Rules and Roles for Brand Collaboration

by Deserving and Owning Authority in Your Space

Addressing OMMA Social in San Francisco on January 26, 2009, Dan Buczaczer, (Senior VP and  Director at the Denuo Group) explains to the crowd how brands should best collaborate with users.  Dan’s approach relies on three rules:

1. Facilitate whatever users are already doing (blogs, conversations, meetups) while setting aside traditional brand-management “hard sell” reflexes.
2. Sponsor meaningful self-expression of one or more influencers through blogs, debates, polls, or a town hall meeting.
3. Dig deep into whatever the users produce to uncover the hidden gems through creative discovery.

When a brand adheres to this guidance, it obtains a role of authority about the space in which it operates.  Mr. Buczaczer counsels us to follow a 5-step course:

1. Aggregate the product of sponsored content.
2. Curate the collection for workability, using good judgment in legal and quality filtering.
3. Organize the curated content into groups or categories.
4. Produce the presentations that make sense.
5. Adapt the distribution of the content in an original and creative way.