CONTENT… MY USE OR MY SYSTEM?

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What is my apperception of this?

How is brand content, which now dominates marketing communications, managing to match its most engaging media?  And how does a key audience specifically use the content that the brand is communicating?  There is a prevailing truth now that making a brand relevant is as uncertain as our ever-changing technology.

An answer to these questions is not yet very clear.  Instead, brands are challenged to respond to the reality that it is hard to determine whether a consumer is engaged in utilizing technology or in self-systematizing content.

What then can brand management do to create more relevant engagements?   Are there effective ways to go beyond the quick-click, speed-reading, distracted- listening or watching of new content?  Who is in control of the content?  Do the social networks and media technology receive content, edit it, and make it personal, aka editorial, communicating it in their own likeness to others?  Or are they using content as a direct feed, pickup, and duplication of provided content, aka advertorial, from a myriad of sources?  Can the consumer tell the difference and does it matter?

We might also ask: Can a system be created that will identify the consumer who wants to and then does pass content on to others?  This is a big data-mining question for the brand.

The brand marketer now has to create content that will build engagement with consumers who can and will become the brand’s customers and content sharers.

An interesting term now being used in marketing is “apperception.”  This is a process whereby perceived values of a brand are related to the consumer’s past and present experience with or knowledge of that brand.  The new perception is added to the old perception, which forms a whole new apperception.  This new apperception can be the catalyst for new sharing of content between and among social networking and brand aficionados.

The goal is to develop a brand content driven system that aligns with the consumer’s system to receive and process new content.  This is our ongoing need to connect and establish relationships with our audience.  It is certainly giving us a lot to think about and process, as we ask:

Will engagement be enough?

Drawing by Art Winters
Drawing by Art Winters

 

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.