I landed up on a blog post about advertising and communications, about how they are different from one another and their overall impact on brand positioning. In essence the post revolved around the idea that advertising is brand positioning and not communicating product details.

My immediate reaction, whether right or wrong, was that this idea doesn’t hold true online. So I set myself up on finding resources on the web that might prove me right. Blame my morbid luck these days, I only found well SEO’d and utterly useless articles in my search. It basically left me with no reference to create a hypothesis at the least on why I found the post perhaps not applicable to the web. And given my lack of any strong technical background of marketing and branding, I perhaps shouldn’t be speculating on the same.

However, this did give me enough thought on how a brand and its positioning efforts need to take in to account social media. Clearly it wasn’t just about where you advertised on the web, and how rich your banner was. The consumer driven face of the web – blogs, microblogs, people generated videos, was changing a lot of existing brand dynamics. Moreover, being the ‘cheaper’ media and performance measured in units that didn’t account for intangibles only strengthened the consumer media and its telling impact on a brand.

Let’s take a leaf or rather an excerpt in this case from the post here:

Advertising is not communications; advertising is positioning. The best advertising communicates precious little about the product or service. What the best advertising does, however, is to establish and reinforce a position in the prospect’s mind.

How does this translate online?, i.e. how does a brand reinforce a position or even build it in the first place if it is a new one. How does a brand use media that is beyond its control and is multidimensional compared to a one dimensional straight jacket environment traditional media provided it with.

1. First of all being part of consumer driven media itself is a positioning step. The glee with which Twitter users welcome a brand and the “finally a brand gets Twitter usage” that is used for every brand that replies to someone is an example in this regard.
2. The second is the use of your consumer’s influence where the spread of their influence becomes the premium on your brand and therefore its position. Here selecting the right consumer segment to be your voice is the critical element. How Amex users popular social media faces on its Open Forum perhaps is an instance worth noting perhaps.
3. Your conversations perhaps defines your position the best. How you tweet, what you tweet. Whether you blog and how do you go about doing it. How active you are on Youtube and what kind of videos do you make, all defines your and positions your brand. It defines how your consumer’s perception and them sharing this on social media reinforces your position. Samsung perhaps understands and uses YouTube the best to position its brand, while Zappos as a company is perhaps built on tweets.

These are what came to my mind on this topic. Again, more than an academic pursuit this is views on what I see, hear and read. What’s your take therefore on the same, and how do you think brand position is altered in new media.. if at all.

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