"In the past, marketers could simply start the marketing engine and put the brand idea in one end, and in time and with enough money some levels of brand loyalty would emerge at the other end of the machine," Pike, a former orange farmer and academic, explained.
"Model is broken"
"That model is broken. It [became] broken when marketers no longer control the media and message."
Pike, who argued throughout his presentation that everything people believe they knew about branding is wrong, said there was no need to segment people on the Internet.
"They will organise themselves into groups and communities and decide how they will interact with your brands," he said. "Everybody is now a foreigner somewhere in this new world, and the concept of geography has changed in the marketing sense."
Pike said that, in an environment where people are always connected and do not rely on the brand for information, marketers need to consider building brands differently.
"Think more like a farmer"
He explained, "The analogy is that you need to think more like a farmer. A farmer is successful if he can get his plants or animals to grow by creating the correct conditions for growth; there are just too many variables and they are too unpredictable to control."
"My point is that although the process of branding is the same - you move up the pyramid [see presentation] from salience to preference [brand resonance]. The way you did it is broken," he elaborated. "Once you could position a brand and then create associations or ideas to attach to it - now your customers draw their own associations.
"The core reason is that whereas once you could change people's minds by broadcasting messages in such volume or weight that people had to have their minds changed - share of voice equalled share of mind equalled share of market.
"Now that doesn't work anymore - people don't trust advertising or public relations and advertising, they trust their social connections and they are connected like never before. So if they want to know something - they ask their friends and trust what they say. And saying that you have control of brand is an illusion because the scene is like in a sea where you have no control.
"You can't control conversation"
He continued, "You can't control conversation, but [you need to] listen and be part of it and try to understand what people need. In fact, the responses that Cell C and Woolworths [and now Standard Bank] have experienced is more than enough to demonstrate that you don't control the brand. Pigspotter demonstrates that people will organise themselves around causes and ideas they believe in - a brand is simply an idea."
That paves the way to the process of brand husbandry (more of an art), Pike said - a process whereby marketers now need to create the circumstances in which the brand can thrive.
"They can't make the brand thrive. They [must] listen and observe and understand. They [must] also build a customer experience - a combination of head and heart things - performance and feelings. They [must] build a fan club.
"They [must] give the members of the fan club something to talk about and a way to talk about it. And they [must] remain constantly vigilant and engaged with their customers so they can constantly adjust and improve the experience and the growth of the brand becomes a partnership."
