Your brand is like Rome or New York – it will be great if it ever gets finished. And like Rome or New York, it can be great right now, even though you’ll never be really finished building it.
Of all the brands that could be reminding us of that, none is more unexpected than Rolls-Royce (full disclosure: I’m long-time member of the Rolls-Royce Owners & Enthusiasts Club). Their technological developments are kept quite literally under the hood while their brand is expressed in every inch of luxury throughout the sometimes oversized cars. But when you think of Rolls Royce, you tend to think things like “expensive”, “luxury” and maybe even “stuffy” and “conservative”. And you wouldn’t be wrong.
But in a bold move, Rolls-Royce has unveiled an electric car currently making its way through trade shows, the 102EX. The CEO has done a lot of press and television to introduce it (see below) and they’ve also built a site to foster the debate about electric luxury cars.
This is surprising for three reasons:
First, there’s no real demand for this car among the super-rich audience for new Rolls-Royce owners, so this is a technological leap of faith for the company to experiment with (and let’s not ignore the fact that even an experimental Rolls-Royce is still an expensive car to build). In the CEO’s own words, response has been “ambivalent”.
Second, the Rolls-Royce brand is about not compromising on anything and currently, electric cars are about compromise.
Third, Rolls-Royce hasn’t usually made fostering debate about its products a priority. In its history, most of the debate has been between the options of “do you want it” and “can you afford it”. This site, though, is a home to hundreds of comments, outrage, innovative ideas on improving the experiment along with a huge amount of support for the idea and the car itself. And they encourage visitors to share their thoughts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
So many companies are struggling with how to incorporate social media into their campaigns and many more are ignoring the problem entirely. In typical fashion, though, Rolls-Royce has rolled it out usefully and elegantly. This is the kind of best practice I talk about frequently at social media boot camps and in my graduate seminar on the subject.
What’s important about this, though, is that Rolls Royce isn’t taking its brand for granted. They realize they need to keep pushing their audience, their messaging and their technology in order to stay ahead of the game. By challenging themselves they’ve challenged their audience and pushed their established brand further than anyone would expect.
We can all learn from Rolls-Royce. Don’t stop pushing your brand or your audience. Never feel like you’re done. Building something that important is work that never ends.
