As part of this campaign, we developed a brand experience for HP, linked from the hp.com/personal site, where users can create their own HP ads by uploading a picture. The idea behind it was to deliver fun for visitors to the site, while at the same time reinforcing the message of personalization and user empowerment that is central to the campaign.

As a side note, though HP’s Silicon Valley neighbors at Apple have consistently delivered product innovation, they have especially delivered brand engagement and buzz. Hence the question of whether to compete with the iPod, other MP3 player manufacturers need to build a better product or make a better commercial.

Advertising does (or can do) much more than just “tell people about the brand”. For a start, it can alert people to what other people think of the product, and whether those others are likely to adopt it. If the product is what economists call a network good (one whose utility to each person depends on its utility to others), then each potential customer needs to consider whether other potential customers will purchase before deciding for themselves. (There’s no point being the owner of the only fax machine in town!).

But, in my defiantly-unhumble opinion, ALL products and services are network goods, at least to some extent. There are even fashions in products such as raw materials and other so-called commodities.

Good advertising can alert people to how others are likely to jump, either directly (eg, through endorsements) or more subtly, by helping to forge a collective majority of opinion about the product and its social meaning. This function of advertising, as facilitator for and signifier of co-ordinated action by consumers, is a lot more than simply information transfer from seller to buyer. The “lot more” here is anthropological or sociological rather than economic.

How many times have we seen strong, sharp, insightful brand communications completely let down by product designs that don’t single-mindedly deliver the brand’s promise? I recall a debate some years ago about what kind of advertising would best build a brand. The entire premise is incorrect. Advertising merely tells people about the brand. If what they hear makes sense and is believable, they purchase the brand’s offering. It’s the experience delivered by the brand which finally shapes the brand in their minds, depending upon how well it lives up to the promise.

Why would HP create such a good brand communication without backing it up with a good brand experience? One can only speculate that the role of marketing at HP is limited to creating communication. When marketing is at the heart of everything that a firm does, then the flow from insight to product design to brand communication is single-minded, smooth and usually results in customer satisfaction and sales growth.

Reynold

Let’s do a little experiment and take a look. Take Brian’s last post in its entirety, and swap the word brand for the word customer and vice versa to see if it makes any more sense.

ReQuote…
Personally, I think the mission of customers is changing. It’s moving from “shaping perceptions” to delivering new forms of value that brands can use. In this shift, customers are more closely tied to the innovation process than they are to advertising or corporate communications. The new “value” for customers can be functional value, aesthetic value, spiritual value, etc. There are no boundaries, which is why the field is becoming so exciting. (“The genius of customers is that they have no limits. The value of customers is that through them, brands have no limits.”)

As I see it, a customer assessment starts with the question: “What is holding our brands back?” You then develop the customer programs to move your brands forward—-beyond the reach of competitors. If you lead brands to greater value, their (positive) perceptions will follow.

This also means that customer strategy moves to the core of business, where it rightfully belongs.
…UnRequote

It still makes about as much sense as Brian’s original post.

The future of brands and customers should be inextricably intertwined, not separate and opposite as they are too often portrayed.

As I see it, a brand assessment starts with the question: “What is holding our customers back?” You then develop the brand programs to move your customers forward—-beyond the reach of competitors. If you lead customers to greater value, their (positive) perceptions will follow.

This also means that brand strategy moves to the core of business, where it rightfully belongs.

Brian said, “Brands are the pre-eminent tool for creating customers, because their protean nature can deliver many forms of customer value. ”

What exactly is the brand for computer users? Is it the communications & packaged offers we practically fall over in every newspaper? Or is is the experiences of buying one, using it and getting help when it doesn’t plug & play like it said on the box?

Surely in such an experiential product as computers, the brand is more about your personal and others experiences than marketing communications. Particularly negative experiences. Just look at the mess Dell got itself into after failing miserably to provide adequate after-sales support.

The root cause of HP’s brand malaise is that its marketers have no idea of the customer they’re trying to create. Brands are the pre-eminent tool for creating customers, because their protean nature can deliver many forms of customer value. However, if you don’t have a clue about where your customers are headed, and if you don’t have the vision to lead them there, you will end up on the quasi-commodity treadmill like HP.

I find your suggestion that “increasingly the best way to fight demotion to the commodity basement will be brilliant acts of branding” to be, well, a recipe to creating yet more “hollow brands” that don’t live up to their expensively advertised expectations.

As Kim & Mauborgne’s work on Value Innovation has shown clearly, a far better way to avoid the commodity trap is to find out what customers, non-customers and ex-customers really want and then to give it to them at lower cost than competitors can possibly do so. Only when you have done these two things should you start to advertise your renaissance to the market.

Too many brands blatently lie to the markets they supposedly serve. And then are suprised when thy are rumbled and customers kick up a stink. Surely you are not advocating yet more marketing lies.