By M. Isi Eromosele

People like to see themselves reflected in the world around them. We like to feel connected to the world.

This desire for connection is no less powerful when it comes to brands. The brands we choose, especially those we keep coming back to, that we talk about in professional circles, and that we recommend to our friends and family resonate in an important way with who we are and what we like.

The need to make an internal association with the values of your audience is a fundamental tenet of branding.

With the expansion of the Internet, the explosion of mobile apps, and the broad impact social media has had on the relationship between brands and their audiences, the value of developing internal association with your audience has grown.

As opportunities for dynamic dialogue between business and consumer have multiplied exponentially, organizations have a need to find ways to engage and elevate their associative value.

Brands that get it right go beyond appealing to material needs; they transcend the superficial back-and-forth to engage with audiences not just around what people seek in a material sense, but on a deeper and more emotional level.

Consumers are now more empowered in the marketplace. And the organizations that are trying to reach this new breed of customers must realize that they have to respond to a subtle but powerful shift in people’s decision making: from “I want” to “I am.”

The “I am” mentality means that decision making isn’t just about purchase anymore. It’s also about the choices individuals make to incorporate a brand into their online profiles, as a way to bring more personal depth and dimension to their public personas.

It’s about the fact that the brands you follow on Twitter says as much about you as who follows you. It’s about the decision individuals make to include certain brands in small talk to drive home a point or to show off a particular sense of personal style. It’s about the choice individuals make to drive an extra three miles from one store to another, because the first “doesn’t have my brand.”

This “I am” mentality complicates the media landscape that brands navigate today. It requires brands to know a lot more about how their target audience makes associations, where they are making these associations and why.

It requires that brands think not just about individual channels, but about in what way they integrate with each other and the relative value each channel adds to the overarching experience created for the target audience.

Building an emotional connection with the “I am” mentality is necessary to keep brands relevant, valuable and alive in an age of dynamic media. It opens up significant opportunities to align closely with passionate people who will engage, co-create for greater value and spread your brand message with the influence of peer-to-peer authenticity.

But building that connection also demands more than ever that brands know who their market audience is, so they can more credibly flex its personality across multiple touch points. This represents a significant investment and requires a willingness to embrace complexity.

The Right Narrative

To be successful, a brand’s story must connect with a larger conversation that’s happening in the market communities. People connect best with brands that communicate through storytelling. People relate to a story that specifically resonates with the human experience and is relevant to the way people touch the brand.

The trick is tapping into the cultural narrative of the audience you want to reach in order to tell the right story. The complexity of the media landscape can make this difficult for brand managers and communicators. It raises questions like “What behaviors should I look at?” “What conversations should I listen to?” “What metrics should I measure?”

To understand the greater narrative of your target audience, context is the key: grasping not only what people are talking about, but why; knowing not only where people are coming from, but where they’re going; seeing the contrast between what people like, and what they dislike.

In creating and managing brand value, companies should:

Listen

Conversation tells us what topics have momentum, what captures attention, what captures the imagination; what we want to share and what we want our community to react to. To find the true thread of conversation, you have to look at what people are saying across channels, wherever genuine, candid conversation can be had: social networks like Facebook, social microblogs like Twitter and across the blogosphere.

By listening for how people talk about your brand in the context of how your product actually fits within their lives, you can learn what people really care about, and find the right balance of emotional and functional messages to deliver at which key points along the customer journey.

Look

Behavior shows us how key themes of conversations take root to motivate engagement and how the narrative plays out in our everyday actions. This is where the spark of association can be seen, indicating potential for building a long-term-

value relationship.

For brands, this means it is important to reward associative behaviors to show that you are paying attention and willing to engage. Think about the associative behaviors you want to encourage when it comes to your brand - is it a Facebook “Like” that grants your brand badge status on an individual’s page?

Take Action

Opportunities become clear when we see alignment between genuine conversations and behaviors happening among the people we want to reach and the core values and attributes we want to stand for.

When you know what your audience cares about, where they spend their time and how they demonstrate association, you can step back and examine what defines your brand at its core.

You can also figure out how to bridge the gap between what your audience talks about and where you naturally intersect with that conversation.

Look at your brand messages. Do they speak to the interests your audience voices in their online conversation? Listen to your brand voice. Does it use the language that fits with how your audience speaks? Do you sound like one of them? Review your brand touch points. Do you have a presence where your audience spends time? Are you there to help them when it comes to making decisions related to your product category?

So listen, observe, and find the opportunities to build a deeper connection with your audience in the ways that truly reflect the essence of your brand and the value to them.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Copyright Control © 2012 Oseme Group