Acting Like 3-Year-Olds With Megaphones

"This damn thing doesn’t work," my 3-year-old daughter, Sedona, growls from the backseat.

I turn down the music and look behind me. She is smiling and pointing out the window at a service truck traveling in the lane next to us.

"Look daddy, just like your phone," she continues after gesturing towards the logo on the side of the truck that matches the one on my phone. "This damn thing doesn’t work," she says once more in a more gruff voice – no doubt an attempt at imitating her father and sounding more masculine than I ever will.

Only moments ago, I had tossed my phone onto the passenger seat. I must have uttered that phrase. Yet another dropped call by a certain network (that will remain nameless) that promises a lack of them.

Some fathers would have used this as a teaching opportunity for their daughters about how to handle anger, appropriate language, etc. However, Sedona has a business writing dork for a father, so, what else would I do but think about branding as it relates new marketing tools available on the Internet?

The following are insights that I had after listening to Sedona’s observations:

1. Branding works (but not always the way that we want it to). Sedona picked up on the idea that the logo or symbol is associated with "doesn’t work" or maybe "ticks Daddy off." The association was formed successfully, and it was certainly not the intended message that the executives had when they dreamed up their marketing campaign.

2. Kids hear and see everything, so be mindful of what you say and more importantly what you do. I create certain expectations in my kids’ minds when I tell them things like, "we should always be honest" or "picking your nose is not polite," however I have been caught going against my own advice. This causes confusion. Replace the word "kids" in the above sentence with "customers" or "employees." No amount of billboards, television ads or top-down messaging will be able to erase their ideas about who you are after they have had a "brand experience" (Look, Dad’s picking his nose). The phone company that I was upset with actually amplified my frustrations with their marketing. They said one thing (not a lot of dropped calls) and delivered something very different.

3. Negative ideas travel faster and are more exciting than positive ideas. Why did Sedona pick up on that particular outburst as opposed to our conversation about Dora the Explorer? There is a reason why most popular music is about heartache and pain. It inspires, and it sells. Right or wrong, this bad news travels faster than any other news.

4. You can’t ignore the 3 year olds any more. With the new marketing tools available to any of your customers on the Internet, that bad news now travels at rocket ship speed and is amplified to ear-splitting decibels. Remember that YouTube video of a cable installer asleep on somebody’s sofa? Admit it, you find that story more interesting than that company’s latest press release. The people that you thought you could conveniently ignore are now talking louder than ever to each other about you, and (here is the real issue) you can’t control that.

Many of these observations are nothing new. To a certain extent, your marketing has never been yours. It belongs to your customers and employees. The only thing that is new is the way in which your customers and employees talk to each other.

When I ask business owners what makes their company so successful, many of them tell me, "It’s our outstanding customer service." (Insert golf clap here) Congratulations. That is part of doing business. If you want to truly promote your business ahead of the competition, you are going to need to do better than that.

So what is the modern parent of a company with 3-year-olds to do?

We have several options. A) Curse the fates that got us here, and lash out against bloggers, YouTube posters, etc. B) Try harder to control our messages to employees and customers with more layers between "us and them," or C) Embrace the new marketing and change our mindset to that of "us and us."

Even though I did not do well on standardized testing, I am pretty sure C is the most constructive. This is not a trend that is going away. Blogs and other networking sites allow a freedom that many consumers and employees have always wanted, and they are begging you to be transparent, authentic and real with them.

Begin your education now. Believe me, I have a long way to go myself in understanding these ways of communication, but all I can do is make a beginning. My usefulness to those that I serve will be hampered if I don’t start, so I owe it to them to learn about the new marketing.

Google "how to start a blog," go to blogger.com, look at Wikipedia and YouTube.com, read the people you like and imitate them on your blog. If I can do it, then you can, too…dammit.