Video and Debate: Who really owns the Community?
In my research I get to interview experts in my industry such as the seasoned Bill Johnston, who’s a community expert and is very involved with community based conferences. In the video above, find out from Bill why he thinks that Marketing should, and should not own the community strategy. Bill also shares how to ‘kick-start’ a community, fortunately, it aligns with objectives first.
The timing of this video is great, as it ties in with what I read from one of the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto:
Secondly, respected internet ‘uncle’ Doc Searls wrote a great post The only real social networks are personal ones in response to my questions of “Should a brand join or build their own social network”. This is a very relevant question to the time, one that I’m getting asked by our clients frequently. Of course I have an answer, but it depends on what they are trying to achieve. Quite frankly, while I understand Doc’s point, (people over brand) getting marketing organizations to relax is difficult and scary, baby steps are needed.
Doc makes the following points:
First, I’m not sure a “brand” can get social at all. Second, the notion of “brands” either “building” or “joining” social networks strikes me as inherently promotional in either case, and therefore compromised as a “social” effort. Third, I’m not sure social networks are “built” in any case. Seems to me they’re more organic than structural. Fourth, the thing companies need to do most is stop being all “strategic” about how their people communicate.
Chime in: The important questions
It’s important that we explore this issue on both sides, so if you’re a marketeer (or a vendor) please read Doc’s post and weigh in on the issue:
So who really ‘owns’ the community? Who should be leading the charge within a company to do this? Is Doc right? Brands can never be part of communities, only people can?
Update: Shel chimes in and thinks I’m getting too close to clients am I sell out? Be sure to read my comment on his post.
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Maybe part of the problem is the word ‘brand’. As I understand them, brands don’t have agency. They are lived relationships between people who make things, things that are made or provided and those who would or do consume them. A brand is a phantasm that takes shape in between those interested parties. It can be personified, but still isn’t a person. A brand manager can act as a community proxy on behalf of an official understanding of a brand, but even those actions are but part of the soup of understanding in which the brand is suspended. So, when Doc is arguing for brands to be more plastic (ie. what he is calling ‘less strategic’) I think he is calling for a more malleable understanding of individual brands that encompasses community (and not just corporate) framings of those brands.
None of which is to argue that companies are not the most interested stakeholders in public discussions of ‘their’ brands. Of course they are. But, they are limited in the ways they can shape community, just as they are limited in the ways they can fully shape understandings of ‘their’ brands.
Thanks Brian
An interesting example that comes to mind that we should explore is “Presidential Brands”. Obama, Edwards, Ron Paul all have brands (phantasmic or real) that people interact with.
To me, this is an example of a person who indeed does have a brand and yet it’s a person.
Jeremiah,
I have mixed feelings on this, but a real world example to share that supports your position. A local ski resort, Crotched Mountain, started following me on Twitter about a month ago. Naturally, I followed them back. Now I can see real time updates on ski conditions, specials etc… that they Twitter about. I mentioned on my Twitter stream and not surprising, a few local Twitter buddies asked for the Twitter name to follow as well. We all know it’s a real person sending out the updates, but quite frankly, I don’t care who it is. What I’m interested in is the Brand updates. And through the Brand, real people have made connections out of shared interests. So, while there are other ways this Brand could communicate with me, it’s presence in my Twitter network / community is of value to me personally and to those of us who have connected around it. So at least on this aspect of Doc Searles argument (that brands cannot be part of communities), I think he’s off-base (I’m not sure I can bring myself to say Doc Searls is wrong ; )
Dave
[…] a couple of “community” examples here, here and here - but based on Jeremiah’s post today, and Doc Searles post it is time to write my […]
Jeremiah:
Nice post. Here are my 3 answers:
1. Communities are owned by the participants.
2. Somebody inside every large organization should be paying attention to the relevant communities. I think they should be in Marketing.
3. Doc is right. Brands cannot be part of a community, only people can.
More here:
http://humanvoice.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/who-owns-the-community/
TO’B
JKO: people may have brands, but they aren’t brands. Which is to say, voters probably vote for brands which happen to have real people as one of their components.
