Brands and the Media

The Media should adopt branding

The topic of brand applied to the media was in the news a few months ago. The Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University added classes of “Integrated Marketing” (a common euphemism for branding) to the school's curriculum. The objective, he said, was “to develop a more profound understanding of audiences and consumers, of what they value and of how to present journalism and the new digital media to them. We also need to have a far deeper understanding of media brands and marketing communications and how to use them to engage media audiences.”

This upset many faculty members who saw this as a dangerous slip towards mercantilism… The dean was promptly accused of making up some of the quotations he used in one of his articles, etc. Calls for his dismissal went out… All this was a perfect illustration of William Sayre's third law of politics: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” Anyway, Dean John Levine was soon cleared of any wrongdoing and things seem to have fallen back in order.

That's too bad. Controversy is good if it advances thinking, and this academic spat died without having progressed to a satisfying conclusion. So, let me stir up the mud a little.

I'd like to make two points: a) John Levine's understanding of brands is inaccurate, and b) brands, the real thing, would be a good addition to the thinking of mass media but for reasons that Dean Levine hasn't anticipated.

Why Branding doesn't really help to understand one's consumer: Contrary to Dean Levine's assertion, brands cannot really give you a better understanding of audiences and consumers. That is because a brand is akin to the character of a product, i.e., what confers predictability in its behavior. Predictability breeds familiarity and comfort-the seeds of “trust.” Humans prefer what is predictable. Even Capuchin monkeys prefer to interact with what gives them the more predictable outcome (see “Capuchin Monkeys and Branding” BrandWeek 10/10/2005, p.17).

Therefore, it would be an exercise in futility to try gaining a better understanding of consumers through the choice they make based on a brand and its ability to generate predictability. People like predictability for predictability's sake.

How having a strong brand helps the media. It seems to me that US journalists operate under the assumption that they should report the facts, just the facts, giving them as little personal bias as possible. I do not know if that is possible, nor desirable. If it were desirable, would newswire services have strongly encroached the turf of newspapers for instance?

I think it is better overall to admit that one has slants and to report the facts as one sees them, i.e., through the tainted glasses of one's experience, of one's personality. The fact is that most media do that intentionally or not. Some do it very overtly, and the most bigoted and slanted happen to also be the most successful. Fox News has in my view a special place in the pantheon of biased reporting. A Pew Research study (4/15/2007) ranked their viewers last for being informed of various aspects of current news, finding them three times more likely than the next network to hold misperceptions about three news topics related to Iraq (WMDs, Iraq's involvement in 9/11, and international support of the Iraq invasion). Their eagerness to show that all is well in the US of A has no limits. I was intrigued recently by statements made by their financial pundits that “the market was up/had shown tremendous growth.” It took a few minutes for me to realize that their analysis compared that day's close to a date in October 2001! Their statement was factual, but o-so-slanted.

Do not criticize Fox News if you are also going to lament the sorry state of news reporting in general: Fox is laughing all the way to the bank. CNN once had the field of cable TV News all to itself. Fox News overtook CNN about eight years ago and held the dominant position until Q1,08… Good or bad, their journalistic formula works. They are predictable. They have a strong brand at the root of their success.

A strong brand can help a news organization sell its product as it helps sell cars or toothpaste. The journalistic neutrality that the profession sees as its holy grail may be attainable, but it is not an appealing objective if your audience prefers partly pre-digested news, news with a point of view they recognize and are familiar with-whatever its slant may be.

Comfort yourselves with the knowledge that, even when highly branded, some news shows can impart more knowledge than others. Viewers of the Colbert Report, a comic news report, knew much more about Iraq than Fox's viewers.

Jacques Chevron
©2009 Jacques Chevron