"...messing with your brand"

The evolution of brand/customer relationships, on the Internet:

Brands talk to customers > customers talk back (sorta, when they feel like it) > customers talk about brands, to other customers > brands begin to get it, and join in

This post at Three Minds deals mainly with step three -- customer to customer communication. Customers are exchanging tips about DIY items created at Starbucks and McDonalds:

"Counter-culture and the public's desire to stand on equal footing with consumer brands are behind the trend-of-the-moment: how-to's on scamming major corporations."

I can be a cynic, too, but this statement misses the main point in its rush to point out that customers can be cheapskates. Customers who make Ghetto Lattes are taking online practices into retail settings -- in this case, creating their own mashups out of available products. It's a small way to inject some creativity into environments that are recognizably artificial, and turn brands that might otherwise feel out of scale into collaborators. And if that makes customers feel better about those brands, this kind of thing should be tacitly encouraged. Right?


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