From the media of speech to the media of action

A company’s success depends largely on the way its brand is seen by the consumer. It is no use having the best product if people are not aware of it. Well-managing the consumer-centric key contacts means to resort to the best amount of options a brand can count on to be presented in public.

We could naturally say that any and every means for the brand to appear is a potential public contact and therefore any of the company’s plain efforts contribute to the perception we’ve got from it, such as: customer service, through-phone support, the driving way of its delivery company driver, the headquarters building architecture and even the store in which the product is bought. Here it is about how the company generally behaves, and for that branding has given huge contributions.

Besides this ‘enterprise’ side there is, though, need to think of the ‘brand’ one, a surely less pragmatic part but yet in which the deepest relations' affairs with the consumers are established. Here it is about a manager able to split the media role from the contact role and also understand that the former should have, as a master objective, the latter. By excellence, the media must jolt the road aiming at connecting audience and product.

If formerly we went after the media mix, new times introduce us the transmedia. By the former we could think of a web formed by a bulk of media, each of them having its duty in unveiling some of the brand’s facets – and then all of them, put together, make its totality come up. By the latter, it is possible not only to build the brand paradigm but ultimately make the consumer live it by experiencing it through the new platforms’ interactions.

Whatever was only speech becomes attitude. The brand leaves the only speaking phase to then getting down to work, start making its thoughts come true. The individual goes from only hearing to actively interfering, and being part of all such dynamics which is by the way open to be transformed according to people’s interventions. In that environment the professional is supposed to critically be quite aware of each of the contact cycle’s phase but, at the end, merge them all and then make them fulfill themselves so that, like a wave, the individuals can surf – even if on their own – from the medium to the contact, which is where brand and consumer, at last, meet face to face.