The Hindu Business Line : All about "you"?

We live in a world dominated by brands of every kind. I don't mean just the FMCG brands and the durable brands. I include the sports persons and the politicians, the authors and the film stars, the doctors and the lawyers and, of course, even the criminals.

Every single product or person or country we know of is a brand. And every brand comes with its own ethos, values, structure and distinctive features. All these add up to the "brand value" that it delivers. And the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.

This is the mystique and mystery of each brand that a marketer and an advertising person worship at the altar of.

They know that a brand is very special. They know that if they build it in the right way and it is perceived in that right way by the consumer it would give handsome returns. No one argues about that.

Tomes have been written and will be written on how to build this brand value and how to value it. There might be a hundred interpretations of its definition and a hundred definitions itself. However, the worth and value of a brand is never in dispute.

Apart from the many books one can read about brand-building and the many more seminars that will be held on the subject, a lot of care goes into deciding whose baby the brand is.

Large companies have separate brand managers for each brand, and these people are invested with the big responsibility of thinking full-time about the brand. These are generally well-qualified and experienced people who should know what they are doing. Other companies have very senior people called "brand custodians." These are the people who are supposed to lend direction to the brand management team.

Advertising agencies have always positioned themselves as entities which build brands. Their work, whatever it might be, is ultimately supposed to aid in the effective building of brands. The planning strategy, the creative inputs, the interpretation of market research, the media approach and every other facet of the advertising agency's work is geared towards building a brand.

I say all this to reinforce the thought that a brand is almost something sacred.

Any experienced person will pull up an over-enthusiastic brand manager or an account director for trying to fiddle around with the core values of the brand. Change for the sake of change is just not on. And even the creatives are carefully planned and executed so that the overall brand experience is in sync with the values of the brand.

So what else is new?

Everything!

We might just be on the cusp of a period that could turn all I have written and all we always thought was sacred, on its head. And I'm not saying it's wrong, just yet.

Time magazine names "you" the individual as "man of the year." "You." Not any famous politician, actor, despot, saint or mover and shaker. In other words, the man of the year is not any of the established brands. Hold that thought.

Advertising Age names its most important piece of commercial content for the year 2006. No surprises again. It is not something created by any of the legendary Madison Avenue agencies. It is not something created by some hot shop in Oregon or Los Angeles or Brazil or India. It is a viral video created by Stephen Voltz, a lawyer, and Fritz Grobe, a juggler. A viral video created with just the basic implements any consumer could access and none of the specialist equipment and skills we pride professionals with. In short, a piece of work created by "you."

"You", the nameless, faceless, paying consumer was always called "king" in a rather patronising manner. The professionals would make a song and dance of studying "you" and submit reams of reports about "you" and what "you" preferred, and what you ate and drank and where you holidayed. The brand experience was something always engineered with "you" in mind. Yet the brand itself was hallowed territory. It was something that could be created, built, sustained and nurtured only by some great specialist.

Then comes the viral video "Diet Coke and Mentos" that is posted on YouTube. It draws millions of viewers and helps push Mentos sales up by a record 15 per cent. The venerable marketing dons at Coke are forced to sit up and take note.

So what does all this mean? I can already hear the advertising heavies dusting their long creative fingers irritably and declaring that this is just a flash in the pan. I can even hear them saying "sure, some of the stuff on YouTube is spectacular. But are you going to dredge the world for a creative?"

And then I hear that on February 4, at the Super Bowl where history is written for the advertising industry, Frito Lay's Doritos will air (at rates that are the highest for any show on earth) a 30-second spot it would have selected from entries it would have received from "you" the consumer.

Are we seeing something new now? Are we looking for something new? Or are we content to bury our heads ostrich-like in the sand?

The Super Bowl is a once-in-a-year opportunity to catch zillions of eyeballs. Steve Jobs launched Apple here in 1984. So who is worrying about planning and strategy that must be woven with insights and research to create a commercial that is meaningful? A brief goes out in a contest application form. Thousands of consumers create commercials and send it to the client. And one of them makes history at the Super Bowl.

Why am I missing the professionals of the advertising industry here? Simply because they aren't here at all. The marketer and "you" decide what "you" want. The middleman has been cut right out.

Oh, this is just an isolated instance, say the learned advertising professionals.

Then I listen to what leaders of the marketing industry in the US had to say at the meeting of the Association of National Advertisers. Speaker after speaker repeated one thought. The marketing pundits unanimously declared that it was time to give up control and accept that consumers now control their brands.

Sure, say the advertising experts, there's nothing new. A brand is only as good as the experience it delivers to the consumer."

And they are right, but there seems to be a difference this time. Today, "you" the consumer are not satisfied with experiencing the brand. "You" want to communicate your experience with other consumers. And now technology has empowered "you" to do so. That is why YouTube garnered the massive valuation it did.

Actually, media fragmentation hinted that "you" could be in control. Cable TV reinforced that hint. Then the Internet added a rush of reality to that thought. Innovations like TiVo cemented it further. Blogs made sure no one could ignore "you" and now with marketers ceding control, where does it leave a generation of brand builders in the advertising industry?

I do not agree that the consumer should be in control.

I worry, however, that if marketers keep repeating it and advertising people do not refute it strongly, it could end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Comments on this column can be sent to brandline@thehindu. co.in )

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