the statusphere, which allowed everyone to become a publisher.

    The question I’d like to ask is whether this published opinion and the pressures of real time (not to mention limited characters) are making brands focus more on reputation than character. How would you define reputation and character in brand terms? Would it be brand equity and brand identity respectively? If the focus were to be more on creating a strong brand identity through the product itself, customer care, sales process and even marketing communication, among others, would reputation/brand equity be much easier to handle?

    until next time, identity scarred

  • Lady Gaga, Identity and Flexible Persistence

    Though the Old Spice man campaign (earlier post) was famed for its creativity, the other important part about it was the near real-time operations involved. More recently, I read about Kraft’s plans to turn 5 chosen tweets into TV ads for its Macaroni & Cheese product. Even more interesting was Coke getting Maroon5 to compose a song in 24 hours, with “inspiration and collaboration from fans” on Twitter. They performed it on March 23rd and Coke released it for free on April 1st. On reaching 100000 downloads, they will also make a donation to an organisation working on providing clean water in Africa. (via, there is another example too, from the fashion industry)

    Real time can be cool, and then I read this article on ‘Accelerated Cool‘, an interesting take on how to keep up in a scenario where a trend is replaced almost as soon as you hear of it. Their answer – “be yourself”, because then “You are owning your identity and embracing the rawness of pure, unfiltered, self”.

    Is this an option for brands? An interesting perspective I thought of was a personal brand – no, not Bieber or Rebecca Black, thank you but (predictably) Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga, who wowed folks at Google and Twitter recently, interviewed by Ev and Marissa Mayer respectively, and answered a viewer question on “Stefani” (her real name) with “This is me. Gaga is just a nickname.” Her song “Born This Way”, viewed a record (until Black’s Friday happened) 24 million times on YouTube, is incidentally about identity. (via)

    But a Lady Gaga cannot scale beyond a person. So, with existing platforms in a constant state of flux, and new ones appearing with a unique set of rules regularly, the answer for a brand is not simple, especially when consumers have the tools to amplify the brand’s #win and #fail and the economics of attention do not usually allow second chances. There is always a choice – to take an example of logos, revert to the old logo like Gap, or stick to their guns, like Syfy. (via)

    I’d say that brands have to find their purpose, from it would evolve the identity, and its manifestation across contexts and platforms then needs to be planned, governed by what LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman would call ‘flexible persistence’. “The art is knowing when to be persistent and when to be flexible and how to blend them.” (via) The science would come from the tons of data – real time and otherwise (earlier post) that is being generated and will continue to grow in volume. The trick, as usual, is in balancing the identity and the context, and if that is done, the brand can play with real time as easily as Neo does with the Matrix. Damn, that example is a dozen years old!

    until next time, identity kits

  • New media indeed

    When I wrote this in last week’s post – “‘social’ as it relates to friends and followers’ overrules ‘social’ as a relationship between brand and consumer”, in the context of how brands use social media, I also became  more conscious that despite me relating to Facebook and Twitter as a means to connect with friends, the platforms themselves were clearly seen as a media by the world at large. Even LinkedIn now apparently has a news aggregator.

    It is true that I consume large amounts of content via (or on) Facebook and Twitter, but I have always seen it as content shared by friends, not as media like a newspapers or TV channels. It is probably because I have always associated media with information and entertainment and never social. But that’s only a personalised view, I realise. The larger picture shows a content delivery platform – media. I guess when social scaled it didn’t know what else to do but become media. Interesting how the new media platforms worked from social connection towards utility and the old media are trying to make the journey from info and entertainment to social.

    And thus when I saw a few recent Facebook developments, I viewed it through the prism of FB as media. Facebook launched Sponsored Stories a while back, using friends’ actions as an ‘advertisement’. It updated Pages giving functionalities that helped brands interact more. Now it has completely knocked off the ‘Share’ button and replaced it with an omnipotent ‘Like’ button that will transmit a story blurb complete with thumbnail instead of the earlier single line in ‘Recent Activity’. (details) Publishers won’t complain since content will be more visible now. Facebook’s comment box plugin also got revamped with better moderation, social algorithms to surface the comments that will be most interesting to you (indicated by social signals from friends) and better distribution – now, when a user utilises the “Post to Facebook” button on a site with FB comments enabled, it can be replied to on FB and will automatically be reflected on the original website as well. If the publisher has a Page on FB, it can respond to the comment and include the people who have ‘Liked’ the page into the conversation. (details) That’s a first from FB – allowing conversations to go out. Wonder what they’re after – interest graph, a perpetually signed-in user, sole web identity provider, all of the above? But in essence, a new media platform that connects publishers with users. And in this age, brands are after all content creators too, eh?

    I would think the progression is obvious – first build a user base with awesome features, then focus on publishers  (including brands) who will make it a distribution channel, and the next step would be to make the advertisers spend more.

    While Google is busy dealing with content farms in search results, I realise that we have very little means to stay away from the Facebook way of throwing content at us. Watch your newsfeed as Facebook uses you and the content publisher to make itself more indispensable as a platform. Like I tweeted, the hope is that in trying to be everything – mailbox, location, photo storage, for everyone, Facebook might lose itself. The effect all this will have on ‘trust’ in networks, I’ll leave for another post.

    Media has always been aggregating audiences by providing information..+entertainment..+social connections… and then leasing it to brands. (advertisers) With advances in technology, it’s perhaps time for brands to create their own direct lines to consumers, outside of the new media barons. Otherwise, in their immediate comfort state of using yet another platform as media, the way they’re accustomed to, it is possible that they will continue to be at the mercy of a third party and have to play by their rules, sometimes at the risk of antagonising the end user.

    until next time, mediators = media + dictators? 😉

  • Id+entity

    There was this experiment suggested in ‘Tomorrow’s God‘ – to look in the mirror and stare into your eyes. If you concentrate and hold your gaze long enough you’ll begin to ‘step outside yourself’ and ironically, have a more objective view. Its a bit similar to some meditation techniques, I think, and though I read (and tried) this about 6-7 years back, I remember having thought of things (about myself) that don’t usually surface. But it does lead to a very interesting question – who are you? 🙂

    Is it the job you do or the designation you hold? Or do you define yourself by your nationality or religion? Or the perception you have created among your friends, family, extended family etc? Or a persona you have created among those who you deal with, only virtually? Or the things you consume and the thoughts that arise in your mind? The beliefs, the notions, the perceptions, the likes and dislikes that are created in you over time? The things you say and the things you do? The person you see in the mirror, the physical manifestation of you? All of these are transient, in varying degrees. Even nationality and religion because for me, they are notional. The fun part is, this ‘you’ is the way you see it, the moment you change the point of view, it all changes. So, who do you think you are?

    until next time, identify yourselves in the comments 😉