Friday, April 21, 2006

Battelle on Google, me on 'brand strategy'

Author, search expert, and all around smartypants (I mean that in a very nice, slightly awe-struck way) John Battelle writes of Google:

As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe the Google brand is in need of message clarification - most folks still see it as that “Aha!” service that changed how they search the Web, but increasingly, it’s also the brand that does deals with Sony Pictures to promote personalized homepages. Clearly, brand strategy is on [Google VP of Global Communications and Public Affairs Elliot] Schrage’s mind.

I replied in a comment to John:

Google doesn’t need a new ‘message’ or ‘brand strategy’. Brand is behaviour. Google needs to look long and hard at its behaviour and change it as needed. The nodes on the network (that is, people) will spread its own (their own) messages about that, as they are already doing. I’m talking individual customers/users as well as the agencies who bring them so much revenue, who are often treated as if they are lucky to have the privilege to work with Google - not as customers who spread the bread on Google’s butter.

(I obviously meant to write “customers who spread butter on Google’s bread,” but having messed up, I’m not so sure my error isn’t closer to the truth.)

This is, by the way, exactly what I was talking about when I wrote of Danny Sullivan’s valuable brand just yesterday. Battelle himself has the same sort of brand, as it happens.