However, I’ll admit that putting down ‘brand with a worldview’ into a generic framework is a rather challenging. But I have seen quite a few examples – personal experiences as well as larger campaigns – that highlight various aspects of this approach. The new POTUS has in fact, provided quite some fodder for this. Hardly surprising, since his usage of extreme stances contributed majorly to his victory. 

Uber: The recent #DeleteUber campaign, triggered by the company’s response to a taxi strike at JFK airport that was protesting Trump’s immigration ban, showed a glimpse of how Uber is perceived by its customers. Lyft was even able to overtake Uber for the first time in daily app store downloads, though Uber tried some fire fighting by throwing money at the problem. This might have been a blip in the larger scheme of things, however, it mirrors my sentiment. If there was an app that could functionally match Uber, I would switch in a blinkbecause, thanks to conversations with drivers who aren’t treated very well, their callous attitude towards queries, and despite their very agile, local, cause based marketing campaigns, I am quite convinced that the brand’s worldview is “don’t care”.

Starbucks: When Starbucks took a stance and committed to hiring 10000 refugees worldwide, Trump followers began the #BoycottStarbucks campaign. Absolutely polarising stuff, as #DrinkStarbucks also gained momentum, and I saw blog posts such as this coming out in support of the brand. While it might have some repercussions in the short term, I feel the worldview will do more good than harm for the brand in the long run.

If you managed to see the Super Bowl 2017 ads, many of them had political stances either overtly or covertly – Budweiser, AirBnB, Google to name a few. (see) The interesting one though was 84 Lumber, a construction supplies company. Its original ad took a direct swipe at Trump’s Mexican wall but the NFL refused to run it and the company toned it down. But it didn’t end there. Their CEO walked back and not only claimed that it had nothing to do with politics but declared support for Trump’s policy! In terms of worldview, starting a fight you can’t finish is probably worse than not having a stance.

I find these particularly interesting because the stance is related to politics. Society at large has a keener interest because it the brand is actually making a judgment on their voting choices and these actions could potentially have a political impact. There is more column space and interest in this than say, and environmental or worker condition stance. That also means polarisation which would have both immediate and far reaching impact on brand health, revenue etc. A Havas research shows that users want brands to “help on big social issues” (slide 44). The same study shows national identity as a very important consumer sentiment. (slide 15) However, there are nuances and examples in the US that show that many people do not want political lessons from their brands. (Racked has an excellent read on this)

If I try to be objective about this, I think what all this does reiterate is that in our consumption, we are largely irrational creatures, and absolutely prone to confirmation biases. We’d love our brands to echo our world view. Once upon a time, brand research used to be restricted to activity and perceptions/perspectives in the domain. But the worlds are colliding. Smart money would be on brands that can use data to glean consumer sentiment beyond domain, and leverage that understanding when forming a world view.

The interesting thing was that I would have watched the Super Bowl ads without any prompting. Which makes me wonder whether the logical and scientific way proposed above to ‘game’ the attention economy is the best approach. I think my discomfort stems from the fact that this leans more towards the ‘media’ in social media and looks at the social platforms from an information dissemination perspective.

My consumption of the ads was more out of interest. The term ‘Intention Economy‘ springs to mind immediately in this context.

The intention economy is an approach to viewing markets and economies focusing on buyers as a scarce commodity. The consumers’ intent to buy drives the production of goods to meet their specific needs.

The thought is whether/how this can be applied to consumption of content. If it can, then the approach would be to make the content as easy to find and accessible as possible, to ‘appear’ at the time of demand, and create different contexts to drive that consumption.

There is another perspective too. The easiest way to  elucidate it would be with the example of Google Reader/ Twitter Lists, where I pay attention to certain content creators, because I trust and value the content they produce. As Edelman’s Trust Barometer would tell you, the ‘trust in experts’ has actually increased this year. Their appeal does not really depend on the attention metrics.

Can’t think of any other ‘angles’, but if you do, please drop me a line, or comment.

So perhaps like the owned-paid-earned forms of content, brands will have to work on all 3 fronts. Harness expert power (employees and others), seed efficiently, create and use contexts effectively, and be easily accessible (like the brand-stream I proposed last week)

until next time, at ease now

PS: New research on why consumers ‘break up’ with brands on email, FB, Twitter, could be taken as a pointer to look at   alternatives to information dissemination.