Branding in a Multi-Media World

As I was looking for a picture to pair with my last post, Why Branding Matters for Businesses of All Sizes, I came across a photo set from Troy Thompson (Travel 2.0) on Flickr and was struck by the strong visual he created to demonstrate the implications of branding in a multi-media world.

We all know advertising (and branding) used to be easier. There were silver bullets. There were guaranteed formulas that could be executed to drive business through the door. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. The world has changed. The reason is that there are so very many different ways to communicate with customers. And customers have so many different choices of the media they will consume. Here is just a sampling of what you already know:

• Newspapers are out, and the Internet is in.
• Social Clubs are out, Social Media is in.
• Radio is out, Streaming is in.
• Television is out, TiVo is in.
• Movies are out Blu Ray and Streaming are in.
• Magazines are out, Blogs are in.
• Direct Mail is out, Email is in.

The world has gotten more complicated and today, the only common denominator for reaching customers is that there is NO common denominator. The end result is that successful businesses have to be very good at presenting themselves in a consistent and reliable manner across all channels of communication, all the time. By paying close attention to the consistency of a company’s message, that company can create and extend their brand. Few businesses have the resources to be able to spend large quantities of money to dominate and saturate a given media channel. This ups the ante on the need for consistency for businesses of all sizes. The more consistent a business is about how they present themselves, the more successful they will be. If a company can create likeability and consistency, whether you’re fast forwarding through their commercial on TiVo, listening to their commercial on Pandora, seeing their product highlighted in a blog giveaway, or hosting a conversation on Facebook, that company can begin to win brand loyalty. So yes, branding in a Multi-Media world is more complicated. There are far, FAR, more moving parts. Nevertheless, the result is the same. Consistency leads to likeability. Likeability leads to loyalty. And that’s called BRANDING. Yesterday and today. Happily that rule hasn’t changed.