Every marketing person who sees this image always has the same initial response – ouch! What a contradiction in brand personality.

Marketers are finding it harder and harder to keep tabs on how their brand is used (or abused). With the amount of user-generated content online, it is becoming more and more difficult to protect brands from unfavorable exposure. Like it or not — and whether we initiate it or not — our brands will be involved in many conversations.  With Facebook reaching over 200 million users, and Linked-in growing by 146%  from 2007-2008, there is no doubt your brand will discussed in cyberspace.

The best way to steer the conversation in your favor is to be part of that conversation on a regular basis.

These days, social media must be a part of every marketing plan. Make sure your company is represented on industry related blogs. Conduct webinars on important industry issues, and be very clear about your company’s position on matters that are shaping your industry’s future.  The more you initiate conversation, the stronger your brand becomes.

One way to protect your brand from an OUCH!

Sometimes the placement of your advertising is just as important as the creative message.  Great example of both in this simple idea for a floor sticker from Saatchi & Saatchi in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Get them off your dog.

Image from The Cool Hunter

In the early days of the World Wide Web, those of us trying to figure out this new medium (especially business-wise) used to hear the phrase, “content is king” all the time. It was in part because there was so much emphasis on new and startling technologies that the purpose of it all sometimes got lost in the shuffle. It was also a way to raise the value and visibility of the content providers themselves, to be at least slightly commensurate with the exalted status of the technology suppliers. Everyone needed to get invested if this thing was gonna work.

Content is still king, but it rules increasingly by committee. The biggest web content provider is now the vast array of users themselves. Whereas once it took resources and expertise to disseminate information online, friendly technologies like blogs, social networks, and real-time communication tools such as Twitter now make it possible for anyone to be a broadcaster. What makes any particular content, communication, or information valuable, however, is the degree to which it is embraced, approved, and shared.

Providing sharable content is already a new fundamental for online marketing. It starts with the notion that branding is as much about expertise as it is about image and message. Ideas and information comprise expertise, and can be offered in a range of formats — text, image, video, even games and widgets and mini-applications — and through a variety of delivery systems. So, it’s no surprise, then, when even the likes of Microsoft gets in on content sharing.

And yet, in this accelerated world of ever-evolving modes of marketing communications, some traditional principles still apply. “It’s all in the execution,” for example, or, put another way, “the devil is in the details.” Embracing new paradigms is not enough. Smart strategy is useless without tight tactics.

Let’s look at a rather instructive example.

Microsoft runs a banner ad on Wired, and right inside the banner is the offer of what appears to be a useful article. Smart strategy: Create expert content, share expert content. And they are apparently making it very easy to get — my initial expectation is that I can download it right from the banner.

Except that I can’t.

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Social media is becoming the unlimited universe in which people are exchanging ideas, both profound and moronic.  It is the world people enter through their Internet devices to investigate any interest they might have.  And not related only to purchases, as the web was primarily viewed once upon a time (like, last year).

The web-enabled screen is like the world’s largest accessible library, business conference, tipline, entertainment source, and way to share your life with your friends.  Your browser is rapidly becoming the window through which everything passes.

The question is: What will you do with all the time you used to spend going to stores, libraries, conferences, making phone calls, attending seminars, searching out others who share your interests?

In the digital world, matching advertising to content (often referred to as contextual) can be accomplished in a myriad of ways, some general and some specific, some effective and some not. Similar capability in television is minimal.

Occasionally, however, unintended associations can occur. The clip is a bit long but stick with it. The payoff is hilarious (despite–or perhaps because of–the serious nature of the programming), and a nice bit of leading-brand schadenfreude.

I recently finished reading “Moneyball”, the national bestselling book about baseball by Michael Lewis.  I am always amazed when I mention the book to my baseball fan friends.  It is always, “Oh, that’s the Billy Beane book.”  They seem to think the book was written by Billy Beane, the visionary general manager of the Oakland A’s or, if not written by him, was written about him.

The fact is that “Moneyball” is no more about Billy Beane than “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” is about Nero or “The DaVinci Code” is about Jesus Christ.  Major characters, yes.  But not the real focus of the story.

The fact is that the real story of “Moneyball” is captured in its subtitle, “The art of winning an unfair game”.  At its essence, it’s about finding ways to succeed when challenged by circumstances.

To set the scene, “Moneyball” positions baseball as an “unfair game” because Major League Baseball teams, dependent on the size of their market, have vastly different resources (budgets to spend on players’ salaries).  Small market teams like the A’s are constrained to very limited salaries while big market teams like the Yankees can spend almost whatever they want to acquire the best and most expensive players.  How then can any small market team even hope to succeed when faced with this, seemingly overwhelming challenge?

“Moneyball” proposes that it can be done - indeed was done by the A’s under the direction of Billy Beane – by adopting Challenger Brand behavior.

What was this Challenger Brand behavior specifically demonstrated in “Moneyball”?

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Dominant brands protect their position by outspending the competition and maintaining a low-risk mar-com status quo. This is also their Achilles heel. With enough creative courage, smaller brands can fly in under the radar and siphon off significant market share. This is the Challenger Brand.  This is where we live.

Challenger Brands have the vision to flip the rules of their category. They have the determination to craft more effective communications. They have a willingness to take creative risks, and a commitment to develop real and lasting relationships with their customers.

As a Challenger Brand agency, we take responsibility for every thought, feeling, association and expectation the market has about you – everywhere, all the time, regardless of project size. Your brand is an unwritten guarantee of performance. Our job  is to convey this promise in a way that translates into greater demand and higher revenue.

The Challenger Blog will be a repository, a discussion starter, a portfolio and a promise of all the things that make smaller and leaner better and smarter.