Don't shoot yourself in the foot just before inserting it into the mouth.
The fact that brands are now talking with us is not so much an intentional branding evolution, as it is the direction that contemporary technology has taken us all. Living in the digital age means instant and nearly unlimited communication. Three billion of us are online now, and each of us has more or less equal access to this ongoing global conversation.
That might spell cacophony, and it often does, but compelling voices sometimes rise above the din. Beautiful people (and beautiful brands) seem to have a natural advantage here–an out sized body of social-media followers that hangs on their every post. But the rest of us—people and brands perhaps a bit less gorgeous—can duly earn notice and global attention, fleeting though it might be.
And there are no occult tricks to this; just be timely, topical, interesting, or witty. If possible, be all the above.
The truly remarkable thing is that these rules-of-thumb are universal – they apply as equally to you and your Twitter-tantrums as they do to the massive cross-platform social-media feeds of the the world’s biggest, brassiest brands.
So how does that play out? There’s literally no limit to the possibilities...but one fascinating trend we’re tracking is the wacky online cross-talk between brands, and some irreverent interactions between brands and consumers.
The brief exchange of Tweeted one-liners between Old Spice and Taco Bell screen-capped above is one of our favorites–they each say their bit, we all laugh, and that's that. The interplay seems a little edgy, a little snarky–but look closer. Doesn't that banter seem more like a bit of verbal horseplay between two old friends?
It surely helps, of course, that the participants here aren’t competitors. We haven’t seen much online interaction between direct rivals, because the results would be predictably ugly. Brand managers rightfully keep a pretty tight rein on social-media messaging, and they know that any posts or exchanges that can be construed as petty or whiny will turn people off. Some small, voyeuristic minority of us might enjoy watching a real-time flame-war between big-brand adversaries, but the rest would disgustedly will a pox on both their houses.
Because fun is fun, and edginess can be entertaining, but at the end of the day it is adult behavior we respect and admire. Big brands, celebs, and even we little folk can log on and quip and banter all day long, and there’s no small chance we can gain some notice in doing so. But doing so in the manner of a petulant child is bound to bring notice we never wanted, and will never be able to erase.
The C4:
1. The ways in which marketing communication has changed in our lifetimes is voluminous (feel free to scroll through a few dozen C4 pages for an ongoing enumeration). But perhaps the most exciting aspect is the phenomenon of reciprocity. Twentieth-century advertising was unidirectional: from the marketer’s megaphone directly into your brain. In the 21st century we have conversations.
2. We’re well into our second decade of this new reality now, and behold the unintended consequences: brands have voices that are instantaneous and under constant observation. Their social-media presences can and do pump out unedited content 24/7. The results can be marvelous, or they can be analogous to shooting one’s foot right before inserting it into one’s mouth.
3. We’ve gone on record advocating for civility and constructive behavior in online discourse. Consider this our corollary: Boorish banter is brand suicide.
4. But highbrow, clever banter? Bring it on. Any conversation is a bit brighter with a few well-wrought quips thrown in. Think you’ve got some of that to add to the planetary chat? Then by all means do so, and reap your due rewards.
