Companies do not “control their brand”. Brand managers do not “control their brand”.

Their customers control their brands.

Brands have always and only existed in the eyes of the beholders…their customers.

This has always been true, but corporate marketeers were able to control content production and distribution with a heavy-handed, ego-centric, self-absorbed corporate focus. Like a cattle rancher scalding baby cows. Only the hot iron was called a “brand standards guide” and the restraint used to hold the poor cow was called an “advertising budget”.

But cheap and easy digital content production, distributed via no-cost digital & social media channels, has completely shattered that stagnant old corporate marketing dogma.

Your customers, partners and individual employees are now your dominant brand gatekeepers, whether you like it and accept it or not. They’re the ones making your brand content, distributing your brand content, influencing other potential customers…all faster then you could ever hope to respond. Your tedious “brand standards guide” is totally useless, irrelevant and ineffective if your potential new customers only ever encounter your brand as mediated through 3rd part content creators.

Marketing managers who continue to believe they “control their brand” are hopelessly out of touch and hopelessly chasing behind how their customers actually perceive their brands…as of this week, this hour, or this minute.

At best, companies can hope to guide their brand. And get real: No creator/influencer/customer gives a rat’s ass about your precious new logotype and the exact kerning of your corporate font. So find innovative ways to directly power your most fervent advocates with content libraries and content production opportunities. Make it incredible easy for them to produce great content about your products or services. Make it easy for them to share and pitch your product to other potential customers. Make it easy for them to win clicks and subscribers while still being positive about your offering. And evolve and iterate this content library and production opportunities so rapidly, that you’re always the easiest and “freshest” company to produce content about.

Only then will your “branding” actually start to produce results…you know, like revenue.