In the wide world of the web, how do you ensure that when a consumer hops on a search engine they find you first?

Bruce Philp, branding guru to ING Direct and co-author of The Orange Code says that the answer is differentiation. Here in the third of three interviews, Philp talks about how the Internet has changed brand management–and relinquished control to the consumer.

Is the notion of differentiation irrelevant in a “Google-search” world?

Bruce Philp: Trout and Ries would have been hailed as geniuses if they’d described the concept of positioning about twenty years later than they did. Search is the reason why.

Positioning stipulates that a brand be recognizable as one of a pool of comparable brands, and that this pool is defined by a particular kind of user.

Can you give an example?

We don’t think about Levis as competing with all forms of lower extremity coverage, or even with all kinds of pants. They compete with other blue jeans, and we consider what makes them different in that context.

That generates more powerful differentiation, because it forces relevance. It becomes not just a matter of being different, but to whom and against what set of expectations.

How do you win at a search?

To win at search, a brand absolutely must think first about the tribe it’s selling to (to borrow Godin’s word) and their particular expectations and definition of themselves. That discipline directs effective search strategies, but it also directs focused branding.

It seems impossible to manage how people perceive your brand. Is that true?

I contend that it’s impossible to manage a brand anymore. Brands are no longer taught in a one-way, didactic context like they were in the age of advertising. Instead, they are observed across the full spectrum of their behavior.

In effect, this means that everything a brand does adds to its meaning. That’s because there are so many channels open–including the Internet–and because the social consensus that advertising is the ‘official’ voice of a brand is broken.

What happens if you try to strictly manage your brand?

A brand becomes a totalitarian state with a massive bureaucracy focused on control. It moves slowly because every single tactic is a decision. It’s an unsustainable approach for any brand that has to do business with consumers in a competitive context, when disruption is coming at it faster and faster.

When Google can tell me not only what people have said about the brand in the last days, weeks and months, but what they’re saying right now, it’s hard to imagine that the brand as a fascist state can stand.

What’s the alternative?

Manage a brand from principle. This is the constitutional model I proposed in The Orange Code. Instead of creating a book of rules, we create a declaration of principles. We hire for it, we reward it, we tell the world about it so that we’re held to account. Over time, the organization begins to organically behave according to those principles. They become its culture.

Thus, in a world where everything an organization does accretes to the brand, that entire organization will very naturally get it right most of the time.

Marketing strategy is really competitor strategy.

Tim Barg, our vice president of strategy, and I sat down and rattled off a couple principles we’ve learned over the years:

1. Competitor strategy is counter-intuitive. Your intuition says, “We need to parrot what the leader in our industry is saying, because it’s working for them.” Jack Trout, co-author of Positioning, once said to me, “You always avoid the strengths of the leader.”

I would say that most leaders of organizations do the opposite: they parrot the leader.

2. Instead of messaging specifically, most organizations message generally. They say the same thing as every other organization in their industry.

There seems to be a “fear of the niche.” There seems to be a built-in resistance to focus narrowly on a message. Or becoming good at one thing. They fear being different.

All educational institutions, for example, say they specialize in high academics – which, unless you’re Harvard or Stanford, means essentially nothing. All management consulting firms say they deliver results. All business intelligence software firms say their software deliver better analytics.

All this is confusing to prospective clients or students or donors. If you’re general with your message, you have no hook.

So if you’re having a hard time growing, begin with your competitors. What are they doing? What are they leading with in terms of their messaging? And how are you different?

My next blog topic: “The Myth of the Silver Bullet.”

If you think it is competitive in the world in which you market your organization, consider the problems of a book author:

In 2006, there were 291,920 new books and editions published in the U.S.

That’s right: almost 300,000 competitors. You are writing a book into a world awash in books and web sites and blogs (71 million) and Paris Hilton.

So the problem isn’t, really, getting your book published, though for first-time authors that’s a big deal. Your book is born into a world of 300,000 other babies, all screaming for attention.

Worse, book publishers are what I call “importers of printed materials.” That is, their primary value in the economic food chain is that they will publish your book using the lowest-cost paper available. That’s great for them, but doesn’t do much to sell your book.

So, if you think that landing a book contract is a coup, think again. Publishers are as clueless as authors are about publicity. After a few weeks, your publicist from the publisher won’t remember your name; publicity is a “present-tense” business – your 60 seconds of attention from the publisher is around 6 weeks. Suddenly, your book is considered “backlist.” That means you’ll receive no more attention from your publisher to publicize your book.

The higher economic activity is publicity, not writing. I know that’s depressing to writers, who all think that good writing will, ultimately, sell millions. I think it was Stevie Ray Vaughan, the late blues guitarist, who once said that the best guitarists are probably still playing to a Texas bar of around 30 people.

Just because you’re good doesn’t mean you will sell millions. Or grow your organization.