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“In some ways, I agree,” I told him. “I can see the death of branding, the verb. But brands and the word ‘brand’ will live on as a noun. Coke won’t go away. The Golden Arches won’t die. But those brands/nouns won’t just be defined by the company that owns them, but by the consumers who interact with it as well.”

We agreed to continue this conversation, fittingly, online.

“Agencies have spent the last few decades refining brands,” Webb wrote. “But no matter what they did, in the end, wherever they netted out, that brand became inviolable. It was enshrined in a ‘bible’—I have literally dozens of these sitting in my office. And each one shares the same basic belief: that the brand can’t be violated.”

Once, Webb spent six months trying to get a logo approved on a pixel-animated-style video game for a major brand. “Six months. Because they were totally freaked because their brand bible had not accounted for a pixel version of the logo.”

Analog brand rigidity will not cut it in a digital, transparent world. With the Internet, consumers suddenly have the ability to talk back in numbers too vast for PR and advertising to control. “We still see companies grappling with this now. PR firms are abuzz with new techniques on how to handle blogs, and CMOs are wigging out about the bad PR a blog can generate.”

What’s a brand to do? Openly enter a dialogue with consumers online, embracing transparency and hopefully nurturing goodwill? Or go the Whole Foods route, where the CEO unsuccessfully masqueraded as a regular blogger trying to influence opinions? “‘Engagement’ is starting to come up as a buzzword,” Webb continued. “But I think it’s something more. When I think of ‘engagement,’ and when I hear a CMO use it, I generally hear it in terms of time someone is thinking about my brand. I don’t hear it in the context of dialogue. We’re going to have to accept that this dialogue is more important than anything else. This dialogue is, in fact, the new brand. The way you converse and communicate with your consumers is your brand positioning.”

Webb then recounted a recent brand experience of his own with the Zipcar rental company. He complained via e-mail that if he could no longer get a car on weekends, he would abandon the brand. He told me it was the kind of e-mail that “most companies ignore and most consumers seethe inwardly over about how useless the exercise is. But amazingly, the freakin’ CMO of Zipcar himself e-mailed me back. Not once, but something like ten times. One customer. I will never leave that company.”

Rather than pass the e-mail along to someone in PR, or make up an excuse, or ignore Webb’s complaint completely, Zipcar engaged in a conversation. “No brand bible can guide this,” Webb said. “Principles guide this. Communication principles that accept, encourage, and reward conversation.”

Rigid, one-way, inviolable branding is no longer possible. The Internet killed it. Interesting stuff from someone who doesn’t think of his company as an ad agency or an interactive agency.

And not one word about chickens. Kentucky Fried, subservient, or other.

The Bucket, Kicked, Repeatedly

Fall 2000

I have presented work before CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, four-star generals in the U.S. Army, hundreds of salespeople at soft drink bottlers’ conventions, and even George Steinbrenner, but nothing quite prepared me for the more than fifty KFC franchisees gathered in the main conference room at Yum! Brands headquarters in Louisville.

They had been arriving all morning, some in white stretch limousines, some in Cadillacs, many in personal cars adorned with some iteration of a chicken-themed vanity plate. Senior account guy presented himself before them all as if they were visiting heads of state. Sometimes he would turn to me and whisper, “He owns more than a hundred,” or “He controls the entire Southwest voting bloc,” or “Make sure you make eye contact with that one when you speak … he’s already pushing for a move to [Pizza Hut’s agency of record] BBDO, and a no vote from him can bring the whole thing down.”

We had