Ie. Bush = not only the existing president but also the other purveyors of constitutional abuse that make up his retinue.
I’m going to have to throw my hat in with Doc on this one. To me, he’s simply coming from a common sense point of view.
I think Brian is correct, ‘brand’ is a very loaded word
With that said, I think brands are inherently social. From the consumer (or user or member) side, they are the collectively held opinions of a company and / or product. Think Norman’s “Mental Model”. From the company’s perspective, they are the value and values that the company would like to project into the market. This obviously has to be backed up by a quality product, service, and corporate behavior, or the public perception suffers.
Can brands participate in communities? No. People participate in communities on a brand’s behalf. Brands can host communities.
Who “owns” the community? Ownership is held collectively by the hosts and the members. I hate the use of the word ownership here, but we are talking specifically about a corporate context.
Who should be driving community efforts? I still say marketing, as they generally have the budget, staff, and infrastructure. I think driving the efforts is a forcing function of change within most marketing organizations, and for the better. Reality is that community touches very org, from support, to marketing, to product… even HR.
Anyway, my opinion, based on driving community efforts at a large software company. YMMV
Yes, the people that participate own and define the community, but from a brand perspective communities provide a unique new way for customers to interact with the brand.
Communities enable the people that work for the brand to now interact with customers and help redefine perception/expectation of the brand.
That’s a pretty important point.
For example, look at what Dell has done with Direct2Dell.com or what Microsoft has done with blogs.msdn.com. Both companies transformed the perception of their brand through their community.
My own opinion is that we are past the point where a brand can stand on its own. A brand is now the complete representation of the products, services, and now *people* (community) that together interact with customers. This applies to product and services as well as presidential candidates.
Isn’t everything a ‘brand’ these days =)
As for who owns the community: typically marketing pays for it, but unless the entire organization ‘owns’ the interaction the community is doomed to failure.
[…] Owyang recently interviewed Bill Johnston to talk about community ownership. You should take a look at the video before reading […]
To answer your questions…
1. Nobody “owns” the community. But the most important piece is the topic, not the people. If you just wanted community for community’s sake, you’d hit a dating site.
2. Tom O’Brien commented above that “Somebody inside every large organization should be paying attention to the relevant communities. I think they should be in Marketing.” What he said.
3. He’s wrong. Smarter than me, but wrong.
And I said this over at Doc’s blog:
“Smart, interesting post. But I disagree. So here’s my “one dumb dude’s opinion”…
Social networks are more than just the sum of the individuals. It ain’t just people talking…in fact, it’s NOT about the individuals. The meaningful ones either center around a single passion point (cars, music, business, etc.) OR they facilitate small groups forming around passion points (like Facebook or MySpace).
So it’s about the passion, not the people.
Do brands have a right to play? As much as they have a right to build stadiums, print t-shirts, co-create game content, produce TV shows, or finance movies. Which is to say, if it enhances rather than ruins the experience, why not?
And in some examples, I think brands can be better (read: more credible) creator of communities. Example, a network built and moderated by Volve engineers could (could!) be more useful/meaningful than one built by the dude down the block.
And when I say “a brand” I mean “people speaking on behalf of the brand.”
My .02.”
The word ‘brand’ has become an umbrella term that alternately means, ‘product,’ ‘company’ ‘experience’ or ‘perception.’
It seems to me, Jeremiah (and Doc) are referring to brand as ‘company’ - and ‘company’ literally means people who travel together. Companies are communities, products are not. If we look at it from a sociological point of view, those who provide products and services have always been an integral part of any community, whether it is the lone merchant or the family business or the company town.
In our recent human history, companies have purposefully built walls to separate themselves from “the community.” In response we have pushed back, demanding that they be “socially responsible” that they “give back” to the community, or that they support local community efforts and goals, i.e. not separate themselves.
Today, we demand they break down the walls further, be more transparent and join us more authentically in the “marketplace.” And, companies are finding they must integrate back into the marketplace in a meaningful way (the fortress model failed). So they naturally turn to where we are gathering, which today is in virtual as well as real communities.
