The Importance of Speaking As One

Lisa Gansky—entreprenuer and social thinker (she is promulgating the notion of the “Mesh,” a variant of the market in which companies leverage social media capabilities for interaction with consumers who may buy a product or who may avail themselves of the service of the product [e.g., think of Zipcar: the ‘net based means by which you can get a car for a period of time; it is certainly not ownership and it is distinctly different from classical renting schemes—but Mesh goes beyond that to Whipcar: here you borrow a car from your neighbor—and oddly enough, the event was sponsored by Lincoln, which undoubtedly wants you to buy, not rent or borrow])—made a comment at a TED@MotorCity (ted.com) that has been rattling around inside my head for a few weeks now:

“A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.” 

All too often, those two elements are either wildly distant or slammed together in an ungainly way.

The first case: There are the marketing people over here.  There are the product development people over there.  The marketing people put themselves in the position of being the arbiters of the brand.  What they say is what it says.

The product development people are not engaged in this conversation.  They are told what to do.  As in: “We need this, which is like that, and we want it now.”  So to speak.

Consequently, it may turn out that while the brand speaks English, the product, the souvenir, speaks Vulcan.

Or sometimes, it is the case that the souvenir, the product, has dominance over the voice and the result isn’t all that pretty.

I’ll provide an example from several years ago.  Remember when pickup trucks were all the rage?  When they were driven by everyone from trades people to college kids?  When they were selling like rock salt the day before one of the snowmagedons that have characterized this winter in so many locales?

Well, Chevy trucks were among the dominant ones.  The full-size Chevys.  The ones that generally worked harder than an occasional load of mulch in their beds.

The full-size souvenir became so strong that everything in the lineup had to have aface that looked like the big pickup, whether it was a sedan, a small crossover, or a midsize truck.  Note in the picture of those 2004 Chevys (in case you don’t quite remember, that’s the Equinox in the front left, Malibu front right, and Colorado in the rear) that they all have the same face.  It didn’t seem to occur that maybe someone buying a sedan really didn’t care all that much about a Silverado.

Clearly, there needs to be balance.  Congruity.

If you go to an American Girl store with your kids, you don’t expect to walk away with something resembling one of the mutants from the X-Men.  If you go to an Ozzy concert you’re not going to go home with a painting in the style of Thomas Kincade.

Marketing and product development need to be so intertwined that it is difficult to discern whose talking.