E-Commerce Link : Brand as Behavior

Restructuring multichannel marketing to drive results

From the utility of instant communications to the search box’s boundless sense of discovery, “always-on” consumers are busy entertaining and informing themselves. Spending is taking a back seat to experiencing. Now what? Successful multichannel brands are redefining the practice of branding themselves, and leading marketers are becoming publishers—driving a continuous stream of experiences and, ultimately, purchase behavior. Here’s how they’re doing it and how you can, too.

A New Premise
The definition of branding is seldom agreed upon, yet “brand equity” is considered a measure of success. As a result, brand-focused marketing pros often feel misunderstood. Smart, capable operational executives can’t accept that the ultimate value of brands cannot be measured like every other function of the business.

The opportunity now is to redefine brands in terms that marketers and operational executives alike can embrace. That emergent definition is to base brands on the objectively measurable, real-time aggregation of everything marketers and their customers do together. That’s different from the old-school definition of focusing on awareness and influencing how customers feel.

Experts like author Jonathan Salem Baskin say branding is evolving away from artsy strategies that create “mental states” toward a behavior-based science. It’s all about creating measurable, valuable experiences.

Think of campaigns that prompt customer behavior—like when T-Mobile launched its myFaves campaign in 2007. The company prompted customers to call their top five numbers for free. It also prompted customers to think about who those five people were in their lives. It made people do something. Contrast this example with Verizon’s “It’s the network” campaign (which doesn’t prompt customers).

Baskin is steeped in brand advertising (Nissan, Limited Brands) yet questions the central tenants of traditional practices. He recently spoke on the subject at the Direct Marketing Association’s Leaders’ Forum and authored the book “Branding Only Works on Cattle.”

“After 26 years fighting that good fight, it occurred to me that maybe all those operational execs weren’t stupid; maybe it was we marketers who had the wrong idea about brands,” Baskin admits.

Success isn’t about “outbranding” the competition by making customers feel differently. Winning is about measurable, behavioral change. Baskin suggests the substance of customers’ behavior is far more important to a brand than anything marketers create.

Brand Without Borders
This radical, new rethinking of branding positions it as a highly measurable strategy. “Being successful today demands marketers to empower everyone in the company to go beyond mimicking a set of cosmetic guidelines,” says Baskin. “Successful brands are collaborating internally—cross-departmentally—with customers to create tangible behaviors that ultimately prompt purchase.”

Increasingly, experiences factoring into customers’ purchase decisions often are found outside of the purview of marketing. They’re originating in other departments—procurement, vendor relationships, prices, service and support, environmental practices, etc.

“While promises are made by marketing people, they are fulfilled by the other employees within an organization,” says Don Schultz, professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School and president of Agora Inc.

Given customers’ control over information relating to marketers, branding is forced to become a group effort. It wasn’t that long ago that employee communication wasn’t considered relevant to marketplace success, says Schultz.

“But today’s marketplace is much more of a push-pull … Technology enables customers to do Web searches; people are sharing their experiences through new forms of media like Facebook and YouTube,” says Schultz.

Utility Is Real Time
The velocity of everything is increasing exponentially. Likewise, the velocity of customer-seller interaction is in real time. The utility your products/services provide now occurs in real time—every moment of every day.

“Customers don’t follow orders nor do they run on your schedule. There’s no limit to the ways, media, contexts and reasons why … and how you need to interact with them to help make decisions that lead to purchase or abandonment,” says Baskin. “Information sharing doesn’t end with the work day and isn’t limited to the channels chosen by your marketing department.”

A New Breed of CMO
Where do you start in this new world where brand is tangible, measurable and inherently actionable? Says Baskin, “Getting proactive with this involvement requires a new starting point: It’s not about applying branding to various departments; rather allowing the collection—of actions themselves—to be understood as drivers of brand.”

That’s a fundamental shift in thinking that translates to “doing.” Measurement of ROI is up for discussion, too. Choosing what to measure becomes less challenging when objective behaviors are considered as “transactions.” Think in terms of assigning value to a white paper being downloaded or a catalog request.

Marketers as Publishers
Today, marketers are rallying behind classic publishing strategies that engage and drive sales/leads later. Think in terms of direct TV infomercials or Web campaigns like Blendtec’s “Will It Blend” YouTube campaign. This is content marketing.

Wal-Mart’s Soundcheck microsite leverages exclusive Beyoncé Knowles video content into an opportunity to sell advertising to Unilever—and boost its own music sales.

“I’m sure you’re thinking that Wal-Mart can do this (sell advertising) because they are, well, Wal-Mart. That’s true, but every company of every size needs to be thinking about this concept,” says Joe Pulizzi of Junta42, a content marketing company. “Do you have resellers or channel partners in your industry? If so, partner with them. The same goes for partnering with associations,” adds Pulizzi.

Using informational and/or entertaining content to continually engage and occasionally prompt customers is proving effective—and that includes B-to-B marketers. As an example, Autodesk is successfully using RSS feeds to engage customers and occasionally pepper them with promotions that generate high-ticket software leads.

Critics suggest this is nothing more than traditional branded advertising, but closer examination reveals a far more scientific—measured and accountable—approach to ROI measurement.

Jeff Molander is CEO of Molander & Associates. He helps business leaders identify new opportunities to make more money using integrated, performance-focused strategies and specializes in content (social) marketing strategies that connect customer behavior directly to sales. He can be reached at jeff@molanderassoc.com and blogs at www.jeffmolander.com.

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