What Wikipedia Can’t Tell You About Brand Fragmentation

Brand fragmentation isn’t an entirely new disease, but with the proliferation of social media and other Internet-based marketing opportunities, it has become an epidemic.

So what is brand fragmentation? It’s what happens when your company’s brand becomes linked with different images, phrases, ideas, and other things in media that have nothing to do with your company, your products, or each other. The brand becomes diluted. It’s difficult for someone casually encountering it to be sure exactly what products or services are offered and available.

The reason brand fragmentation has become epidemic is because the Internet, and particularly social media, have lowered the barriers to publication and hence to advertising. Does someone on your team have a marketing idea? With a few hours of work and a few clicks of a mouse, it’s up and running: a new website, a blog, a Facebook or Google+ page, even a series of tweets. It’s quick and easy (much quicker and easier than in the old days, anyway) and cheap—or even free.

The result in far too many cases is a proliferation of uncoordinated marketing and advertising ideas that link your products and services to nothing that makes much sense or is easy to remember and keep straight. The energy is high, but it’s unfocused. There’s a lot of creativity being presented, but it presents potential customers with confusion instead of opportunity.

There are few advantages to publication barriers, but one that does exist is a level of discipline imposed by the difficulty and expense of old-media publication. With that natural discipline removed, it becomes necessary for your marketing team to self-impose a replacement for it. The preventative for brand fragmentation is a focused marketing campaign.

Much of the secret to the marketing and branding focus is communication among the various people who are engaged in your marketing efforts. In particular, it’s imperative that social media managers see themselves as part of a larger marketing effort. Also useful is to make certain that everyone engaged in marketing be familiar with Internet-based concepts such as search engine optimization, or commonly referred to SEO today.

It’s also important to be willing and able to kill an idea that doesn’t help to promote the brand in any coherent fashion. That can be more difficult than it might sound. Creative efforts are loved by their creators and no one wants to see his or her ideas shot down. But not every idea is a good one.