On Branding: Transparency, Disintermediation, and Silly Putty
Published by cory March 30th, 2008 in Social Networks, Marketing Strategy, Building Steam, Facebook, Transparent, Disintermediation, Silly Putty.In the past week, a couple folks have brought topics together that feel like critical ingredients of the next wave of the web, and with it marketing communications.
As backdrop, Christopher Locke saw this trend coming back in 2001 in Gonzo Marketing when he noted that Ford was being very progressive in 2000 by trying to get all employees to push forward their passions into online forums. As an example, if people who work for Ford also like to garden, then foster online communities amongst employees offer the possibility to open up to the outside world to interact about all sorts of things that could even include new ideas for Ford’s trucks, but also a lot of other good ideas and meaningful involvement.
This week, Gary V. nails it on his “120″ video covering how all these new social web tools are forcing folks to align all elements of their lives onto the same page. No more secret lives, fake or ambiguous ID’s since Facebook is playing the hand of people to fess up to the networks they belong to for access. Along with that forcing hand comes transparency.
Next up, Loic Le Meur offers solid thoughts on his frustrations of the decentralizations of the social map. Partly, web communications are just becoming more advanced to meet users’ needs, but also he’s noting a problem with the early stages of web’s social tools.
Facebook is a walled garden which offers people a safe and user-controlled environment. While Flickr and MySpace broke a lot of social norms about a person’s online persona, Facebook’s attraction as a safer version of digital media sharing allows for a transitional platform for those still afraid to fully go online. For these ‘early majority’, the idea that digital media may get online with little to no control personal control is still scary. An explosion in video and digital camera technology combined to most cell phones (plus much easier uploading functions) should all but end that fear in the coming years (for many in the early and late majority of tech adoption, not for laggards).
How does this thread together for branding? The two emerging concepts of transparency (=people being who they are at work and at home) plus disintermediation (=tools that foster connectivity without being a platform) create a person as marketer/representative/communicator. [note: yes, I’m pulling a term, disintermediation, that isn’t really used for the web, but I think it fits]
Marketing strategy and communication is becoming more like silly putty. While these branding concepts are not novel in for web developers and marketers, it is very challenging for firms outside of the interconnected web that are used to highly structured interactions. Silly putty can even make a copy of the news/comics that can be stretched. 
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