The market as a conversation: a constantly repeated mantra for 21st century brand communication. You might argue that “the brand is not possible to own nowadays, you can’t totally dictate your brand image anymore” suggests an idealised past that never existed, (change is, as you know, good for consultants) but anyway. But the accompanying idea that brands should be more human, less corporate and engage in personal conversations, though interesting in itself, seems to result in many cases in empty non-conversation, in boredom. “How do you like your coffee?” tweets the software company, and feels it’s now engaging with the human world in human way, by imitating how “real people” speak. Nothing happens.
Well of course, this kind of conversation is never engaging to anyone in itself. It’s a classic example of communication with a channel maintaining function – the information transmitted is not all that important or exciting or fun, but engaging in the conversation helps for example to establish and maintain relations of various kinds with other people. The same conversation that one finds pointless with a neighbour you normally only greet with a “hello”, feels totally different with your best friend. A very human activity. And face it, yes there are brands you love, but you’re acutely aware that even with the most engaging brand personality, a brand can’t speak and has to go through a human being, who’s the actual recipient of your channel maintaining chats, and for them to be everybody’s best friend on that massive scale just because they work somewhere nice, well. Unfortunately, a brand is not cuddly TV alien ALF, where a voice and a hand that fitted his little furry costume could create the perfect illusion of a family member.
Paul Fusco wants to know how you take your coffee.
Without prior investment in the relationship with another human being, this “conversation” is just the lacklustre reality of a February morning talk with a stranger, or neighbour, or semi-acquaintance, on the tube. Yes, the snow is terrible, yes, you’d think public transport in a Scandinavian capital would cope with it better, no, I normally don’t have to use the subway to get to work, but today I have an early-morning meeting. Cue hopefully not too rude display of we’re-finished-here behaviour, e.g. concentrated texting or Metro reading.
So why is it so many brands don’t instead try the type of interpersonal discussion that doesn’t depend totally on relationships, being the great conversationalist? The great conversationalist is interesting, knowledgeable, entertaining, shows her/his personality – which leads to a favourable view of the person, classic brand equity in fact. This inevitably leads to dinner invitations. Difficult, yes, but nothing in commercial communication is easy. That’s why people like me are (sometimes, very well) paid to spend all day and, frequently, all night creating it.
Brilliant at one-way communication, brilliant at two-way communication. And quite dashing.
And, anyway, the really interesting brand-as-conversation idea surely should evolve around where you and your customers place and replace your brand within the large tapestry of human life. What you might call cultural conversation. It might well be created with the help of one-on-one talks, and it can certainly be helped by following online conversations about your brand. But it’s above all a question of understanding and reacting to what your customers or fans or users need, think and do on a larger scale, and in a deeper way, no matter the medium. What do they dream about, what are their biggest griefs, their biggest prides? How do they use your brand in their life, and can you help them, honour them, challenge them even? Balancing that is being another kind of great conversationalist.
Actually, though useful for many things, there’s nothing intrinsically more engaging with two-way communication. Almost everyone in the whole world has been moved, touched and comforted on a very personal level by the totally closed one-way mass communication of recorded pop music. There’s no reason why your two-way conversations shouldn’t live up to the standards of the exciting, interesting brand personality your other communication channels imply you have going for you.
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