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Business book review: Brand Anarchy

23 May 2012 by BusinessTraveller
This is a really good book for anyone involved in journalism, marketing or communications. Unlike so many books on the subject, it is grounded in common sense, properly analytical and supports its propositions with instructive case studies and anecdotes. It’s also well written – the authors started as journalists and it shows (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?). They ask the right questions of themselves and then provide the answers, most of which it’s hard to disagree with. First things first – they define brand as “... a connection between an organisation and its customers” and show how the internet has finally proved how incorrect companies were in thinking they ever had control of this connection. As they point out, the internet has multiplied the problem by a billion, and then for good measure made sure that anything negative is immortalised for ever digitally where anyone can find them. They even have a good case study on this when someone dragged up an old story from years before and used it to damage a brand (Asda and the Daily Mirror, and the unfortunate placing of an advert for DVDs aimed at fathers opposite a piece on wife-beating). The point was that although the story was retweeted and blogged about, journalists investigated it and discovered the story was several years old. The authors draw several lessons from this, and one of them is that although journalism is under severe attack, “the basic tenets of professional journalism must be maintained.” Quoting Eric Schmidt of Google “every two days we now create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation up until 2003”, the authors point out that an organisation may not even be involved in the conversations taking place about it, but it is possible to monitor those conversations. There follows some excellent research on whether the current tools are sophisticated enough to do this (answer: no, not without human interpretation), and, later, what communication skills will be needed for practitioners in this area along with professional development, building a network online and managing your personal reputation online. “If Facebook is your personal network and Linkedin your professional network, Twitter is the crossover between the two....” For companies, the opportunities, and the dangers, are immense. “Your audience wants some type of engagement with you and is almost certainly actively identifying itself on the Internet.... invest your energy in identifying and listening to your audience. Then plan how you will orchestrate the right conversations for your brand in order to engage and participate.” Quotation doesn’t do the book justice, however, since it’s a thoughtful read which asks as many questions as it provides answers (and which references many different experts – you even get “Alastair Campbell’s five organisational communication themes”). Along the way you’ll encounter everything from brand jacking and how to protect yourself, to why mashup means nothing, and also quite a lot. Still, there’s an urgency to all of this, as summed up by the author’s final words after discussing what companies and individuals should do “Oh, and get on with it. You haven’t much time.” Tom Otley
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