Why you must let your customers be 'like' you

In Singapore, and quite universally around the world, this is what has been happening since the beginning of the "Branding" and "Advertising" industries.

Branding and advertising activities have, roughly, been around this sequence. First, a business, with the help of a branding agency, sets out to derive an interesting, unique, and appealing story behind a product or service.

Hopefully, that story will result in a meaning for that particular product or service within the minds of an identified group of consumers known as the target audience. This is the branding part.

Once that part is done, the business then goes off to communicate, with the help of an advertising agency, to the target audience group on what that brand story and intended meaning is.

The aim is, of course, to invoke consumers' emotions towards wanting to be like, and to like, the brand, and to ultimately end up consuming that product or service.

It is the "I-Tell-You" and "You-Need-to-be-Like-Me" so that you can be cool; sexy; beautiful; successful; etc. days.

In those two expressions, the "I" is the brand and the "You" is the "consumer". Many businesses are realising that those days are gone. In fact the entire consumer-seeking-desperately-to-be-affiliated-with-the-brand era is long gone.

The tables have turned quickly for brands and consumers within a span of the last couple of months.

Today's consumers derive their own stories and meanings behind products and services. This is from their own experiences through exposure to, and consumption of, those products and services.

These stories and meanings are authentic. And when they are communicated by consumers within their own social circles, these stories and meanings spread like wildfire - aided by todayʼs technology, of course.

Hence, going forward, though these two expressions - "I-Tell-You" and "You-Need-to-be-Like-Me" - still hold truth, the roles have reversed. Now "I" will be the "consumer"; and "You" are the "brand".

Businesses are beginning to realise that it is ineffective to derive and broadcast branding messages to consumers within the vacuum of the branding and marketing departments.

These messages are bound to fall on deaf ears. Rather, businesses should first deploy resources to, with the help of domain experts, derive a strategy to listen to, analyse, and act on, consumers' messages with regards to the branding of a product or service.

In other words, brands should ACT (Affiliate, Consult, and Team up) with consumers - by listening to them, and not act at them.

Ng Chong Yang,  Business Development Director, Tangoshark