The introduction of the idea of Brand Streams a couple of weeks ago caused a little stir in the scene. Interesting enough, both blog posts related to the topic didn't get any comments, but I got a few direct responses through Twitter and direct talks with brand experts and people who work in the marketing field.

I think the Brand Streams theory divides them into two basic camps: Those who say "Yes, I can see this is how it actually works" and those who don't understand what I'm talking about. The latter are the people who promote a kind of branding that relies on concepts like "repeat your message for long enough and people will listen" or "if no one listens, shout louder". I don't want to sound disrespectful, but I would say it's the old-school marketing crowd that has trouble embracing the changes that are already happening.

There is a third camp in there, and that's the group of people who grasp the idea of Brand Streams, they do see the changes, but they simply don't know what to do with it. They are looking for clues how they can incorporate what they're learning from Brand Streams. So I set out to write a list of principles, perhaps rules to follow, some sort of "10 ways to make it work" guide. But I got stuck, it didn't work out.

I don't have a turn-key-solution that will enable you to control a Brand Stream. This would defy the very idea of a Brand Stream, which is all about the natural flow and observation. Maybe in time, we'll come up with more conclusive rules, principles that remain true for every kind of Brand Stream.

But in the meantime, I think it's easier to focus on what you can do to avoid mistakes, or how you can reduce your misconceptions on the relationship between brands and people.

I think the following 10 points are summing it up:

1) People have been waiting for your brand

I put this on the top because it is this sort of background information few marketers will ever tell a client. To most ad- and marketing agencies, the client is still king. And you can't blame them. We all have profound fears of decreasing business, so it's understandable that many just do what they client likes, not necessarily what would be good for its business.

Never the less, realizing that you are just one voice in the crowd and no one has been waiting for your contributions is a crucial lesson. It makes even the most successful brands demure and realistic about their prospects. You don't hear Olympic athletes blurt out "I'll flatten the competition" before a run. Instead they are consolidating their powers and focus on the actual competition.

A lot of old-school marketing people will tell their clients they just need to be heard. Be loud, visible and boost your brand presence. Sure, it can't hurt to be seen or heard. But what you tell your audience needs to be of some substance. It needs to be relevant to them. People are not waiting for your brand, but if you have a message for them that relates to their lives, chances are higher they will stop and listen.

2) Your audience belongs to you alone

The main reason why people have not been waiting for your brand is not because they are not interested in your story. It has a lot to do with the great amount of noise out there. You can try to put more force behind your campaign efforts, but in the end, it only matters what you have to tell.

People don't live in isolation. They don't consume just one kind of soda, drive the same car or wear the same style of clothes all their lives. We are surrounded by a lot of brand noise and we try maintaining a course of our own decisions. Come on, executives—you live in this world too. Humans like diversity and we love the luxury of choice.

People make choices based on various influences. Pricing is just one of them. A low price may help certain products to temporarily increase sales, but on the long run, it will be other values that make your product stay and float in the market.

3) People live online only

I already said it: people don't live in isolation. They live their lives fully, not just offline or online. In fact, most people are not even aware of any difference between what they're doing online or offline. Of course, this doesn't count for everything (I still know the difference between a newspaper and an RSS feed), but in general, online is just another track of our life. It has become a main contribution and communication channel, enriching and enabling our lives on many levels. But we don't "go online" anymore. With iPhones, laptops, at work, in coffee shops or on the road, we are practically online most of the time.

Yet, this online activity is not isolated from our other activities. It is so much tied in, you won't even notice how much. Phone calls, email greeting cards, invoices, business cards and websites, TV or YouTube, Apple Store in a mall or online, grocery shopping or pizza delivery, text messaging and door-frame chats. What's the difference? It all comes down to activities offline or online, but does it really matter where it happens?

What really matters is what we're doing, how and with whom—not where. And we never do these things without context. They are always related to some need, wish, dream or random activity that makes our life what it is.

