"The Secret Power of Brands" is one of the four MOOCs (massive open online courses) that I am currently doing. Very interesting indeed, so for anyone who is looking to learn more about branding, I can only recommend it. As part of the course materials, we were assigned last week to write a short piece answering the following question: To build a successful brand, is it better to control every aspect of the brand, or to encourage people to adopt it and adapt it? Here's how I answered:

In today's era of real-time, in-the-moment, everywhere-and-anytime world of online communications, brands no longer hold control over their reputation. Organisations do indeed control internal activities such as manufacturing, supply chain management, finance and even corporate communications that allow them to ensure expected quality of products and services, but the way their brand is seen and experienced externally is now defined by consumers. As Brian Solis says,

“Businesses are no longer the sole creator of a brand; it is co-created by consumers through shared experiences and defined by the results of online searches and conversations.”

Brands have no physical objectivity. They sell a way of life. The asset of a brand is that dream that exists in the heart and soul of the customer and her experiences of it, shared in the online space.

Digital technology has put the power of influence in the hands of ordinary people. Everyone is a publisher now. The age of ‘we talk, you listen’, top-down style of corporate communication is now gone with social media having fostered the democratisation of information helping to change the way consumers form opinions and make decisions as well as enabling stakeholders to easily and quickly engage in a two-way communication process with brands.

Ordinary people hold the power, they have a voice, they know that and they are not afraid to use it. On the contrary, they speak loudly whenever they're unhappy. Brilliant example here is Greenpeace's campaign against Nestle's Kit Kat a few years ago that only went viral because of the massive consumer activation – people commented, they shared, they liked, they disliked, they questioned: together, they nearly destroyed the brand.

So it's not just about people adopting and adapting the brand, it's about people participating in its creation. With the rise of digital and the constantly emerging new platforms, brands have to capture hearts and minds by putting the consumer at the centre. Why? Because our attention economy is quickly becoming a collaboration economy, where people want to make an impact and be part of something. Think of GE's Ecomagination or Ideas Lab – crowdsourcing and collaborating with outsiders to generate innovative ideas for e.g. clean energy.

As the Edelman Trust Barometer consecutively shows each year, people trust other people like themselves. It is 'me' and 'you' deemed credible, reliable and trustworthy. And trust, as we know, is fundamental to business – if no one trusts you, no one would want to do business with you. To stay in business over the next years, brands would need to learn to give up the traditional notion of full control and learn to co-control and co-exist with consumers, inviting them to be a part of the brand experience, creation and representation in the real world. If brands want to be trusted, they need to learn to trust their consumers first. The organisations who succeed to strategically adopt and adapt will be able to secure tremendous competitive advantages in today's increasingly volatile markets.

What do you think? Should brands control every aspect of the business? What role do ordinary people play?