Mr Ryan of RMM has a good post and on some old/new advice for brands: be useful.
Nothing’s more important to my mind for brands working out how to be successful in networks than to ask themselves how they can be useful. Then start planning campaigns and content type things.
If I hear “let’s build an interactive brand experience that our consumers wil enjoy” in lieu of strategy one more time I may do someone a mischief.
I think “Be valuable” is more to the point: I value a lot of things which aren’t particularly useful. Don’t we all?
I could say that if you give me something I value you are being useful to me.
If you offer something a social group or online network will find valuable you are joining in, making yourself useful…
But I also know what you mean.
And I also think that thing is to turn on their head the bad habits in the way marketers think about the people they are trying to talk to.
Too many are used to thinking of the consumers and useful and valuable and to be tricked or seduced into doing useful things for their brands, “training” their “consumer behaviours” as some would put it.
In order to succeed in the networks age it pays to be thinking about how you can alter your brand’s behaviour to be useful or provide valuable things for the consumer.
Of course, in response to Jackie’s point, I also have useful things which I don’t really value.
“Useful” should be a basic aspiration, “valuable” if you possibly can. “Entertaining” can substitute for “useful” but you still need “valuable”.
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