At this years PSFK Conference NYC, I moderated the panel ‘Brand New Rules’, a discussion about whether new rules are needed to govern the behavior of brands in a world increasingly defined by changing social, cultural, technological and economic forces.
Which got me thinking. Hasn’t it always been the role of brands to break rules and create new ones?
And doesn’t that come from brand strategy ideas that create change in culture?
Is ‘new’ just another way of saying ‘good’?
I think we’d all agree that there’s no shortage of good creative thinking in our industry. So why is it often difficult to make good ideas happen?
The role of a brand is to invent new possibilities, so setting rules might seem counter-intuitive, but perhaps there are new practices we need to put in place to put more creativity into ‘creative strategy’.
With our panelists Paul Worthington, (Wolff Ollins), Paul M Taylor (Diageo), Maria Vrachnos (Peep Insights), and Doug Jaeger (thehappycorp/Art Directors Club), we started to debate what these brand new rules might be, and now we’d like to hear what you think.
Everyday this week, for 4 days we’ll be posting a new question for you to debate. Rupert Newton, (the other half of The Joneses) and myself will be weighing in and guiding the discussions, until we have 4 ‘Brand New Rules’.
(Catch up with the conversation: question 1, question 2, question 3)
Question 4.
Every great business adds value in some places and makes money in others.
What can we learn from companies like Facebook and Twitter that do not appear to have a revenue model?
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
You learn that if you can create sizeable mass, people will invest even though no substantial revenue is created and fact that they hope that one day a revenue model will be generated ….
June 4th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
There’s a common theme of trial and error running through the debate this week, although not one client has weighed in on that one (funny that).
June 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Next time you’re presenting something to a client, tell them it’ll work because it’s ‘Backed by Hope’ and use Facebook and Twitter as benchmarks. Good luck with that.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
This from Rob Deflorio at Mother:
“Popularity has value. And you don’t need to make money or add value to be popular”.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Ok, here’s a challenge for you all. Someone find a client to tell us what we’re dealing with here and let’s really have a debate.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Taking a private company mindset, Twitter and Fb create real value by being social infrastructure and things that are become part of social behavior will ultimately be monetized. It took Bezos nearly twelve years to make Amazon profitable. Obviously, shareholders don’t like to hear this. Perhaps Twitter should stay focused on its community and resist the temptation to go public.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
So the learning here is to stay true to the brand and wait it out?
June 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Interesting question. It’s counterintuitive on its face to think that you don’t need a revenue model to be “successful”. Looking at Facebook and now twitter they were social tools built on social connection that derived their scale through usefulness. Brands can learn that they need to determine what their roles is in culture and people’s lives is besides just selling shit. When you do that, you build a genuine connection with your audience and they’ll tell someone or many people good things about you. Old fashioned yes, but it still works, no matter what the strategy or channel utilized, useful wins. Now, just trying selling that to a client.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Couldn’t agree with you more Chuck, and now we’re back to the age old debate of what is a brand idea anyway? Will it always be a matter of subjectivity?
June 4th, 2009 at 7:13 pm