Search is the Anti-Brand

Lurking just beneath all the latest brilliant thinking about branding is the not-so new world of  Internet search, and the hint of its utility beyond SEO and the other lead generation tactics most companies have embraced.

In my new book, Branding Only Works on Cattle, I contemplate this strange thought: there's no there there in search.  No place to put your brand as a static thing that marketing experts have designed.  Search doesn't operate in the language of colors and buzzwords, and it doesn't force consumers to think the things your branding has thrown at them. 

It doesn't exist unless someone dips into it, almost like a quantum physics moment: consumers conjure it into being by stepping through one of a limitless number of doors, at a limitless number of different moments in time.  Web search then aggregates, from all of the potential information available online, to create search results. 

It's a snapshot of a moment. 

Internet search has forever changed the way consumers behave.  It shifts authority from the information-giver to the answer-seeker, and exposes every conceivable aspect of brand to scrutiny.  Even in its early adolescence – it was only 10 years ago that Google's founders were still in grad school-- it daily puts many millions of people in contact with information they never would have otherwise found. 

From locating the nearest bakery, to finding how-to instructions for building bombs, it has enabled people to find much of what they look for, and sometimes find something else, or more.  However imperfect, web search is the lubrication that makes connecting possible for businesses all over the world, not to mention governments, special interest groups, and porn collectors.   

The good news is that no longer does your business have to wait for all of that brand awareness to trickle down to the masses.  Search allows interested folks to percolate up via their own inquisitiveness, and literally ask you to tell them something.  This is what experts call behavioral marketing, and it references the specific technique of placing a clickable term (or ad) in front of a consumer who has the highest probability (based on past behavior clicking on things) to click on it.  It has inherent value, because there's usually a reliable, statistical model to correlate X number of clicks with Y number of sales transactions.

The bad news is that this has nothing to do with branding.  In fact, Internet search is the anti-brand.

We now know that newly-empowered consumers are less gullible and loyal, and more finicky than we'd ever imagined.  User-controlled consumption of information (and subsequent behavior) has revealed that many of those supposed brand relationships on which corporations relied were really nothing more than habits, often times unconscious.  People paid more for things because they didn't know better.  They behaved certain ways because of routine.  Branding didn't cause this phenomena as much as cover-up many of its true drivers.

So, while most branding is still based on something that can be said or declared, in a magazine ad, bantered back-and-forth in an online forum, framed in an inane Internet video – or as the deliverable from a link in web search – people have changed their behavior.

Corporate marketing is still focused on optimizing search terms to promote the stuff of branding, consumers are already past that step: I'd suggest that people don't search with questions about brands as much as generic terms about things or activities.  They're not looking for answers from brands, but rather answers about products and services.

Search algorithms provide the connections and associations that corporations assumed, once upon a time, could be made by branding.  Web search undos these connections, and treats brands as words, just like in the Middle Ages...marks with no implicit meanings beyond those which an anonymous public of Internet users, and secret equations, choose to give to them.

What's connecting people to products and services is not a direct relationship with corporate marketing, but rather the independent, user-prompted behavior of search.  And who needs the shorthand of brands if the information, whether disparate or aggregated, is both available and constantly updated 24/7 online?

Comments

[BIG Kahuna]

"The bad news is that this has nothing to do with branding. In fact, Internet search is the anti-brand."

Nope, you're looking at it wrong. Here's why SEO is branding:

1. You can make your title tag have any message you want. Yours could read Branding is a behavior not smoke and mirrors.

Most people HAVE no idea how to use a title tag properly.

2. Google is a trusted brand with search results. Appearing "naturally" tells the searcher that Google has put its stamp of approval on you by being in the top ten. Why else would king Google put a result in if not for best results.

3. Proper SEO builds credibility and brand awareness. If you consistenly rank in Google's top ten for a myriad of related phrases searches see this and recall it. For instance if you were to search branding company, branding agency, brand identity, internet branding, corporate branding we'd be found in Google's top ten for all.

Believe it or not consumers still search a company's website consistently. I'm amazed at this but everytime we run SEO reports we see it.

Humans search in a way that will best help them find anwers. SEO companies like us anticipate what that will be and apply it to a website. Therefore branding is ABSOLUTELY acheived.

When someone searches for a Boton SEO company they find us and call. That's branding. We made them find us in that search, they see our message, visit our website and either fill out a form or call us.

SEO is Branding.

[Jonathan]

Naw, I think it's glorious lead generation. By your reckoning, a larger Yellow Pages ad would be branding, too?

I do agree that the attribution of appearing the the top of a search result suggests credibility, just like the term 'popular' attached to a news story about a product or service does the same. And lots of companies don't get this...successs is a vital brand attribute.

But the difference between 'awareness' of a company or product name, and 'brand awareness' is vast, in my humble opinion.

[BIG Kahuna]

Not glorious lead generation. SEO produces 90% of my new leads and they're hot with problems needing to be solved. Ready to go, serve em up kind of folks. No rfp's, competition, just me and them.

Can't tell you how many times I've heard, "I've seen you all over Google". Presto, I'm trusted.

Never mind the title tags and descriptions that come up in literally thousands of searches for us each day.

Yellow pages is advertising, not branding. And showing up in Yellowpages just meant you paid.

Natural SEO is all Google's doing. See the difference?

[Mary Adams]

In order to be visible for search, a company has to be out there on the web talking the talk and walking the walk of its brand. So I don't think the search is an "anti-brand," it's a tool to connect a company with people that are interested in what the company offers--not just as the slogan level, but at a deeper level. It's like the difference between telling you I like to read and showing you a list of the books I read this summer. Internet content tells the story, draws the picture that rounds out the consumer's experience. My book list is a much more effective way of attracting like-minded readers than a slogan, "dedicated reader."

[Yaybia]

We tend to disagree.

http://www.yaybia.com/2008/10/search-is-anti-brand.html

and well said @MaryAdam!