Brand Building: Importance of Context
Data fascinates me - at any given moment in time, I’m processing a multitude of information from my physical and digital environments. Sometimes these worlds overlap. When this happens, the information relevance stems from context.
What is context? Context is the space, role, and place in my life of related information. For example, I talk a lot. I talk a lot about companies, productivity, Twitter, value and qwitter. I care about community, relationships and social media. The multiple (and some would argue redundant) social media tools I use to integrate physical and digital worlds provide meaningful data because the communities from which this information comes tells me about exchange constraints and the information source. Likely, I’ll think about 140 characters from a tweet differently than I’ll think about a 140 word blog post differently than I’ll think about a 140 word comment. I’ll consider other easily accessible information when processing the information provided.
I can minimize points of misunderstanding by having redundant, related information attached to geographic places that I relate to by virtue of professional or personal roles in my life that is temporal and spatial. For example, if I were still living on the East Coast and talking about a short, weekend trip to Portland, is that Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon?
Would your answer change if you knew that I had an older sister (with whom I enjoy a close relationship) living in Portland, Oregon and no relationship to anyone in the state of Maine?
Would your answer change if you knew that I were dealing with a personally challenging experience and felt incredibly overwhelmed?
Ok, enough about the hypotheticals - to get to the point:
What I fail to understand is how brand managers or evangelists can fail to link their companies’ products or services to each touch with a consumer or user. By dropping this link in interactions, consumers/users lose context behind the interaction and derive less meaning and value from both the interaction and the product. SnagIt’s Betsy Weber will always have a place in my heart because she’s an awesome person who lets me know to let her know if I have problems with SnagIt. She’s also interesting - she travels, lives in the midwest, shares her life with me. I don’t abuse my access to her because of context. I have an arm’s length, personal relationship with her and that’s enough for me to understand why she reaches out to me and engages me about the product. She doesn’t abuse my ear with shameless self-promotion because of context. Understanding that value makes me want to share this story.
Brand isn’t what you’re saying about yourself. It’s what others are saying about you.
Thanks to Jim Benson, for providing the conversation that sparked these thoughts on context. Read his thoughts on context on his blog, Evolving Web.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
[...] in the importance of context. That conversation inspired me to write about the importance of context in community managers’ relationships with their constituents. Jim wrote about user interface design’s ability to provide [...]