Challenges of Social and Digital Media Engagement for Established Brands: A Rise of Crowd Culture

The purpose of this article is to take a closer look into the current brand management practices of leading MNCs around the world in a holistic way, specifically in digital and social media. There has been a massive interest from all marketing and advertising agencies to utilize the strength of social media in a conventional manner where the approach was to develop rich content by high-end media professionals and promote those content in the digital media with heavy budgets. But the conventional brand building strategies may not work as expected. The way people used to express their brand preferences has changed with the emergence of social and digital media. It is far easier now for customers to be united under any certain subject matter within a very short period of time by using many established communities. Their opinions and thoughts are well circulated and have a major effect on that specific subject or brand. Thus, the significance of branded content is on the decline. The inception of these crowd-based communities is pretty large, and they are doing a better job attracting followers much more efficiently than bigger brands do. The areas where brands are spending their promotional budget also need to be looked into. The conventional practice of spending only in the awareness stage and buy stage is not helping the brand like it used to do. More emphasis should be put on the stages after the actual purchase has been made, how the customers react, how they advocate for others and so forth. There is a need for a sustainable brand building strategy that will help established brands reap the benefits of digital and social media.