You may have read, or certainly heard about James Surowiecki’s book ‘the wisdom of crowds – why the many are smarter than the few….’ There is a beguiling appeal to the simple, and almost intuitive notion that more people giving more information/opinion will lead to a more accurate out come. Wikipedia is built on such a notion. In fact, as JS himself points out there are a vast number of situations where this is not the case. Indeed three of the 5 main situations could almost be used to define a crowd – where the group is too homogenous, imitative and emotional.

This is not the place to debate the finer points of information theory, but James’ book, together with the rapid rise of virtual crowd building via social networks, should give us involved in marketing and communication pause for thought.

The digital landscape might offer consumers the near perfect information that would lead to optimum decision making, but I fear that we are asking too much. Human behaviour certainly in the instance of brand consumption is not to analyse minutely, but to buy on the basis of consistency, reflective of one’s values and to make them feel good. Hmmmm isn’t that ‘homogenous, imitative and emotional’ behaviour?

So does this mean the aims of brands and crowd wisdom are technically at odds but in reality aligned? Perhaps, but it unquestionably makes the job of brands harder. To me, the mantra for brands must be ‘Honesty, transparency, and people’. Honesty – Align your marketing to what you really do or you will get found out. Transparency – let people see what you are doing – if you don’t they will jump to conclusions. People – technology is actually making the importance of a brand’s people far more important they need to be good and they need to care, whether that’s in ideas for the brand, the salesman or the service centre handler.

Because the reality is it’s easier than ever for the slightest negative perception of the brand to incur the wrath of the crowd – just ask Northern Rock or the McCann’s…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Digital. 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.