The Decentralization of Brand Building

Powerful, complex and volatile, a brand is often a company, product, service or individual’s most important competitive differentiator. While marketing, public relations and advertising can help to preserve, protect and enhance the brand, it’s important to recognize that, ultimately, the brand is a collection of perceptions in the minds of your stakeholders. That was never truer than today, at a time when the Internet has empowered its 1.6 billion users to tell the world—loudly, instantly and continuously—when a brand is failing to live up to its promise.

The reverse is equally true, as I was reminded today when I happened on a video called “If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe’s” on YouTube, which its creator, San Francisco-based Carl Willat, says he “shot on my Palm Treo before I accidentally ran over it with my car.” It’s hard to imagine a paid commercial that would have the power of this three-minute-long, unofficial, fan-made riff on the unique quirks and pleasures of Trader Joe’s.

The video was posted on YouTube on January 27. By February 12, it had been downloaded nearly 124,000 times and it had swept the blogosphere, with hundreds of thousands of references and links. The vast majority of comments were made by people who talked about why they loved Trader Joe’s … reinforcing the retailer’s brand promise of being a place where “value, adventure and tasty treasures are discovered, every day.”

The [Divorce] Court of Public Opinion

Tricia Walsh-Smith, an angry New Yorker engaged in a bitter divorce with her husband, a wealthy Broadway executive, is continuing to air her grievances on YouTube in the second of two videos about her impending divorce. The original video — which was downloaded more than 2.5 million times and was picked up by 383 mainstream media outlets in the first week — can be seen here.

Whether Walsh-Smith has helped or hurt her cause is immaterial … although I would imagine her shenanigans are unlikely to impress the judge who hears her divorce case. As MSNBC’s senior legal analyst Susan Filan said, “In the end, a divorce, as upsetting and emotional as it is, is just a financial transaction.”

As a PR practitioner in New York, who has worked for law firms and handled crisis management assignments, what concerns me is the increased potential for sudden, swift blogstorms — like this one — when parties to a lawsuit or crisis decide to take the communications into their own hands. My concern is intensified when the ultimate decision is the responsibility of lay people (members of a community or jury), who may be swayed by what they see and hear on the internet.