The New Brand Tree: Growing the Fruits of Earned Media

What is the the new Brand Tree?

The new Brand Tree is inspired by nature.

Building a healthy brand is like growing a healthy tree.


(= symbolizes)

Seeds = Owned media
Fruits = Earned media
Fertilizer = Paid media (organic fertilizer = social media, inorganic fertilizer = traditional media)
Roots = Brand foundation
Tree trunk = Brand strength
Ploughing = Storytelling

Brands cannot buy or create Earned media. Fruits of earned media have to be grown with the right mix of paid and owned media. 

However just like ploughing is an art, storytelling is too! With the proliferation of social media, mobile, and emerging technologies, Brands need to create unique, compelling stories with the right blend of paid and owned media channels. Brands that become great at telling stories to engage consumers will enjoy the fruits of Earned media.

Taking this analogy a step further - when a fruit falls, its seeds give birth to a new tree, that means Earned media has the potential to produce more earned media, thereby bringing brand sustainability. Therefore brands should change their focus to designing campaigns that will result in earned media.

To help the new tree grow better and faster, it is advisable to add some seeds of paid and/or owned media. The right mix of media can only be determined based on what the brand wants to communicate. Brands who are not prominent in their consumers' social ecosystem will be perceived as weak brands. They will need to create compelling stories that consumers will want to share in their social networks.

Final word: Earned media brings sustainability to the Brand! 

Just like a tree's health is judged by the fruits it bears, similarly a brand's health can be evaluated by the media it earns as a result of good storytelling, and the right mix of paid, owned, and earned media. 

Read about challenges that brands are facing and how they can win the Great War of Digital Consumerism.

The New Brand Tree: Growing the Fruits of Earned Media by Avinash Jhangiani is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.