All week we’ve been talking about the value for companies and organizations of connecting with, and even embracing and empowering their brand evangelists. But a recent post by Sean Howard raises a very valid question: What if an brand evangelist creates content about a brand, that the brand might not approve of? To illustrate his point, Sean even created a parody video about Marketing Profs, so I invite you to click over and check it out.
Here’s a couple of other possible examples that brands might object to:
- A popular political blogger that’s an evangelist for a particular restaurant chain creates a post lauding the chain. However, the post contains the blogger’s usual proliferation of 4-letter words, and the blogger actively supports several organizations that the restaurant chain’s founders are opposed to.
- A video blogger creates a humor video where he does a ‘taste test’ of several different soft drinks, and spits each out, declaring that it tastes like (use your imagination here). Then he finishes by drinking Pepsi, says it is amazing, and not at all like the other soft drinks.
The idea is, what should a company do if one of its brand evangelists creates promotional content for that brand, that the brand objects to? How should they respond?
As I told Sean over at his place, I think it all starts with the connection that a company has with its evangelists. The company/organziation has to make the effort to connect with its evangelists and communicate to them exactly what their branding is. Companies and organizations can’t invite their evangelists to promote them, then try to slap their wrist if they create content on the brand’s behalf, that the brand doesn’t agree with.
Remember that evangelists WANT to see your company or organization succeed and they WANT to promote you. And they WANT you to talk to them. To give them direction. To show them how they can best help you. Take advantage of this to work WITH your evangelists to help them better do what they already want to do: Sing your praises.
How do you think companies and organizations can best communicate to their evangelists how their brand can best be promoted? Should they?
Great question, I’ve seen this happen in a company I used to work for. MMO(RPG) games are a fascinating case study in community and brand management. When you’ve got 300,000 or 10 million+ in the case of World of Warcraft players, that’s a lot of evangelists and a lot of detractors.
The only thing you can do in that situation is work with the players. They’re paying $15 a month to play your game, so multiple points of contact, public events, anything to stay connected to the players is paramount.
There’s a wealth of information on official and unofficial forums, however, the industry direction is to start these games without official forums as they’re too time consuming to manage.
It’s a huge missed opportunity for these companies.
Nic as I am reading these comments by y’all, I am really struck by 2 things:
1 – This is an incredibly smart conversation that we’re having
2 – It’s a conversation that few brands are ready to have with their customers, or themselves.
That’s really sad.
Well, any company who has earned themselves brand evangelists should never try the old power and control b.s. from the days of yore in order to “keep them in line.” I’m an big evangelist of one brand right now and feel accountable to them because of their considerate, consistent communication with me via social. I don’t want to offend them so I run things through them first, asking their opinion. (Like u said Mack – they’ve connected with me.)
Not every evangelist will take this route of course and, if my brand had hardcore evangelists, I would promote those videos, photos, parodies I like most encouraging more of the same.
Hi Catherine, great thoughts, and I think this ties into Jesse’s point about degrees of evangelism or ‘fandom’ that customers have for a brand. Whereas one evangelist might be offended if a brand they love asked them to change how they promoted that brand, another evangelist such as yourself might be more open or even excited that the brand was reaching out to them to give them guidance on how they can best promote that brand.
It depends on how you define “evangelist.” If it’s an employee or someone who is being paid or promoted then that’s one type of evangelist. If it’s a fervent fan who promotes the brand because they like it or want to share their passion for the product with friends then that is a different type. I create videos for brands all the time (WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, iPhone apps) but they don’t pay me and I don’t expect them to promote the work in any way. If they ever asked me to change something or “demoted” my work then I’d probably focus on other brands who didn’t try to be as controlling.
The Marketing Profs parody video is a tough case because it has mixed messages and has a very negative connotation.
Hey Jesse, interesting thoughts. When I say ‘brand evangelist’, I am talking about a ‘fan’ of the brand, someone that loves the brand and tries to convince all their friends why they should love it as well 😉 But at the end of the day, I think these people want to see the brand succeed, and if the brand approached them and asked them to change the way they are promoting the brand, I think most evangelists would listen.
The HUGE caveat here is the WAY in which the brand asks. If they are respectful and appreciative of the evangelists’ efforts, then I think the evangelist will tend to honor their request to change their communication style. But if the brand fires off a cease and desist letter and throws lawyers at them, obviously they will likely convert that evangelist into a detractor, and will probably draw some additional negative coverage to the brand.
Great post, Mack.
I love the comments as well.
I think it’s sad that brands aren’t promoting the work of fans. While Jesse may not expect a brand to participate or thank him for his efforts, I think it’s a real loss that brands aren’t doing just that. It’s the shift from co-presenting to co-viewing as BBH Labs pointed out.
The challenge comes when a piece makes fun of a competitor. It’s funny. I felt like the Marketing Profs piece was more of a statement against BNyet than it was against Marketing Profs. But at the same time, it did involve flaming shit. But some really GOOD flaming shit. 😉
It seems to me that there is a common vein in the comments of engaging with enthusiasts. You allude to this as well, Mack. Through ongoing conversation, you can help to sculpt some of the activity. I wouldn’t go so far as educating the community on the brand, but I think we’re on the same page in that through communication people start to better relate to what the organization’s values and beliefs are.
But it also raises a need to have a sense of humour and to be in touch with the community and people that are creating things. Otherwise a parody could be seen as negative or vice versa. So again, staying in communication seems to be the lesson of the day.
Good thoughts, Sean. I think the underlying theme here is, how comfortable is the brand with letting its evangelists express themselves in their own voice, rather than the brand’s voice? And where’s the brand’s comfort zone for letting the evangelist creates content that in their voice moreso than the brand’s?
I think each brand has their own line of discomfort that they don’t want their evangelists to cross, and I do think that this line can be moved if the brand has a stronger connection and wider communication channel open with its evangelists.
Oh and BTW, is BNyet a competitor of MP? I didn’t even catch that 😉
Da.
Lol.