Who Cares about Public Opinion? It’s All About Published Opinion

If you look in my kitchen, you will find many brands that I love and these often come along for the ride when I talk about my life.  If I post a recipe online, I would include the name of the chicken stock I use (Kitchen Basics) as it’s just as important to me as to the amount that I use.  Why?  Because I am a brand advocate.  I believe in what that company does and makes.  Not because someone asked me to.  Not because I get a discount when I talk about them.  Could the brand do a better job of harnessing my enthusiasm? Yes.

In this fast-paced world of technology, each new advancement enables me (the consumer) to talk louder, and carry and even bigger stick. Social media has become our stage on which brands can be championed or vilified and clients have found they are hard pressed to police all this chatter.

In this age of social media the only thing you really own is the ability to embrace or alienate the crowd.  So, which is it?  Live the life of Mad Men and keep pushing the 30 sec spots, or embrace the fan and start setting up blank canvases everywhere for the crowd to paint for us?

I recently sat with Frank Rose, of WIRED magazine who is currently writing a new book entitled “Welcome to the Hyperdome.”  Frank outlines how the internet is changing storytelling by saying, “we are moving into a hyperdome, into an all-encompassing info-maze where everyone and everything are connected.  Boundaries that once seemed clear—between storyteller and audience, content and marketing, illusion and reality—are starting to blur.”

We have already seen the signs of this with your basic restaurant review.  Would you prefer to read one review from Time Out magazine or the posts of 50 consumers like yourself on Yelp?  Sorry TONY, your reservation was canceled.

The result of this world social order power struggle is that it’s time to think of your brands as clubs—they can be health clubs, night clubs, private clubs or social clubs.  As with any club the members make up the most important element of the club, for without them the club is just another empty space.  Every club member is an advocate, ambassador, spokesperson and mascot. It’s our job to give them the tools to do their jobs and smother them with praise when they work for us.

As for the detractors—the nasty Nellies—the ones that never have anything nice to say: If we do our jobs right, the advocates should drown out the dissenters.

Why don’t I have a membership to Club Kitchen Basics?  I don’t know, but I should.  They know I’m here.  I’ve sent them love letters.  Turns out, they don’t have a club.

So if you’re a brand manager (at Kitchen Basics) remember that every positive email from a customer about your product, work, and customer service is a brand new club member.  You should add my name to the list of brand advocates, friend ME on Facebook.  Send ME a birthday card, put MY name in lights.

As Winston Churchill once said… “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”

….And I talk a lot.