Figure 14.2 is an illustration of a fictitious travel brand, represented as ®. In this example, the brand has spent a substantial amount of money to build a destination web site, to which it might even direct people occasionally. The site itself is overloaded with corporate-vetted, brand-friendly, controlled content. Perhaps it’s even fairly easy to find your way around there. But is it realistic to assume the Field of Dreams scenario, that is, if we build it, they will come? Have we not learned from the mistakes of the dot-com boom and bust? What would happen if the brand released its stranglehold on content and let it freely swim around the wide world of the Web?

The reality, of course, is that the walled garden of corporate web sites is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the number of viable—even competitive—alternatives for an average consumer to choose and visit. As the illustration suggests, there are several layers of content categories that ripple out and away from the brand nucleus. What’s interesting about these layers is that the further away they move from the center, the less controlled, less formal, more authentic, and more credible they become. As they fan outward, the brand also becomes less able to influence or filter what is being said and who is saying it.

The first layer represents the best-in-class social networking and content-sharing hubs—each of which is individually stronger and more powerful than the brand could ever hope to be. In the video category, YouTube prevails. In photos, Flickr lives large. In social networking, Facebook outshines MySpace (until the next one comes along). In microblogging or presence, Twitter rules the roost. In each of these networked hubs, brand content enjoys a rich and relatively social existence, able to rank, rate, review, comment, and share accordingly. In many cases, brands have carved out specific channels or content hubs—such as www.youtube.com/nike or www.facebook.com/pepsi (which redirects to www.facebook.com/refresheverything). In others—such as www.youtube.com/bankofamerica⁴⁵—zero videos and a solitary comment reading, “lolz fuck ya!” greets the brand enthusiast and/or Bank of America customer! In all cases, companies have a far better chance of seeing and being seen by a larger base of prospects and customers by establishing an ongoing, active, vibrant, and current presence accordingly.

The second ring represents blogs, sites, message boards, communities of interest, and associations that are influential on their own because of either their reach or their composition (category relevance). For example, airline CEOs are nowadays more likely to be lurking on the Flyer Talk site than reading the pages of the Wall Street Journal for feedback (which typically reports on Flyer Talk anyway). In this world, the brand has very little control, and in some cases—like with the traditional “cease and desist,” or what I call “sue and rue,” such as in the case of Engadget and T-Mobile (just Google “T-Mobile Jaffe” to find out more)—it’s probably better to stay as far away from them as possible. Members of this category typically act as accelerants and disseminators of content, as well as connectors that offer a two-way bridge between consumer and corporation.

The third ring represents you and me, the average Joe or Josephine, the individual blogger, photographer, or activist who is increasingly creating content. And when they do, they’re smart enough to be doing exactly what you should be doing: posting it on their blogs, alerting the community hubs, sharing it on the networking hubs, and uploading it on the content hubs (and in case you didn’t know, they have their own channels—mine are www.youtube.com/jaffejuicetv, www.twitter.com/jaffejuice, or www.facebook.com/jaffejuice). For the most part, however, they’re carriers in the germ (i.e., viral) sense, by referencing other people’s content and curating it for their own communities. Often times, it’s your content, though not coming directly from you. On some occasions, it appears alongside questionable content (such as lolz fuck ya) or is framed in commentary, criticism or conversation. But for the most part, the choice to create or curate brand-centric content is exceptionally positive and immensely valuable for brands.

The ripple/hub diagram works equally well to illustrate the way the brand advertises or communicates its messages. The center of the diagram represents traditional media outlets, which are exceptionally controlled and theoretically most capable of reaching the largest number of people at the same time. As people move further away from this center, however—be it watching a 30-second spot on YouTube, creating a video response to it, talking about it to a friend, or commenting on its merits (or demerits) on a blog—the message itself becomes less moderated and therefore less persuasive from a blind perspective than it once was. In addition, the number of people exposed to it are extremely staggered, fragmented, and spread out. The result is extreme dilution of impact (at least across a small, concentrated window)