Experts in this new, uncharted territory offer a few guidelines. Some of this, not surprisingly, harkens back to Branding 101, though that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. After all, what works on print or TV is likely to apply at some level to Facebook and Twitter, too.
For anyone pondering the idea of maintaining brand consistency across social media, here are a few pointers from people in the trenches, including Michael Sunden, director of the New York office of branding firm Landor Associates, Sarah Hofstetter, senior vice president, emerging media and brand strategy at digital agency 360i, and Brian Clark, CEO of GMD Studios.
1. Establish Your Brand Voice
This is fairly basic stuff, but before you go out on Twitter and Facebook to promote your brand, you have to decide what exactly your brand stands for. How? “You need to find a mission, principles and a standard for what drives your brand,” Sunden says. “All those personality descriptions.” For instance, the personality traits for Apple might be "innovative, user-friendly and well-designed," but you wouldn’t include “open” in that list, or “edgy.” Diesel, meanwhile, would be "edgy," but not necessarily “dependable” or “valuable for the money,” so communications across all media should reflect that.
2. Invite Commentary Instead of Chest-Thumping
Says Hofstetter: "The Internet provides the landscape for user endorsement at scale, where everyone can, and does, have a voice -- and they use it. If people know what your brand ‘means’ to them, and they witness positive actions and have positive experiences with the brand, then they can talk about you in a way you never could.” And yes, that means that they might trash your brand. Here, you might take a cue from ad agency JWT, which recently launched a practice it calls “Brand Journalism,” which is actually a social media-based form of public relations. For example, JWT ran a
3. Be Relevant
Clark likens branding in social media to running a political campaign, in that brands have to stay on message when they can, but then divert from that message when the news of the day dictates the narrative. For instance, the Red Cross recently used its Twitter feed to cheekily reference Charlie Sheen’s rantings while still staying on message:
Of course, brands have to be very careful in taking this approach, as evidenced by Kenneth Cole’s ham-handed comments over the Egyptian crisis. "You need to realize a strategy that combines the proactive with the reactive," Clark says of brands. "Social media really punishes [brands] if they don't."
4. Don't Aim for Consistency, Aim for Cohesion
“A foolish consistency,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Or, as Hofstetter says, “Consistency results in matching luggage, which doesn’t allow you to adapt to the medium.” It may sound like semantics, but Hofstetter says the difference between consistency (bad) and cohesion (good) is that the latter “means telling a story that hangs together in an appropriate way depending on where you are and who you’re talking to.” In other words, cohesion is a bit looser than consistency and involves rallying your messaging around a brand principle (see #1). For example, 360i client Oscar Mayer’s message is “good mood and good food,” so the brand’s message on Facebook, Twitter and even its Wienermobile is all about that. The Kraft Foods brand’s Facebook Page, for instance, currently cites the “Top Do-Gooders” who report their five-plus good deeds per day to the site in hopes of getting $100,000 (to help charities in their communities, naturally) and a ride in the Weinermobile.
5. Know Your Audience
This is also fairly basic, but Sunden says that its important to study your audience. Social media provides a wealth of information about what the target demographic is interested in, so use that information to develop a content strategy. In doing so, you may find that that you have to tweak the strategy a bit because of new information. For example, just as Starbucks appeared to be losing its mojo (around the time CEO Howard Schultz returned), the company set up a site where customers could submit ideas to make the brand better. The site is still up and running. What drove Starbucks to make such a move? Sure, it was good PR, but the company was also at what Clark calls a "point of pain." It's in those tough times that brands tend to get innovative, Clark says. The ultimate example of this is Apple, which, before its latest decade-plus winning streak, was something of an industry basket case. All of which is a nice way of saying that Aflac, Chrysler and Kenneth Cole are poised for a bit of innovation right now.
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