Become a Brand People Actually Listen To

Only 5% of your consumers really care about branded content. So what does that mean for your leadership strategy?

The number of social networkers following brands is falling (from almost 1 in 2 in 2012 to 1 in 4 currently) – the issue is quantity over quality. Simply put, if everyone is doing it – how can your [insert your brand/product/service] story really stand out? After a bumper Superbowl ad season it’s back to business with 70% of brands apparently “experimenting” in the branded content space yet it somehow manages to feel mature.

Have We Hit a Wall?

After all when Red Bull has taken us to the stratosphere and AT&T has given us a summer-long stretch of narcissism that catapulted reality TV into a parallel universe, where is there left to go?

If you follow the hits and likes on each campaign, any CMO will tell you that we, consumers, literally can’t get enough of this creative, native content. A significant minority of global consumers (35%) will broadly admit they enjoy content from brands, particularly if it can deliver a timely promotion. A similar proportion of social networkers (even across older cohorts) just want to show their love and support for the brands they care about.

So what turns good to great?

It is almost inevitable as the battle for customer engagement and brand connection is essentially won (and lost), for many more than ever before, on a social media distribution strategy. Whether it is paid for, earned, co-created or simply tapping into existing networks – properties that have clear and strong (read: beyond launch) social distribution strategies see the most success. At least for now.

And what is the way of the future? Well brands have a few options.

1) They could tell me something I don’t know. Preferably about myself (rather than their beautiful brand, or frankly any other beautiful people).

I like brands who teach their audience to sell themselves. Not in that like me/share me I’m a funny/caring/offensive (delete as appropriate) kind of brand viral that shows I, the consumer, knows good distraction when I see it. Brands will actually need to turn their fans into marketers and track their numbers. Help them to produce what we at Future Foundation call ‘Narrative Data’ – a trend that is most certainly on the up. Red Bull’s Personal Best campaign is a fantastic example of this in action, where the fan will track all their vital statistics (bp, heart rate, race performance, diet inputs etc.) and the brand then puts that data to work and turns it into the story of that fan. In an instant they become your insight partner. And they also show you what’s socially interesting to share and build that into their branded content campaign. Seamless, social & simultaneously entertaining.

2) There’s the biometric route, where the privileges only flow once you've proved you feel, quite literally, the connection required. Brands like Heineken are already doing absolutely fascinating things where the product responds in real time to the beat of every individual’s own heart. That’s true brand love.

Brands are for life

To me, native (content) is what native does. The native stories of tomorrow have to involve real emotions and real people. So not choreographed co-creation. They need to actually be relevant to people’s everyday lives and what they need to achieve as opposed to only their appetite for distraction.

The stories will keep on coming but in the long run this model is just too exhausting for us poor old consumers. The social norm on share is shifting rapidly (even amongst the young and ostentatious).

Think about it – what sort of content is really worth your social capital these days? If we want the consumer to keep on caring, brands will need a thorough investment strategy. Those ‘likes’ are about to get a whole lot more expensive.

Statistical source: Future Foundation research, October 2013, Base 1,000 – 5,000 respondents per country, 23 markets.