Social Media and Market Branding

At the recent Ad-Tech Conference in San Francisco, panelists discussed the impact of social media in aiding companies and their market brand. It has been three years since a poll found that 55% of all companies polled had setup blogging initiatives. Since that time one thing has been proven correct, social media has redefined the definition of branding.

One of the growing trends that blogging has provided is the relieving of call center traffic. However, Beth Thomas-Kim, director of consumer services for Nestle USA, stated that blogs in their current usage are simple one-way communication channels. She added that, “The walls need to be blown out from the call center,” she said. “We need to migrate outside our own world and talk to consumers where they are.”

Many on the panel have seen that where there are no communities established by the companies?, communities will spring up from consumer response. When this happens the branding of the product is no longer in the hands of the company, but in the hands of the consumer.

The tradition definition of a brand is what does the product or service means to the consumer and what it symbolizes in the mind of the consumer. At the end of the panel, all of the panelists agreed that the consumer owns the brand and they are going to be the ones who control its destiny.