Now that social media has shattered the illusion of brand control, is your company ready for this brave new world?

The Vatican recently announced that it was exploring mobile and social media as a way to reach people for World Youth Day. So, if a man wearing a funny-looking pointy hat gets it, what’s wrong with these companies: Louis Vuitton, Burger King, Johnson & Johnson, Taco Bell, Delta, etc., and the list goes on.

The Forrester blog came out with a list that shows which companies were punk’d by social media because of their ignorance of the new communication dynamic.

In a previous article on social media, I state: “It will just be much more difficult to lie to consumers since they have the tools and the communication ability to weed them out.” And that’s why they got punk’d. So what did they do wrong? And what do others companies do wrong when they approach social media?

There are two fundamental structural reasons that hamper current companies: layered vs. matrixed, and campaign vs. strategy.

The most powerful brands are often the ones that get left behind. Why? Because change comes much more slowly to them. Their corporate structures are layered — a tree structure of employees sitting on top of employees who sit on top of other employees, all in a tree structure of responsibility avoidance. This causes entrenchment and aversion to risk in an effort to reach that next rung. Those companies are glaciers; oil tankers trying a three-point turn; a blind squirrel trying to find a nut.

There are many reasons for that structure, but for a long time it was also the most efficient structure for the media cascade. Old media worked much the same way, rifling down from primary news sources, like a river from a mountain source hitting its tributary. Major broadcast networks and major newspapers dictated what the consumer saw, read, learned. Press releases hit primary news sources and fanned the message out. Everything was nice, neat and tidy.

And then it all started to fall apart, and it’s going to get worse. The fracturing of media communication, and many companies’ inability to spin their normal message, is causing a rethinking of how all brands will have to communicate with their consumers.

No longer can the marketing, corporate communications and senior leadership of companies remain in layered tree structures when it comes to the way they communicate their brands to the consumer. They must be matrixed, and those matrix hubs must be empowered to react without going up and down trying to force-fit a crafted message. They can keep the rest of their company functioning as is, but if they don’t rework the way those groups communicate, they are not only going to be left in the dust, they’re going to go out of business.

What they all must realize is that brand control was always an illusion, but now that illusion has been further shattered by the vortex of communication enabled by social media.

Most big brands tend to look at social media through the lens of their agencies. It’s tied into communication campaigns that are often temporal in nature. The ad agency and the marketing department do their campaign, the PR agency and corporate communications do theirs, and both stumble forward with temporal programs that may or may not get resonance.

What the consumer then sees is a company that is often schizophrenic.

Consumers do not care what your corporate structure is, and they don’t see the mini fiefdoms that you have organized around these structures. They do not see different divisions or sub-companies. You are a brand, one brand, so start acting like it. A structure for how to deal with this at a corporate strategic level must be established or your company will go from schizophrenia to multi-personality disorder.

However, all is not lost for these companies. What gives them a slight leg up in coming back is their brand power. They don’t have to sway to the latest trends because the erosion of their brand for not “getting it” takes much longer to dissipate. Also, many of the employees that jumped ship because of those companies’ myopic view of change during the first wave of the dotcom crash are now married, have children and crave a little more stability than the dynamism of being in the trenches of our industry provides. Those employees bring with them an understanding of communication, brands and consumers that is a welcome addition, albeit an often contentious one.

It’s a brave new world, but is your brand ready — and is your structure designed — to embrace it?

OK, now back to the Pope. You thought I forgot about him, didn’t you? So why does the Pope get it? Maybe it’s the whole ability to commune with an omniscient being that gives him a leg up. But in reality, from a pure business perspective, the Vatican has to get it. It has to replace an ever-eroding consumer base somehow — almost an entire generation for whom disillusionment with the church stretches deep.

The Pope has to replace his flocks somehow, and let’s face it, there are not enough parents willing to let their kids be altar boys these days. Yes, low blow, I know, but no longer could the church stick its head in the sand like it normally did. The church got that wake-up call because it affected business.

This time the Vatican is reaching out, instead of closing in. Regardless of what you think of the church or the Pope, the message is one of hope. Hope for a new generation. Ignore the religious pomp and circumstance, or the few members who go off with self-righteous indignation. In any company, religion or group, there will always be bad apples, but the majority of these groups act honorably and give their lives to service. So maybe the Pope is on to something after all.

ranty rant signing off…