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Brand New – Can a brand be built on conversation?

by Hayden Raw

Modern brands are usually built around some form of story or mantra. Stories are great; they act as cultural anchors for potential customers to associate with. They are one of the most effective pieces of your brand strategy and without a story a lot of brands would not survive. The construct of a brand is evolving with the uptake of social media induced, two-way communication. We are seeing a lot more brand influence coming from customers. With this in mind, I want to explore whether a brand culture can be built using conversation.

Lets break down the difference between a brand story and a brand culture. I like to think of this as a one-to-many relationship. A culture is constructed from many stories. Culture is the macro state. It’s built up over time through consistent and positioned story telling.

What are the key parts to building a brand culture and how does that relate to communication? I recently spoke to Keren from Trellis Brand Strategy about whether brand culture could be built on conversation. She mentioned that brand’s inherently require a personality before they can have a conversation. I tend to agree. To exist in conversation without personality is impossible. Every communication a brand makes reflects at least the personality of the communicator. In its simplest of forms brand culture exists through the personality of the communicator. What I’m looking for is whether this personality is a heavy enough to influence ongoing culture.

For experiment sake, lets say the personality comes first. A brand communicates to its customers with a preconceived personality. Would it be possible for the brands personality to change based on customer association? Presuming this is a strategic personality; would it incur more harm than good if it were to change? That’s a question for your strategist to figure out the correct answer to.

What if communication comes first? Lets get a little hypothetical and imagine that a totally blank canvas brand was to engage in communication with customers. Obviously they would need a product offering and a target market, but lets assume their brand culture is non-existent. Would it be possible for the culture to be built by the association of the customers? Most definitely. This type of association-driven culture works through both purchasing and communication patterns.

Brand culture is a product of so many factors. The most important are product, personality, story and communication. The way they affect a business is relative to the engagement channels and methods. I believe that a brand culture can be formed by communication, but I also believe that to truly make the best use of brands resources they should have a pre-conceived personality that jump-starts the engagement.

So what do you think? Is it possible to create a brand culture based on communication? What needs to come first, the personality or the communication? Is the role of the designer to create a personality based on the visual?