Every person is a brand, Mark Hass said to an audience gathered Monday at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.
Hass, former president and CEO of the PR firm Edelman U.S. and senior adviser at Teneo Strategy, discussed strategic communication in a digital context at the school’s Must See Mondays speaker series.
Hass said the methods of managing a traditional brand and a digital brand have a lot of overlap.
“You need to be aware that people will kind of make decisions and judgments about you based on what they see in social space,” he said.
Moderator Kristin Bloomquist, executive vice president and general manager at advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt, noted that employers no longer only look at the resumes of potential workers but also at their social media profiles, like Facebook and LinkedIn.
“Your reputation lives online these days,” Bloomquist said.
The digital context of today’s world and the increasingly online presence of consumers have forced brands to change the way they operate. Companies have an obligation to interact directly with customers, and, according to Bloomquist, they need to make sure their customer service strategy matches their marketing strategy.
“Individuals, but also companies, have a much greater risk by ignoring the conversations,” Bloomquist said. “They may never answer the 800 number or never respond to a letter that you write, but if you put it online, it’s out in the universe and they can’t ignore you any longer.”
With such a fast spread of information, Hass said the issues companies face are amplified in the digital world. Hass discussed Chipotle’s recent food contamination problems and the brand’s lack of transparency regarding the issue, despite the digital spread of information about it.
“It’s a reflection of how badly they managed the digital context that this unfolded in,” Hass said.
Media companies have also had to change their approach in order to keep up with the digital age, according to Hass. With Google and Facebook controlling a majority of content, many users get their news via links on search engines and social media, as opposed to visiting the home page of a news site. This makes a news outlet’s distribution just as crucial as its content.
“Those companies have enormous control over what we see, how we see it, what happens when we see it, and you need to be aware of that as a news and information consumer,” Hass said.
Navigating the modern world of information is easier for companies that were born in the digital age, according to Bloomquist.
“Traditional media companies, like Financial Times, like the Arizona Republic, like the New York Times, are trying to figure out how to become digital and how to monetize that. And they haven’t figured it out,” Bloomquist said. “Digital native companies, like Buzzfeed … those companies, because they grew up in this age, have figured it out more easily than the traditional media companies.”
But Bloomquist also said that these issues of adaptation and perception extend beyond the scope of media.
“I think that it’s no longer just digital media,” Bloomquist said after the presentation, “that the landscape is so huge and it is changing the way in which we do business as communication professionals, but also how companies do business.”
Contact the reporter at libby.allnatt@asu.edu
