Aaron Brazell, Director of Technology at b5media has lined up a handful of well-respected voices on both sides of the PR game to host a “roundtable” discussion on Social Media. It’s a five part series with the second post running today at Technosailor.

Question #2 – What does the concept of “brand” mean to you and how do you see the concept of brand protection (or the concept of “open source brand”, so to speak) being transformed in the internet age?

Read the full set of responses here. Click here to read about the participants.

Brian Solis: The brand is something altogether different today than it was BSM (before social media). The brand used to be something dictated by corporations and reinforced by marketers and ultimately evangelists.

However, these days, many marketing and business executives foolishly think that they can still solely control the brand and the corporate messages 100% when in fact people are also contributing to brand identity and resonance.

Social Media zealots preach that participation is marketing, and indeed it is, but there are ways to do it right and ways to completely f it up. One thing is for certain is that covering your ears to customer commentary taking place in social networks and the blogosphere and repeating “la la la la la” over and over pretending like it doesn’t exist IS NOT participating.

It the era of social media companies have no choice by to relinquish control, well somewhat, to those who chose to discuss it openly, in public forums that are in large part, actively contributing to the extensive influence enabled by social tools.

That doesn’t mean that companies can’t help chart the course of a brand, businesses just need to take into account that people now have voices and there in lies a new opportunity.

Let’s not forget that a good brand, or a terrible brand for that matter, evokes an emotion bond.

The true “open source brand” will acknowledge and leverage the “voices of the crowds” in order to extend and mold brands for both now and in the future – by connecting with people.

Again, Social Media is about people, not audiences, and therefore, brands affect people and in turn evoke responses. The smart marketers will learn how a brand relates to the various markets they wish to reach, why it’s important, different, and helpful, and connect with people directly to help them. This reinforces the brand and service attributes we ultimately hope to carry forward.

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The Series:

Question #1 – What do you think the biggest challenge is for the Public Relations industry to fully embrace social media?
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