In the article, Branding in the Age of Social Media, Douglas Holt gives an excellent analysis of how brands can connect with audience in the age of social media. The trick is social media has promoted some of the once subcultures into “crowdcultures” where members produce their own content. The key to success in nowadays digital age is for brands to tap into these “crowdcultures”. 

I agree with this article! Here are the three tips / key takeaways that brands should know (reasons why I agree with this article):

Tip #1: Problem - Branded content is no longer enough.

What it says at the beginning of the article about the branded content really resonated with me. Marketers are scratching their head every day to come up with ideas and topics or what’s called as the “branded content”. I’d been through this process myself before but it wasn’t working as good as I hoped - the hot topics that I try so hard to tap into is not effective. Why? It’s not relevant to the audience!

Tip #2: Problem - Mindshare branding and purpose branding are not effective enough.

It’s surprising to find out the two examples provided with the mindshare branding and purpose branding. This was my “a-ha” moment because I was going through the process as mentioned, but got into the same situation. Why? Again, it’s not relevant to the audience!

Tip #3: Solution - Make crowdcultures work for you

I love the examples of Dove, Axe and Old Spice that illustrates how brands of the person care category make use of the crowdculture methodology to craft messaging relevant to the audience.

The good news is that marketers are already familiar with many of the processes of cultural branding (. The takeaway here is not to be intimidated by the new platform/technology, nor to be carried away by emerging trends. Doing for the doing it’s sake does not work. The key is to look into the subcultures / crowdcultures and stay close to the customers.

This is a very practical piece of article. This is almost disruptive in brands/marketers’ mindset. For next steps, I am interested to learn more about what kind of listening skills that marketers can use to scout the crowdcultures.

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