Where were you when YouTube was born?
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THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES Cast your mind back a little: 10–15 years ago, say. Before the Second Iraq War. Before September 11th or the Tsunami in the Maldives. Before Diana died and YouTube was born. Brand management was so much easier then, wasn’t it? You knew exactly where you stood. Brandbuilding budgets virtually allocated themselves, spread strategically across the restricted range of available media. TV would feature if the brand was big enough. Then there would be plenty of press ads. A few radio spots. A poster campaign or two. A dash of DM, perhaps. Some instore displays. T-shirts for the sales force to wear at exhibitions. Ah, those were the days. But it’s all so different now. Our world has changed dramatically over the past few years—perhaps largely because communications have become instant and international in ways that only science fiction aficionados might have anticipated. Just cast your eyes over this edition of the Journal of Brand Management and you’ll see few topics that would have been discussed as recently as ten years ago. And as the World Wide Web, e-mail and mobile devices have stretched their communications cobweb into more and more households, consumer choices have also grown exponentially. These relatively recent developments have made brand management today considerably more challenging than it was during the half-century or so since May 13, 1931—the day on which Neil McElroy of P&G changed marketing forever by writing the classic memo that led to the creation of the discipline
of brand management.1 Today’s brand management challenge, in our global post-modern marketplace, is getting the spread right. Exactly where should you splash the cash?
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES Although it’s not clear whether the phrase ‘may you live in interesting times’ really is an ancient Chinese curse,2 these are certainly interesting times in which to be involved with brand management. Today’s global communications make it possible to showcase a brand to the world in general, but also, paradoxically, to precisely selected individuals. You can now, virtually (in both senses of the word) shake hands with each of your potential customers, delivering a personalised message that is tailored to say exactly what you believe they want to hear. This may seem like a good thing, but of course there is a danger of it all becoming too complex and confusing, for both consumers and brand management professionals alike. Information overload is growing as rapidly as the methods of information delivery. It’s becoming apparent that too much choice may be as bad as too little, because consumers are now reacting adversely to the relentless bombardment by filtering out more and more of the information they are confronted with. Focusing on what’s important is an inherent ability mankind has had since the caveman days, so just as most of us now notice only the road furniture we are specifically looking for, such as direction signs and speed cameras, we now also tend to notice only
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