Love Your Brand

It pains me to watch newspapers go out of business. I have a soft spot for the written word on paper, delivered daily. As an undergraduate, I dreamed of being a writer. My journalism professor gave me a shot. That shot turned into the most-read column in the university paper, four years running. I took great pride in being a columnist. Truth be told, I loved it. Every Thursday, I loved walking along the student union, watching as folks eagerly turned to "Rod's Thoughts" (the name of the column). I even considered it as a career path, but moving to Bakersfield to make just above the poverty line was too much for a 22-year-old who craved the city lights along the Bay and the allure of global travel at a big-time marketing agency (that has sense faded, in a been-there-done-that sort of way).

It's pretty much a certainty newspapers will not exist in the coming years. If they'd focused on their brand much sooner, and changed their business model as well, newspapers would've had a better shot at staying relevant in the digital age. Newspaper brands had a bond with readers; a trusting relationship. People depended on them to deliver objective, nonpartisan news. They paid no attention to the relationship they had cultivated for decades with their loyal readers. They made no attempt at transferring that bond from ink and paper to digital. The loyal fans of their brand would've followed. Newspaper forgot the business they were in, which was not a distribution model, but rather a relationship model. People follow people. This is why cable news outlets are led by personalities. We're a relationship economy. Always have been, always will be.

Had newspapers taken their brand seriously, had they cultivated their core loyalists, sustained the relationship with each one, had they brought them into the fold, had they delivered a quality product via digital and not gotten caught up in the ink/paper/distribution model, they would've survived. Let's hope at lest a few do.

Let this be a warning to any organization: take your brand for granted and people will leave you.