Building brands: Rediscovering the virtue of sharing

The digital world in which all brands now live has resulted in three mega-trends: the socialisation of media, the consumerisation of business, and the digitisation of information. Whether on the agency side or in-house, as custodians of brands, all marketers and communicators are faced with increasing complexity in building brands and brand loyalty.

Simply getting your brand message out is not enough anymore. Brands must become “living brands” — nimble and agile as persons, relatable and able to speak at the speed of now. They share vision and values with people more openly — and are open to people’s participation. Sharing happens on multiple platforms and goes far beyond telling consumers to share content, or like a brand video or message.

Obviously, the key to successfully building a brand — or loyalty to that brand — is determining what consumers truly want. Big data, social analytics and a multitude of other tools now exist to assist us in drilling down as far as individual consumers — to assess what kind of behaviour they really desire from a brand. But often, it is better to take a step back and look at the big picture. This is what Edelman has done in its “Brandshare” survey.

The trigger for undertaking this survey was a simple thought. The digital world has brought to us a profound shift in the meaning of “share”. It has gone from a virtue to a click. So, we set out to determine what would happen if brands were to rediscover the virtue of sharing. We looked at which sharing behaviours would be important to people, how important those behaviours actually were to people, and if people wanted more of them. Also, finally, the link to real business value — did sharing behaviour by brands actually influence consumer and purchase behaviour?

Globally, the results were overwhelmingly supportive of our thesis that consumers want brands to share — some 90% of respondents indicated such a desire. Yet, only 10% felt that brands were actually sharing well.

At this stage, the reader is probably thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense. But share what?”

We identified six dimensions of sharing appropriate to brands that resonate with consumers: shared dialogue, shared experience, shared goals, shared values, shared product, and shared history.

Shared dialogue is all about creating a meaningful conversation with consumers and allowing them to share stories. The operative word here is “conversation”. That means creating a platform for listening to consumers and allowing them to express their opinions — not just putting out what you think is a meaningful message. Shared experience is about giving more experiences than just the product — and making each of those experiences special.

Shared goals and values indicate that the brand is aligned with what is important for people and that the brand is truly interested in helping them achieve success. Shared product is about giving people a voice in personalising the product through engaged input and feedback. Shared history is the realisation that your brand history is secretly seductive. Shared history may, in fact, be the glue that shows your brand has been consistent in its dialogue, goals and values over the long term.

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