Word Of Mouth Marketing Relies On Reputation Not Branding
Brian Caroll over at web pro news wrote an interesting piece on word of mouth marketing relying on reputation rather than branding. I disagree with him, branding and reputation need to work in harmony. Without a good product it is difficult to build a good reputation, branding is part of that good product. Branding is becoming much more important as choice grows dramatically. If I shop using something like froogle I can switch brands in an instance. If somebody I trust has told me that Brand X is the only one to buy in a certain segment I am likely to be swayed to purchase it. Word of mouth marketing is an excellent tool to promote brands as well as individual products.
posted by Charlie Tuke-Hastings at 11:11 AM
3 Comments:
I totally agree that you need a great product these days, its almost table stakes.
But if you describe Branding as the story the brand owner tells, while reputation is the story the customer tell about the brand – then these days reputation is becoming more important that brand. Eg who believes that AOL is a good ISP anymore?
I think there's a complete misunderstanding of branding going on here. Wally Olins would define a brand as being the complete presence of a product service or organization. This means internal, external, visual, written, tactile, reputation, anything. He even suggests substituting the word brand for the word reputation for organizations that are culturally suspicsious of concepts like branding. I agree with him. The two things are indivisable. You cannot affect your reputation without also affecting your brand. The problem is that everyone has jumped on the brandwagon and branding is now often seen as some veneer you wrap around a company to make it look sexier and more interesting. Great brands were never built this way and never will be.
http://tramadol-sqllt.blogspot.com/
Ciao!
Post a Comment
<< Home