BI Revolution

I love tip #2: Let Consumers Create Their Own Brand Experience

This reminds me of the book The Experience Economy by Pine and Gilmore. Yes, by all means allow, suggest and encourage your customers to mashup, change, comment on, participate in and riff on your brand experience. 

Brands are living things. Any brand's story evolves, grows and changes over time much like the arc of a life. If you look at most brand lifelines they are wavy like a sine wave. Brand acceptance has ups and downs.  

When I worked for M&M/Mars we thought WE were in control of OUR brands. Not so much anymore. Today, THEY are in control of YOUR brands, or at least that is what you really want. Sure you get to curate what THEY do with YOUR brand, but you can't "control" anything anymore.

Control was always an illusion. Since brands are cultural memes shaped by the tides, winds and storms of opinion, myth, truth, romance and love they can be hard to reconcile, hard to understand what comes back at you. 

Ever play that game where you are in a circle of say 30 people and tell the person next to you something, they tell the person next to them in turn and when what you told gets back to you it is not recognizable? Brands are playing that game as I write this out there in social media land. 

I should say brands are monitoring that game, if they are smart, because it is possible to shape the sine wave with the right juice at just the right time. What is the right juice at just the right time? Sure I tell you, you tell 29 people and I don't recognize my answer when it comes back (lol).