MBS Marketing Association

The next generation of brand managers must be willing to relinquish some of the control their forebears have enjoyed. That was one of the central themes at the MBS Marketing Association's May event on the future of brands and brand managers.

Speaking at the event was Futurebrand's Director of Strategy Erminio Putignano who said that growing cynicism about brands and the marketing techniques employed in building them is leading to a need for deeper engagement with consumers.

He pointed to Coke's recent Hong Kong-based campaign by McCann, where independent film makers were invited to create short films designed to cheer up high school students awaiting final exam results. The campaign entitled "Scores don't matter, look on the positive side of life" was a shift away from Coke's traditional glossy productions and an acknowledgement of the audience as brand custodians.

The decision to go ahead with the experiment probably took deep consideration from a company that helped to write the rulebook on branding, but ultimately it started a conversation with consumers that was more authentic and in tune with the local Hong Kong culture than previous approaches. Putignano suggested that people are taking control of brands, and as marketers we need to find new ways to foster a culture that encourages this kind of engagement.

At the extreme end of the scale, collaborative or 'open source' brands like FREEBEER give away all control to anyone who wants it. Originally conceived by Copenhagen-based artist collective Superflex and students at the Copenhagen IT University, the recipe and branding elements of FREE BEER are published under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to use the recipe to brew their own or create a derivative of the recipe. People can even earn money from the product, as long as they publish the recipe under the same license and credit the work.

But the award for greatest brand of our time, Putignano argues, must go to Barack Obama. His wholehearted embrace of new media gave supporters a sense of ownership over his presidential campaign that swept him into power in a way never seen before.

Of course, as an analysis by the ORION social media tool suggests, not even the smallest detail of the Obama campaign was left to chance. But his resolute commitment to communicating with supporters meant that people felt involved. Finding out via Twitter -- before the mainstream media -- that Obama's running mate was to be Joe Biden made people feel like part of the team, like an insider. It's the kind of enthusiasm and commitment that brand managers dream of, and it helped to raise a phenomenal amount in donations while changing the way we think about political campaigning.

It's this emphasis on relationships, Putignano suggests, that may just give the Asian world a cultural advantage in shaping the brands of the future. While the West has arguably turned the broadcast model of communications into an art form, the Eastern focus on enduring relationships -- be they family, business or community -- is exactly the mindset required for building lasting brands into the future. And although the torrent of Asian business students flowing to Western business schools is unlikely to dry up anytime soon, Putignano says marketers have a lot to learn from the Asian mindset.

Ultimately, he says, it's about providing meaning for people. Only by being authentic, and by avoiding the boring and the predictable, can we hope to build successful brands.

In that regard at least, the old rules still apply.

Erminio Putignano is Director of Strategy at Futurebrand