The truth is, there is a symbiotic relationship between “company” and community and there always will be. They are a part of the community.
Who should be in charge? Public affairs - not marketing, not public relations. Although an ideal(ist) scenario would be for the company culture to be such that “those who travel together” really do.
Hi guys.
I’ve got to agree with Jeremiah here in that it really depends on the situation. I completely agree with what’s said above re individuals within a company being able to be part of the community in an official capacity. However, from a purely practical point of view (we advise brands on their social media marketing strategies) simply ‘joining’ a social network, such as Facebook or Myspace, does nothing for a brand.
The only way to have relevance is to give benefit, either in the form of a flow of useful information, such as for the ski resort mentioned earlier, or in the case of a news agency; or to provide an interactive benefit, through applications, competitions etc. These allow people to ‘interact’ with the brand, and interact with their friends through the brands, in a useful and positive way.
So there are two ways that brands can join social networks: through the personal interaction of their staff, and through interactive applications.
On a similar note, I’d be interested to see what people’s thoughts are on a recent situation we had with a client. We were deciding whether to host a forum within their own application, however they were so worried about the possible political fallout of having free comments that they would of required extensive monitoring of the forum. We advised them that such extensive monitoring would hurt the brand, and that they’d be better off simply pointing people towards unofficial groups, where the conversations can be completely free. I thought this may be of interest to this topic, as it’s a case of a brand choosing purposely NOT to own a forum or conversation.
Thanks,
Josh
[…] can watch the video below, and also check out Jeremiah’s blog post with the video, which has a lot of good conversation around this […]
My pennyworth.
Jeremiah, you’re right (as usual), it depends on the situation. Without being too simplistic, the community owns the community.
Companies need to appreciate that all of their people are ‘brands’ (tired phrase, I know) and that collectively, they contribute substantially to the company ‘brand’.
But I disagree that brands building or joining social networks compromises the social effort. It may be strained and/or misguided, but it CAN still be deemed a social effort.
Doc is right, social networks are not ‘built’ as such, they are created by an underlying need for expression that needs to be addressed.
I personally agree that companies should (if they know what’s good for them), be less top-down in the way that they communicate. My personal view is that organistions have everything to gain and very little to lose from listening more and allowing their people to steer debate. Hence the attraction of using social media of all forms, to change culture and over time, change the company brand.
Jeremiah, great conversation here on Web Strategy, sometimes however when I read the comments, I feel like I haven’t swallowed enough Cluetrain or Silicon Valley kool-aid.
The whole debate for both sides rests on whether a brand is an intangible or includes people (I fall in the latter camp).
If Doc and Shel would just realize there is a dual definition people are playing with, I would hope they would agree that even a small group of brand people (company employees/ambassadors) can rally a community effectively.
If their argument is that brands, people or intangible, poison the conversation because of their commercial interests, i believe their wholly wrong.
Take Dell Ideastorm, Mozilla Firefox, Jones Soda, Lululemon, P&G Innocentive, WD40, Maker’s Mark, TiVo…etc. - set up by brands, involve countless hundreds of thousands of people, inside and outside the company, thriving dialogue and engagement, happier users and more profitable brands.
Do brands screw it up…often and flagrantly, no reason to say that well-intentioned and well-practicing brands can’t practice community well.
In fact, the community advocates are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t invite brands/brand people to the dance for two reasons:
- communities will remain starved based on lack of proper resources to incent, excite and build and manage platforms from willing brand participants
- when enlightened marketers realize the current online and social network ad model is built on quicksand, these current thriving social networks funded almost entirely through ad revenue or seed revenue (based on ad revenue expectations) will shrivel up, enabling micro-communities of brand advocates/content creators/insight and innovation stimuli and ambassadors will be perhaps their only saving grace
I couldn’t argue more forcefully or persuasively - for brands interested in growth - community is not only something they can and should participate in, it will become the one thing they will absolutely need to participate in.
Hopefully most of the argument is semantical, I fear given the common refrain from some of the social media world that there are very real community velvet ropes that brands shouldn’t go past.