4) People need to be engaged

It started sometime in the nineties. I was working in advertising and all of a sudden, everybody seemed to talk about tribes and how they needed to be engaged. It got even worse when the Web business emerged and marketing companies were proposing engaging websites.

People don't need to be engaged. If someone wants to engage in something, they will engage themselves. By forcing someone to click a button, fill out a form or enter a competition, you don't do your brand a favor. You are still forcing people to do it. It's somewhat like saying "you don't leave this room if you don't have sex with me".

Better than any media before, the Web has made clear that people engage in everything but what companies want them to be engaged with. This is why many companies are still afraid of the Social Media moniker. It's like speaking of the flying dutchman: "What do you mean, they can write whatever they want?".

If you have a sound offer, a great product and benefits your brand represents, you don't have to worry about disengaged customers. You should rather focus on finding the Brand Stream, because you can be assured: great products and great services always draw waves of attention.

5) People won't share what they experience

Dream on. Seriously, this is never going to happen. People will most definitely use the Web with all the power of the tools it provides. And why not? It's the greatest communication medium since the print press revolution. You are witnessing a new age of consumer empowerment. It should be celebrated as the greatest time to live in.

Communication is likely the most fundamental root of our civilization. It's what made us learn, grow and finally shop. The Web is a source of inspiration, not only for startups and technology developers, but for regular people who are consuming products and services from your brands. And since companies spent decades on making people memorize and buy their branded products, they shouldn't be surprised that people start talking about them.

This is something you should never try to suppress, control, or worse, ignore it. In fact, it's quite dangerous to ignore the buzz around your brand. You should rather use all the tools the Web provides, to listen, learn and participate.

6) High traffic or click-rate equals measurable success

Recently I was working on a study about Social Media. It was about an analysis of usefulness of Social Media to a number of brands for this particular client, a retail business chain. I was working on it for three weeks and regularly sat together with a small team, to discuss the results and finalize next steps. The whole process was designed to ask questions and condense the output, so the client would not only see conclusions but also understand which steps could be taken to participate in a Brand Stream.

In one of these meetings one of my colleagues said: "So you're saying there are 28,740 people who are fan of this product. That's an enormous number of people!" and I replied "Yes, the number is big, but it means nothing. Look at the content on this page. It has no posts."

Quantity on the Web is very relative to quality of content. It doesn't matter how many members your brand's profile on Facebook has. As long they are not participating, these numbers are like sleeping bats in a cave.

You can create fun games, develop surreal patterns that force fans to pull in more people, but all that "engaging" won't work if your product is in the wrong category. See, if your product is iced tea, it won't make people talk about it. If your product is organic meat from happy pigs, yes, then your customers might potentially have a high interest to talk about this topic.

You need to understand where your brand fits in and where there are already large groups of people who may have an interest in your brand. Only then you can count on those user numbers.

7) Microsites help every brand

I think it was some time between 1998 and 2000, I had started working full time in the Web business, when I first heard the term microsite. It was the time when clients started asking what the difference was between a homepage and a website. Once they thought they had figured that out, they said: "Ok, so a website is a bunch of Web pages, but I have this product or brand here and I want to give it a home, but I don't want to call that a homepage. What do I call it?". And the marketing field created an artificial label called microsite.

From 2001 until 2007, microsites became extremely popular term among our clients. I have been fighting a lost case against their popularity, because despite the fact microsites are nothing else but websites with a different label, the misconceived idea of their mystical success rate doesn't seem to die.

What is worse, most commonly, these so called microsites are simple HTML containers for a giant Flash file. Lots of animated, blinking, flashing and noisy stuff, but nothing to do, participate or share.

Let me be plain about this: Microsites don't work, period. They are a collossal waste of money, colorful and probably pretty, but they don't do anything.

Microsites are based on the idea that people are desperate to play games and have nothing better to do but send you their "experience story" with your product. They are based on the idea that your audience has been waiting for a certain brand name to show up on the web, and they spend hours looking for that particular chocolate bar, mayonnaise or face lotion. Just because your brand has a microsite, nothing will change in the relationship between your customers and your brand.

