The ART of Digital Branding

 
That Digital has changed Branding forever is by now common knowledge. So what's new now that anyone can talk, blog or tweet about your Brand with sometimes unbelievable power. What is essential to ensure that conversations about your Brand are constructive and positive? Here is a suggestion: learn about the ART in Digital Branding.

In the Brand Governance piece on this blog I highlighted the importance of Digital Brand Governance already. Digital Brand Governance should help Brand Managers to deal with discussions that include your Brand in Social Media by providing a framework. IBM has a great example of how this can be formalized, without turning it into a Rulebook. Their IBM Virtual World Guidelines provide employees with the general code of conduct for all actions and communications in Virtual Worlds such as Second Life. Although targeted at these Virtual Worlds these Guidelines could also be used to guide employees for Social Media. Completely in line with common practice in Social Media, this Framework is publicly accessible. 

The IBM guidelines refer mostly to common sense and honesty. In fact by stating it the way they do IBM empowers its employees to act as they see fit and take responsibility for their actions. 

So now one step forward to Social Media itself. Brand Governance or Employee Guidelines are only one part of the Digital Brand reality. In Social Media it is not only your employees or biggest fans that talk about you. Anyone can talk about your brand, the quality of your services, the individual responses of employees to Twitter communications and Facebook posting and so on. These conversations cannot be controlled or switched off. You can only influence them with Guidelines such as those proposed by IBM.

You could consider the ongoing conversations and discussions about your Brand as a test for your own Brand Values. In fact every day your Brand is tested regarding 3 value dimensions:

• Authenticity
• Relevance
• Transparency

If all 3 are considered to be a positive part of the Brand's perceived image, the conversations originating about this Brand in Social Media will be more meaningful and positive. If a Brand is authentic, relevant and transparent it will also be easier for employees to participate in the dialogue in which case the aforementioned Branding Governance Framework is of great value.

Authenticity

On Wikipedia Authenticity is defined as follows: 

In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself. Authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite these pressures.

Interesting is the aspect of pressure and influences. This Brand Pressure is e.g. clearly a topic when it comes to making a profit in comparison to sustainability and social responsibility. The Pressure on Brands has clearly increased with the arrival of Social Media. It is e.g. there where MacDonald's recent Twitter campaign around the use of Biological Products went horribly wrong. A group of Twitter users considered MacDonald's claim as non-authentic and used the hashtags to Tweet about there own issues with the Brand.

Relevance

Referring to Wikipedia again, Relevance could be defined as follows:

"Something (A) is relevant to a task (T) if it increases the likelihood of accomplishing the goal (G), which is implied by T." (Hjørland & Sejer Christensen,2002).

Interesting here is accomplishing goals. Many Brands suggest that using their products or services has a benefit. These benefits are almost invariably related to improving one's life or to achieving goals. 

When a Brand uses its relevance, e.g. like Kodak did in photography, it will attract less or ignite negative conversations. Brand Relevance is closely related to Marketing and Product/Service Design with a defining influence in the Digital space. 

Transparency

When a Brand is clear about how it behaves, reacts and functions to the outside world, it gains in Transparency. Transparent Brands explain how they behave and stick to the rules and regulations they've communicated. Some of these rules can also be implicit and are learned when someone interacts with the Brand. A simple example is e.g. the time it takes to respond to a comment or answer a question. A quick response time will contribute to a feeling of Transparency.

Applying ART

So Authenticity, Relevance and Transparency are important Brand Dimensions. In Social Media these three are consistently tested. The question is of course how a Brand can Monitor and Measure this.

Measuring ART for a Brand is a soft non-quantifiable practice in the first place. If we look once more to the IBM guidelines there's nothing which quantitatively defines correct behavior. By referring to ART as a natural part of any inter human social activity one could argue that when a Brand starts to feel like it is isolated or bullied, it is also loosing on one or more of the 3 dimensions. It is always important to measure traffic and count the number of times people use your Brand name in conversations. 

It is then important to have someone in your team reading and understanding posts. You should check regularly with the Social Media managers about tonality of ongoing conversations. In fact you can ask them directly: are we still seen as Authentic, Relevant and Transparent? If they have even the slightest doubt about any one of the 3, consider ringing the alarm bell. It is then probably time for a RestART.

Update: what about Apple?
A colleague asked me an interesting question after reading this article. Apple is Authentic and Relevant but not Transparent, at least not when it comes to when it comes to their Product announcements and planning. Also their decision making process in the App Store is an unpredictable Black Box. Yet as a Global Brand they are in the op 3, so how does that work against the ART principle?

The answer I guess is two-fold. On the one hand, Apple is very Transparent when it comes to existing products, the way the work and the way Apple's services works. From a usability aspect Apple is without competition. In fact the Usability is in complete harmony with Apple's great design philosophy.

That Apple is not so Transparent about their next products contributes in fact to the power of the Brand. It enhances the reputation of those sources who know and who proof to be right when they predict something about Apple's product roadmap. It is also proof of Apple's power. They can partially go against the Transparency principle because they are so strong in the Usability area which makes them extremely relevant.

That the AppStore Certification process is opaque might be inconvenient for developers and others who occasionally depend on the outcome.

The incredible Apple Usability should be an inspiration for a great many other Brands out there, specifically if they manage to match the Brand's Story and Identity with usable products.