- Details
- Category: Properties
- 29 Apr 2014
- Written by Amor Maclang
AS developers, have you ever asked yourselves what route you would like your brand to take? Would you rather be popular or influential?
This was the viral topic my partner, Brad Geiser, discussed when he graced iBlog: The 10th Philippine Blogging Summit as a speaker earlier this month at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. He talked about the psychology and the science that accounted for what makes individuals popular and/or influential. The talk he delivered easily became the most tweeted topic during the conference, and I’d like to use some of the insights he shared to help shed light on the confusion between these two independent concepts.
With such a very stiff competition facing today’s real-estate players here in the Philippines, the challenge to stand out from the rest of the field has become a lot more daunting, especially with social media emerging as a convenient platform that helps consumers shape an opinion that may either favor or oppose your brand. How do you know which path to pursue? What do you ask yourself before you start building a following for your brand? Would you rather be seen as a popular entity or start shaping an influential identity? Let’s take a closer look at the elements that distinguish these two concepts.
What do marketers care about?
Today, in the marketing industry, we are exiting the era of reach, which is a mass marketing concept. We are reentering the era of influence, where developers who know a thing or two about being green,” for example, are now being replaced by the more valuable “sustainability advocates who empower lifestyles.
Does being a popular brand automatically make you important in the marketing mix? The answer is a big no, of course. Marketers only care about two things: reach (popularity) and thought leadership (influence). In choosing a brand ambassador, for example, remember to use popular personalities if you want to amplify a campaign. On the other hand, if you want to shape or strengthen a reputation, go with those who are influential. You do not use popularity to shape reputation, and you do not use influence to amplify a message; doing so would be inappropriate use of your resource.
Popular and influential are not the same thing and they are often confused. Engagements that are pursued even when the distinction between these two concepts are unclear are often ineffective and unsatisfying to clients.
Battling for reputation space
The pendulum used to be very much swung toward popularity. But now, the pendulum is swinging more and more toward influence as more brands and companies fight for reputation space. To be a relevant entity in today’s market environment, you need to be respected as an authority as opposed to merely being seen as someone who is simply riding on a trend.
So, would you rather be popular or influential? Some may answer, “Well, I want to be both!” But what we noticed was that, there were some societal self-correction mechanisms that prevent that from ever happening. For instance, if you tap a celebrity endorser who’s very credible but starts becoming too popular, the market will start calling him a sellout—and you don’t even know why they are calling him a sellout. Did his opinions change? Not really, but why is he being regarded as a sellout? However, if somebody becomes too popular, all of a sudden their credibility becomes suspect. It is a societal self-correcting mechanism, preventing one person from having too much influence and popularity at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that brands or people who are popular aren’t influential. They are. But you’ll never really find that many who are both really influential and really popular. Brands who managed to be like that are extremely rare; they are the true rock stars. They are popular, but what they put out are so original that they cannot be seen as selling out. These brands practice extreme reputation management.
Take a look at SMDC, for example. They are not using Sarah Geronimo to shape a reputation. They tapped her to amplify their message of quality and accessibility. Paris Hilton, too, is another example of a popular personality and Century Properties has done a terrific job in communicating their message.
An interesting brand building work that we did—which best illustrates the efficiency of knowing the distinction between popularity and influence—was when we partnered with Unilab for the Alaxan “Aray Mo, Galing Mo” campaign, which starred Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao. This may not necessarily be related to the job that we do in the real estate sector, but I know very well that developers can draw inspiration from this success story.
Manny is, hands down, one of the most popular personalities this generation has ever seen. But would you say that he’s influential? For some, his opinion on certain aspects wouldn’t bear so much. But for Aray Mo, Galing Mo, we did not use him to amplify the campaign; we used him to shape Alaxan’s reputation. But if he’s popular, how can you shape the reputation of a brand? Well, Manny is influential when it comes to something, and that’s being a badass who can absorb lots of punishments. So what we did was to simply shift him from being popular to being influential, and shaped the reputation of the brand in the process. Pain is his glory, and for that he was irreproachably credible. The guy has a PhD in punishment!
Most developers interchange the idea of popular and influential, and have a hard time utilizing their resources to their advantage. Know what you want to do and what kind of success story you’d like your brand to start fulfilling. Remember, the secret formula behind effective real-estate campaigns is this: measurability equals money. If you can measure the value that you offer to the market, you can establish a favorable reputation that will ultimately satisfy your business objectives.
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