What's in a brand...?
Ok so my friend Ralph’s post over at Brand Logic has me thinking this afternoon. Although this topic isn’t strictly tech related, I think it applies to a lot of gadgets and gear that we love, so I’ll try and approach it from that angle.
Ralph’s post was regarding the SciFi Channels recent or soon change to SyFy. I say recent or soon because it just doesn’t matter to me. Which is I guess, is the point.
When was the last time you turned on the TV to find something to watch and tuned to a specific channel? If you are like me it’s probably been years. What I do is scroll the program guide looking for a show I recognize or want to watch. I don’t even usually even notice what channel the show is on until after I have tuned to the show and I see the transparent logo in the corner of my TV Screen.
So what exactly does SyFy think is happening? People are checking out an episode of Ghost Hunters and noticing that it says SciFi in the corner and realizing “ohh sci fi, I don’t like space and aliens and things, I better find something else.” Uhh yeah which over priced marketing firm sold them that line? Cause that’s just not happening.
The truth is the channel could be called the Happy Favorite Show Channel (HFSC) and it wouldn’t matter to me. As long as it had BattleStar, Star Trek, Stargate and the rest of the content that I am looking for is there I’d keep tuning it in.
Lets point this a bit more at the Tech sector and look at Hulu. I am starting to watch more and more TV on Hulu. A few weeks ago, when my Time Warner DVR (crap) decided to not record all of the second episode of Merlin, my wife and I watched that episode on Hulu. Now did I go, hey let’s check out some NBC show because they are all good? No I didn’t even know what network Merlin was on, I just searched for the content I wanted and watched it. I didn’t matter to me what channel it was on, or what network produced it. I was there watching their ads because it was the content I wanted.
Ok ok enough with entertainment. when it comes to gadgets or hardware the brand matters doesn’t it? Again I say no.
I’ll let that sink in a bit, because yes I am an Apple fanboy, and I am telling you that the Apple name does not make me buy things. It’s the Apple products I love, and lets look at it that way. Sure I love my Apple products, but if the iPhone was still the iPhone but it was made by GE, I’d still like the iPhone. Computers, sure I am using my beloved MacBook Pro to type up this article right now, but what I love about my MacBook Pro isn’t the hardware as much as it’s the OS X operating system. If I could buy OSX and easily put it on a Dell or other discount brand computer, would I? Yep you bet, especially in this economy. In fact I have, my Dell Mini 9 netbook runs OS X currently. It’s a great system. But I can’t commit to that for my main systems because there is always a chance that Apple will do something that will block OS X from working on non Apple hardware, and I just can’t risk that on a production system.
Generic drugs are another great example. Do you care that your medicine is a generic and not a name brand. Nope. It’s the content that you want.
I dare say there is no brand out there that you use for brand alone. Odds are you are there for the content of that brand, and if that same content was available elsewhere, you’d follow the content you like and not the brand.
There is one place that brand does seem to matter and have an impact, and that’s when your brand becomes synonymous with problems. You’ll notice above I put the word crap in parenthesis next to the words Time Warner DVR. Time Warner because of their dreadful DVR product as well as other changes in their service and policies has become a bad brand for me. Anything they put out now will be looked at skeptically at best or out right dismissed. But even so, if they came out with a new product or service that got rave reviews, I’d give it a look despite my prejudices, so even there, good content could save a bad name.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow for companies, especially companies that specialize in building and marketing brands, but in the end the brand name, the brand logo, the brand itself is an after thought to the consumer. If you have a good brand name, you might get them in the door, but if you want to keep them, you need content, and I think in most cases it’s the content that will refer the customer to your brand.
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