THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

Okay, it’s time for a new phrase: the Lens of the Crowd. Like a parabolic solar concentrator made up of millions of flat mirrors, each focused on a single point, the Lens of the Crowd will be the new watchdog for your brand–and your public persona.

In my post "Googleability = Credibility," I commented on how creating a real, believable, and immediate public persona for yourself will be critical if you want to be "invited to the table" for business in the near future. Since then, I’ve had some people comment "Well, yeah, okay, but what keeps me from creating a persona that’s completely different than my true self? After all, this is even more nebulous than creating an avatar in Second Life. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?"

Well, it’s simple: the crowd.

In fact, we’re already seeing the leading edge of this phenomenon. When a large consumer electronics company posted a fake user-created blog last year to increase interest in their new gaming platform, the truth behind it was outed in hours. How? Someone in the crowd sensed the blogs were fake. Whether it was a turn of phrase or a too-professional look, it set someone off on a quest to find the truth. In hours, links to comps of the blogs at a marketing agency were posted in comments on the fake Sony blogs. User opinion took a decidely negative turn, with many readers urging the company to "stick to making products" rather than "playing with bad marketing."

In these days when someone can look up the owner of a website, use Technorati search to cross-reference usernames, go to Google to see if they have any other forum postings, and then activate a community like SomethingAwful or Fark to dig even deeper, it’s time to learn a new marketing reality: if the crowd cares enough about something, they’ll dissect it. And they’ll find the truth.

Today, it’s easy to extend this marketing reality to your own brand. It’s no longer enough to create a brand platform, key messages, a personality, and the vehicles to deliver them. If your users don’t agree with what you’re saying, they’re empowered not only to talk back, but to activate the community to discover the truth–and then, in turn, post it to thousands of blogs. Including your own. Delivering on your brand promise has always been important, but never has the impact been so immediate or extensive as it is today. Months of work can be undone, literally, in hours.

Tomorrow, the lens of the crowd will extend to your own persona. If the crowd cares enough about you, they’ll focus their lens upon you. If you’re a public servant, or a prominent businessperson, or a thought leader, you’d be well-served by ensuring the persona you create today is real, honest, and true.

Because the Lens of the Crowd will only become more powerful.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Ruminations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.