Are you building a brand, or leveraging it?

As we look at the brand, particularly online, we have to acknowledge that there are places where we are building brands, and places where we are mostly leveraging them. What makes this difficult is that there is no clear and absolute delineation. In the 'old' world, television was seen as the place to build brands. Newspapers or yellow pages leveraged them (with some building going on)... directing people to where to find 'it' and make the purchase (over simplification, but you get the idea). Today, even television is not completely dedicated to brand building, but has elements of leveraging. How do we know which we should be doing?

Building a brand is all the stuff we do before the consumer is ready to buy. Leveraging the brand is what we do when the consumer is ready to make the purchase; it is when we pull together the 'feeling' and equity we have created, then relate this to the consumer and their immediate need. We leverage the Brand as we sell the product or service. Which one we are doing at any point in time is less about us, and all about the consumer; at least it should be.

What brings me to this point is the perspective that the "brand" keywords are upper funnel and need to be controlled by the parent company, presenting the brand's message. On the surface, this rationale may appear solid. However, this is the web. Old perceptions of how the brand is used by the consumer no longer apply. When someone types in "Honda", they are as likely looking for a place to buy a Honda CR-V as they are trying to figure out what the "Honda" brand stands for and what types of cars Honda has. Brand messaging control in search is about the company. Understanding the intent of the search is about the consumer.

While this conversation regularly comes up in search, the same discussion needs to happen around display. Geo-targeting, behavioral targeting and other user profiling capabilities allow us to learn about consumer intent. As they visit sites, they may indicate that it is no longer time to tell them about Honda's great quality, but instead focus on the great gas mileage of the Civic, or even the service and quality of a specific dealer. We have to be more open to the intent in order to provide the consumer with the right information.

In reality, everything we do either builds or diminishes the brand. We know that the web changes the way we interact with the consumers, but brands need to understand that it also means we have to be prepared for a much wider range of messaging than just the brand's highlights. It is very likely that, when someone uses a branded keyword term, the best service a brand can provide is to step back and let a local dealer lead the conversation. If this is the case, but the brand insists on leading with a very upper funnel message, instead of leveraging what they have built, they end up diminishing it and frustrating the consumer.