You know what gets me excited? Today it is possible to build an amazing brand, even a ‘household name’ with a media budget of zero dollars. All you have to realise is that your brand, and indeed your marketing effort in general is way to important to leave in the hands of a marketing team.

 Allow me to explain…

 First, lets look back at how a whole lot of the biggest brands of last century were built:

1. Find a product that not many people are making.

2. Make it.

3. Spend a whole lot of money telling people about how awesome it is , any way you possibly can. Or, even better, a whole lot of money on making and airing awesome ads that are really entertaining/funny/inspiring/beautiful/remarkable but are only really loosely associated with what you are advertising.

4. Profit.

The truth was it didn’t actually matter whether the product was actually awesome, or just mediocre. It was hard to find alternatives, hard to evaluate them effectively, and even if one consumer did realise your clever ruse and switch there are another 3 million people waiting that have just been told how awesome that product is, that don’t really know the truth and are dying to buy it.

Now, there is almost certainly a better product in the product category that you are shopping in than the one that you see advertised on TV/in the magazine/on the billboards around town. Even better, it is easy to find out about it.

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way that people find out about products and services. I am not talking about banner ads and Google AdWords. The Internet is a fundamentally different medium, in which conversation is the currency. In effect the Internet acts like a giant town square, with everyone able to (in fact gagging to) have their say on everything and anything – from Brittany Spears’ latest lip syncing incident, to the best brand of toothpaste for getting rid of cigarette and coffee stains.

This is where smart business people are taking advantage. Now more than ever you can build an amazing reputation quickly and cheaply simply by being amazing. Wow, who would have thought?

The cost of communicating on the Internet is next to zero. Once you have the ability to access the Internet there is no barrier to publishing in one form or another.

And this is where the town square analogy rings true. Lets imagine for a moment that we live in 1860. There are two small general stores in town, on opposite sides of the main town square. Store A has a friendly, knowledgeable clerk who knows the townspeople by name, is happy to order in exotic items if requested, and even has a live pet Kiwi. Store B on the other hand has a clerk that is rather aloof, his store is well stocked, and his prices competitive, but there is nothing out of the ordinary about it. It is just an ordinary store.

The townspeople love talking about Store A when they meet each other in the square: “have you seen Pete’s pet Kiwi?”, “he ordered me in Bovril from back home”, “…and what a lovely man.” Store B on the other hand almost never gets mentioned. It is not that it is bad, just that there is not much to talk about.

This exact scenario plays out on the Internet constantly, however what makes it even more powerful for businesses that get it right is two things:

1. The Internet allows messages that are repeated to float to the top. The more that people say “brand X is totally amazing” the more that becomes gospel. (Hint: Google search results are – right now – the gospel)

2. Some townspeople of the Internet happen to have megaphones, and a whole lot of peoples attention. If you can show these people how amazing you are, then you will be rewarded for your effort. (Hint: Find these people)

Of course this also means that if you disappoint people, particularly by promising that you are awesome and just turning out mediocre you will suffer. Big time.

So how can you be amazing? How do you make sure you surprise people and deliver amazing results? The answer to that question is different for every product and service. I bet a good place to start, if you are already an established brand, is take some of your media budget (I would say take it all, but I know that is scary) and empower your entire staff to deliver something amazing. If you are just starting out, even better, you can bake amazing in to everything you do right from the start.

Brands today have a choice. Spend your money on actually being remarkable, and let the network do the work.  Or, spend a whole lot of money on trying to get people to notice your less than remarkable, but probably perfectly adequate, product or service. I know which makes sense to me.