Branded Technology

Okay, I admit, I was drinking at the time I came up with the term, 'Branded Technology,' but even the next day it sounded like a nice little umbrella for all the web design, facebook apps, twitter homepages, mobile 'experiences' and, well, all the technology that we try to get to express our client's brand. So I figured I'd ask other people what they thought.

It didn't go well.

I posted it as a question on LinkedIn, 'What do you think of when you see the phrase 'Brand Technlogy'?' I got answers like these:

Schizophrenia. Sort of like 'Sales Manufacturing' or 'R&D in Accounting'. Nick Chuvakhin A jack of many trades and a master of some…

like a made up job-would get the card tossed Terry Callendrillo Construction Safety Specialist

The first word that came to my mind was, 'pretentious'. The second word, or rather, group of words, were things like, 'phony, b-school baloney, fraud', etc. Mark van der Hoek Technology Development Engineer at Clearwire

I found it interesting that the more technical and/or engineering minded people were the, shall we say, more up front about thinking the idea was stupid. The couple of marketers that responded said things like this:

Using technology to market your brand… Dave Maskin, a Tradeshow Booth Traffic Builder and Event Entertainer

You are creating a technology for a brand. I wouldn't really consider you like an ambassador in the digital field. I guess that is my take on it. Jamie Favreau Entry Level, New Media

Not that either of those were particularly flattering -- I got a 'Duh, you're using technology and branding' and a 'Yeah, I see it but it doesn't do anything for me.' Both of which are fair.

Actually, all of them are pretty much fair -- I hate made up phrases that obscure what we're actually doing, and so often, there's a perfectly good old fashioned thing that applies to the new fashioned world. We still have media buyers, even if they're buying Google Adwords. We still have programmers, even if they're doing 'Web 2.0' programming. We still have brand management, and we still have technology.

And what really hasn't changed is that the techies and the marketers hate talking to each other. The guys running the presses didn't like the ad men, the directors never like the producers… 'creative' and 'production' are always at odds.

Which means that Nick Chuvakhin was actually right, what I'm trying to describe is schizophrenia. Only I don't know why he says 'schizophrenia' like it's a bad thing…