Memetic Brand

by Michael Cayley & Jonathan Salem Baskin

Lincoln and Roosevelt are heralded as great American leaders in times of crisis, and their vision and fortitude are recognized as drivers of their historic accomplishments. However, we think their greatness had far more to do with their abilities to be catalysts for network effects.

If we’re right, it reveals a very different interpretation of the calls we’re hearing for “leadership” to restore confidence in our economic system. In fact, there’s a good chance that no government policy gesture or announcement will mollify the worries of businesses and consumers, let alone stabilize the markets.

Confidence must emerge from the networks in which we all participate. We need to lead ourselves.

This raises intriguing issues and opportunities for corporate marketers looking to craft a way forward.

“In times of uncertainty consumers rely more on trusted relationships when making purchasing decisions,” says Dr. Brent Simpson, an expert at the University of South Carolina who specializes in understanding how social order is formed.

Stanford University’s Matt Jackson, a leading social network theorist, adds: “People’s friends and trusted social relationships are important in influencing their behavior, and people learn from and emulate their friends. Attitude certainly can play into that, especially in turbulent times.”

So what does this mean for businesses directly impacted by the financial crisis, like banks, brokerages, and insurance companies, as well as any consumer business facing the prospect of declining (or less profitable) sales?

First and foremost, you can’t brand your way out of it. You can’t rely spin doctors to declare your path through the crisis; your customers must see and verify it. While your hired guns are hatching ads and press releases to statically “position” the situation, your networks are trading information and defining it in real-time.

And that information, whether accurate or not, has absolutely nothing to do with how the brand has been envisioned, promised, or promoted. Every network is founded upon the tangible realities of action and reaction, just as the mechanism of their function is cause and effect.

How do you empower these networks to step up and lead?

* Know your networks. Invest in software to map connections between people and content.

* Move your enterprise closer to customers, employees, partners and investors. In the past we talked about flattening hierarchies; now it is time to integrate internal & external sources of value.

* Trust opportunities that emerge from the exchange (don’t just talk, and certainly don’t lecture).

* Make information a utility as ubiquitous as electrical light. If what you share isn’t affirmed and forwarded, don’t repeat it…instead, recast or reimagine it, and find new ways to prove it to your networks.

* Demand feedback and ideas.

* Stop looking for ‘home runs’ and play ‘singles and doubles’ by finding small wins, frequent trials. Make constant adjustments. Allocate resources towinners and abandon losers without blame.

The larger revelation of today’s various crises is that the era of symbolic branding is waning, if not over. The woes of the financial institutions have graphically illustrated to us why.

It was always untenable for lenders to ignore the details of weak/bad relationships and to expect instead that homes or property (i.e. commodities) would appreciate in value with no accord to the strength of home owners (i.e. the source of value that differentiated the commodity). Instead of accessing and fostering the relationship to make the loan a better product, the banker chooses to focus on the derivatives.

All businesses face similar risks. From toothpaste to software services, consumer brands invite significant downside threats when they focus on manufactured identify and perception, and not on the drivers of true business strength: connection, interaction, involvement, collaboration, consumption and the other aspects of human behavior.

There are no brands, or businesses, without the networks of people who make them real. It is in, and through, the behaviors of these networks that the Lincolns and Roosevelts for our business and social communities will ultimately arise.

Jonathan Salem Baskin and Michael Cayley met through the concurrent release of their manifestos in the 50th issue of ChangeThis.

Jonathan Salem Baskin recently released the book Branding Only Works on Cattle. This post also appears on Jonathan’s blog at http://dimbulb.typepad.com.

55 minutes … long but worthwhile …

This prior one, less than 5 minutes, is one of my all time favourites …

Check out his blog post on “Context Collapse” here.

UPDATE:  June over at Network Weaving is lovin’ Michael Wesch too: http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/2008/08/web-20-and-network-weaving.html

For one entire year in high school, at least once a week, I calmly walked into our Principal’s office, was offered the use of the PA system with a smile and I announced the time and location of a teenage beer drinking party that was broadcast throughout the entire high school. Eventually most of the kids from two different high schools made it out to one of the parties. I never got caught. Ferris Bueller eat your heart out.

Of course I did not actually announce, “Hey everyone! They will serve us booze at Daniel’s Restaurant! See you there at 7 pm tonight!” I spoke in code …

“There will be a Break Dance Club meeting at Danny’s at 7 pm tonight. Members are reminded to arrive promptly and dress appropriately.”

This was long before the “flash-parties” that are the terror of today’s parents, where news of a private “parents away!” party can spread by text message like wild fire and quickly escalate into a swarm of dangerous strangers wrecking and looting a home. That is an entirely different communication effect with its own memetic qualities.

“Break Dance Club” became a “shibboleth” for some of the teen community in my home town. The idea of a Break Dance Club seemed innocent enough to our teachers and parents in a context where a moon walking Michael Jackson was a mass communication pop culture hit. To us the idea of a “Break Dance Club” was an immediate attention getter. Our party music came from Canadian punk rock bands like Teenage Head and the raging guitars of April Wine.

Who are the goofs in this “Break Dance Club”? (murmurred explanation) Ahhhh … ok, I “get it”. I’m “in”. See you there. Hey – are you going to the Break Dance Club meeting? Wha? And so on …

What are your brand “shibboleths”?

Do you know the “shibboleths” of your competitors?

I wonder what Chip & Dan Heath would say about the structural factors that make effective shibboleths? I am reading their book about the memetics of ideas, “Made to Stick“. It is great! But it is focused on how to achieve mass viral success. So far I have not seen them elaborate on how a memetic brand can also have elements that are exclusive - maybe to your employees, perhaps to only your most important customers.

I have been thinking of “Social Capital Value Add” as a sort of shibboleth that will resonate with disciples of value based management, economic profit/economic value add and brand valuation. I am not going after a mass viral “Tipping Point” hit. I am trying to bring a message to a small but potent group of executives within a framework that brings them meaning both in terms of how to understand what is happening and what to do about it.

Is that the right approach?

Anywhoo - thank you to my friend Doug Ireland for explaining to me what I am thinking.