Ad Age coins 'Brandividuals'

Lots going on in the social media world today. I'm sure much will be written about the Skittles homepage play today with Twitter but I'm always really interested in how brands are talking about using social media and I think Ad Ages coining of the Brandividual definitely touches my team so I thought I'd give a description of how Windows has decided to deal with this issue.

The term 'Brandividual' is so new it hasn't even made it's way to Wikipedia yet. The basic concept is when an individual talking about a brand becomes more prevalent than the brand itself and the brand is then benefitting from the equity of the person's popularity. A good example of this was when Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft. Much of the brand equity Robert built during his time at Microsoft was attached to his personal brand and not Microsoft so when he left the brand equity went with him. Here's how we in Windows currently think about the difference between brands equity and marketers equity.

@MSWindows and @WindowsLive are our branded Twitter accounts. This is where we talk about the products and provide customer solutions, support and general Q&A. We want the accounts to have a personal feel and bring a face to the brand so we post the profile of the people doing the Tweeting using ^co tags to identify who said what but the account is clearly owned by the brand and the brand is the 'hero' of the account. Same theory goes for our Facebook and YouTube channels. Account belongs to the brand. Goal: drive awareness and customer satisfaction with Windows.

As members of the social media community we also think it's important to participate in conversations with marketers so we have our own Twitter accounts and blogs. Ali, Marcus and I tweet what's interesting to us as marketers working at Microsoft. This brand equity we are building in our own personal brands. We are always very transparent about working for Microsoft when we blog, tweet, vlog, etc. Account belongs to the marketer. Goal: build credibility/awareness for the Windows social media team. Bring a face and name to a big brand.

One big difference you can tell between the two types of accounts are the followers. My followers are interested in social media marketing, fashion and Marty, not necessarily Windows. On the other hand followers of the MSWindows account are interested in Windows and certainly don't need to know or even care that I run the social media team behind the account. Success for them is when we answer their question and give them a good customer experience.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing,windows marketing,twitter,blogging