Crowdsurfing

Martin Thomas, author of the book “Crowd Surfing”, paid a visit to Coley Porter Bell last week and spoke about how brands are dealing with the age of consumer empowerment.

His thesis is that, though it has become something of a marketing cliche that consumers own brands whilst brand owners merely control trademarks, in reality the way that companies and agencies talk about brand development and management is largely predicated on the notion of absolute control, a notion that runs counter to what is really happening in a consumer empowered and expressive world.

If you want proof, says Martin, try an Google image search for ‘MasterCard priceless’ or ‘McDonald’s.’ 

All to often the trademark owners don’t really know how to navigate this changed world and come down disproportionately heavily on consumers messing with their brands. Sure, there will be cases where empowered and creative consumers have crossed the line, but all too often the corporate giant gets too defensive too quickly.

My personal favourite is computer programmer, Jose Avila, when short of money and furniture when he moved to a new town, starting to create tables, chairs, a desk, shelves, and even a bed out of used FedEx boxes. 
He posted pictures of what he had done on www.fedexfurniture.com This could have been a brilliant story for FedEx. It is a very creative. And it is a recycling story par excellence. FedEx could have fanned this story and started a whole new strand of interesting PR coverage, stunts, events, etc. But instead of embracing what Jose was doing, the company brought a lawsuit to have the site taken down. The case seems to have gone back and forth, with Stanford lawyers working pro bono with Jose. As of January 2009, the site is down.

But there are people who are beginning to embrace the crowd. People such as Proctor & Gamble’s former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, A.G. Lafley, who describes how business leaders: “are operating in what is very much a ‘let go’ world”, Alex Marks at Microsoft Advertising who talks about “allowing your work to get ‘messed up’”, by which he means allowing consumers to get involved in the creation and dissemination of a brand message, suggesting that “You’ll not only save yourself money but you just might increase your share of voice.” Go to www.ideastorm.com and see how Dell are embracing the crowd and their ideas. Doritos has run a competition for people to send in their ideas for superbowl ads (the winner gets to make theirs and it is aired).

I wonder how long it will be before we create a ‘logo of parts’ and allow people to create their own versions of it, or have an open source brief with a global call for logo submissions for a new identity?

For more details on the book, the blog, Martin or to enroll for surf school, click here .