The new consumer chooses your brand (product or service) if they believe what the brand is saying is true. It’s a selective—and an emotional—choice. Marc Gobé, author of Emotional Branding, Citizen Brand, and Brand Jam (www.emotionalbranding.com) discusses this historical shift and how your leadership style must change to accommodate different expectations. 

Brand & Strategy: We’re awash in brand clutter from the last three or four decades. How does that clutter shape the way people make buying decisions?

Marc Gobé: We are back to reality and normal branding, not excessive branding. The past six or seven years, there was an uncontrolled rush towards money with no principle whatsoever. I don’t think I saw any real branding for a few years. The money was there for the taker. Business upheld a ‘grab it’ strategy rather than trying to make an effort to bring consumers towards their brand.

One of the expressions of the excess was the illegal billboards in New York and L.A.

Is there a fundamental shift in the minds of consumers in how they approach spending?

As Baby Boomers head for retirement, they are going to be spending less. Right behind them is Generation X, comprised of 47 million, which has lost the buying power that Boomers had. The millennial generation brings a whole new set of values. Their concerns are going to be the environment, and they are clearly looking to conserve energy and buy less; they’ll be a lot more sensitive to the impact of their buying options.

People are choosy; they are not free-spenders. The challenge for businesses will be to give them freedom to buy their brand. That’s real branding. The biggest revolution, though, is people being able to talk to each other about brands.

How is that different from a generation ago?

The new media technology has made it so that the success of a brand is based on how open they are with these consumer communities. Consumers have a personal relationship with the brand; they have to believe what is being said.

In reading about the founders of Google and Twitter and Facebook, I found that these people all have one thing in common: They aren’t Jack Welsh – the iconic former GE leader! They got rid of the emperor complex. What’s interesting is that most colleges still train under the Jack Welsh theory.

What makes them different?

The new leaders expose themselves to criticism. They are open to dialogue. That is a new culture, which is the social media culture.

Take the CEO of Zappos.com, for example. At 31, he makes one dollar a year, even though he heads a large company. When he Twitters, he exposes himself: This is who I am, these are my finances, this is my business, and these are my values. He creates an open dialogue. He makes you feel like he knows you. He’s with his consumer. It’s a model of fairness, personal accreditation, and personal engagement.

Brands, then, are defined by authentic leadership?

Yes – where the reputation of the brand is strongly connected with the owner and how much people like them as individuals. It’s about humanizing the brand. That means a leader of the company Tweets: I’m locked out of my hotel room because I closed the doors behind me and I cannot get back into my room. That’s human, and we can relate to that.

The new generation seems to crave that, but what about the Boomers?

The Baby Boomers were trained to believe in any kind of dream that was offered up. They were told there were no limitations to dreams. It was about limitless opportunities. And they were willing to compromise their integrity for the acquisition of material goods, because those material goods defined who they were.

Now we are at a point of finding out that there are limits and that some of the dreams that were referred to us are unattainable. Hence, leadership has changed. People don’t want to hear that you’re going to take them to the moon. They just want you tell them who you are.

In a sense, brands have been lying to us for a long time.

Of course. But to be fair, everybody was on the same page. Somebody tells you, “I love you,” it’s not exactly true, but it’s kind of nice to hear. The game was played, and accepted–and it was good. And why not? Because really, there was not a lot of risk playing that game…until it got out of control. Think of the movie Wall-E: The younger generation is like robots trying to fix the mess. And consumers don’t want to be deceived anymore.

If you promote your company as green but at the same time you’re suing the state of California because you don’t want to abide by their emission standards, people are not going to buy your brand.

So how does an ordinary organization apply this shift to their marketing?

The new media technology has made it so that the success of a brand is based on how open they are with these consumer communities. Consumers have a personal relationship with the brand; they have to believe what is being said.