Bob Dylan wrote the album The Times They are
a-Changin’ in 1964. There is no doubt that back in the early 1960s, the
times certainly were a-changin’. They still are. The rate and pace of change in
global trade, global communications, global culture and global technology in
2018 is nothing short of stupendous.
What strikes me most is not so much the change, although it is spectacular, as
the fusion of global trade, global communications, global culture and global
technology. The totem pole of this fusion is the power of global branding. Take
Red Bull, a brand whose global success hinges entirely upon using social media
to become a cultural and commercial phenomenon.
Red Bull doesn’t take the usual route of interrupting time-constrained and
data-bombarded people with an unwanted message and product. In Red Bull’s
Stratos campaign, it wanted to generate buzz around the brand association with
an adventurous spirit and the breaking of new technological ground. Their
audience was the extreme sports crowd so they knew that Felix Baumgartner
jumping from space and free-falling to Earth would capture the imagination of
their target demographic.
The jump was caught on video so they used YouTube,
non-branded hashtags and tweets on Twitter to let people know about it, and
encouraging the viral spread of the video by using Facebook Connect to get
email addresses in order to publicise the event. Did they know it would go
viral? Hmm
The digital heart of Red Bull’s “extreme branding” is
significant given the challenge faced by 21st-century brands in gaining our
attention. Social media and new technologies means you and I can and
should be treated differently as individuals, and this demands figuring out how
to let us control of product and branding decisions.
Take the example of bringing together 3D printing and social
media to customise products. We are moving ever closer to people being able to print
off from Facebook a smartphone incorporating the chips, antenna and other
three-dimensional components. A feature edition of the Economist has
gone so far as to relate digital manufacturing, including 3D printing, robotics
and collaboration online, to a third industrial revolution.
Old control
Take McDonald’s, which is providing brand content to Generation Z (the
iGeneration or post-Millennials, born since 2000) users of Snapchat. Sixty per
cent of Snapchat’s users are under 25 and one-quarter are of school age.
Snapchat offers a fixed and ephemeral messaging service where photos and videos
disappear after 10 seconds, encouraging Generation Z users to creatively push
the boundaries in manipulating the McDonald’s brand.
McDonald’s is effectively empowering the Snapchat community to deliberately
transform their brand. Snapchat users edit multimedia messages provided by
McDonald’s, referred to as “snaps” consisting of a photo or short video,
overlaying it in irreverent and humorous ways.
For McDonald’s, letting go and losing control of its brand
to Generation Z makes sense, given its problems in attracting younger
consumers. In many ways they are embracing what ground-breaking thinkers such
as Seth Godin have identified as a move away from mass production and mass
marketing based on transactional relationships with consumers towards
permission-based relationships. These treat people with respect and involve
them with branding and product development as the best way to get their
attention in a cluttered world.
As Godin notes, when someone chooses to pay attention, they
are actually paying you with something precious. Attention becomes an important
asset for a brand, something to be valued, not wasted.
In the climatic lines of the final verse of Dylan’s title track on that album,
he quips “the order is rapidly fadin’”. With the irresistible march of digital
into every facet of our lives, and the sophistication and empowerment of
consumers, the old control logic of branding is rapidly fading.
Like Felix Baumgartner, the space jumper with the Red Bull wings, brands have
to jump. And, like Felix, leaving behind what is familiar and known is not
always easy!
Professor Geoff Simmons
4th March 2018