8) Visual branding is the key to success

As a marketing- or Web consultant, you may hear this often from a client: "We like it, but we don't see our branding". By branding, many clients are referring to what is often misunderstood as design, checking off items from a list of graphical elements used as visual identifiers.

True design comes from the core of usage. The Bauhaus rule "Form Follows Function" is not just a phrase or an outdated school of thought. It's a basic principle all good design has been following, ever since design was used, even before Bauhaus existed.

A visual identifier may be helpful for an audience to sort out where the respective Website belongs to. So of course, visual identifiers, such as colors, graphical elements like lines, boxes, typography and the use of images are all part of the total brand experience. But they play an insignificant role compared to the actual design experience, the usage of the website.

The role of visual branding is even lower in the greater context of the brand experience. In other words, if your logo sucks, maybe that will make people go "ugh...". If your product and your brand experience sucks, people simply don't buy your product. Looks may please your audience and give it a comforting feeling of a nice finishing, thus enforcing people's trust in your brand's authenticity. But visual branding is not the triggering element that will make people actually buy your product.

Visual branding has its role, but it's not a key element in participation.

9) A 360 degree cross-marketing campaign will create a Brand Stream

Not too long ago, I emailed a former client about their brand. We had worked together in the previous year and I was interested to hear if they had plans for further marketing activities. After three months, the client wrote back: "We have a new agency doing our 360° brand campaign". I don't know who sold them to a "360° brand campaign", but I feel sorry for this client.

Covering all media money can buy, blasting your message through all channels you can access, doesn't do anything for the people. To think the repetition or increase of budget for presence would change any of your customer's behavior patterns is simply an illusion. People don't buy more stuff just because you're telling them your product is great. People will only repeat buying what they made good experiences with. If your product breaks, tastes bad, has side effects or sucks in any aspect, people won't change their mind because of your 360° marketing campaign.

It's the core values that make a brand worth looking at. Of course it is harder to sell a good product if you don't have a big marketing budget. Because before I make a good (or bad) experience with your product and brand, I first have to know it's out there. But it's short-sighted to assume that more money can buy more customer loyalty.

Brand Streams emerge on their own. You can promote your brand's values, but you cannot influence people beyond of what they're willing to take. If you are expecting wonders from a 360° ad campaign, don't be too disappointed. If your product is solid and your brand represents clear value, chances are higher your brand may be in a Brand Stream already.

10) Be on every Social Media platform you heard of

For many who embrace the current changes in marketing and branding, this sounds like a no-brainer. Of course, they say, you need to be out there and use every Social Media platform there is to promote your brand. No matter what kind of brand you have, no matter where your audience is—ignore all that—you just need to have a profile on Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Delicious, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterbug, YouTube, Vimeo, Qik and Ustream. By just being there, you'll have a Brand Stream going.

This kind of thinking could be counted as number one of all mistakes, because it is the most dangerous idea. If you do this, you go ahead and create profiles on all these platforms, without thinking about your audience, without taking it step-by-step, analyising your brand assets, creating a brand profile and basically knowing what you're doing, your endeavours will fail with certainty.

Conclusion

Brand Streams are not created artificially, out of nowhere. The fact you create profiles on those social networking platforms doesn't magically produce more audience. To work with a Brand Stream, you need to understand it's natural flow. You need to learn where your audience is, what they dream about, what they wish for and what makes them sleep soundly at night. You need to know their worries, hopes and expectations from products your brand is promoting. You need to understand what they are talking about, when they are referring to bad personal experiences with brands. You need to enable yourself to decypher these experiences as "brand experience" in the first place.

In short, you need to listen, watch, read and most importantly, you need to participate as a being, not as an anonymous brand. You are no longer corporate voice, or product branding. Your voice is one in the crowd.

Recommended reading

• Brand identities are not singular
• What Are Brand Streams?
• FriendFeed Group on Brand Streams