Pseudo Branding: Learning Adaptation with Rapid Prototyping

One day, I got so tired of telemarketing calls, that I pretended to be taking the bait to see how far it would go.

I found the company name, address, and began using a Trans Union database to see what I could find. Pulling on link after link, I navigated what appeared to be independent media and ad companies, all the way back to Microsoft. Could it be that “shell companies” operate on behalf of major companies to collect user data in methods of all sorts of chicanery, for the purpose of not tarnishing the mother brand?

If no tread mark exists from starting and later winding up a marketing agency, how could the role of an ‘alias’ be used legally, ethically, and scientifically to test markets, gather customer data, segment it for research, and perhaps even validate product features based on the surveyed needs and desires of users? While exploring this subject late at night, Tunnelblick on fleek, I realized new uses for many of the common branding tools and communications platforms that internet marketers deploy on a daily basis. Freed up to not represent a valuable brand, the capabilities for customer testing and learning are endless, but sometimes illegal, especially with GDPR laws in tact.

Still, an inventive branding export may use the role of aliases to valuable learn about end users in involved and creative ways. I’ve taken term “psuedo branding” as an idea that a like-brand or user may easily co-exist as a friend, customer spy, administrator, or even a perceived double, not to try and steal your identity, but rather to learn more deeply about your human response to a measurable digital stimulus. Potentially meaningless brands may not be so meaningless, secret brands may not want to be secret at all, and the art of counter intuitive digital presence has once again stolen my curiosity in the possibilities of advancing solutions through data-oriented customer understanding.

Lesser than a Machiavellian point of view, there’s no privacy issue at stake in customer testing through known alias. Weird as ‘people watching’ may be, it’s interesting what we might be able to learn through an army of aged profiles, a Facebook group geographically planted on the other side of the world, or a competitively branded doppelgänger intended for marketing research. When you have a great product, there’s no need for phishing, black hatting, scamming, or illegal decisions — but taking a creative approach to learning about your end customer?

Many more capabilities will come for understanding the needs and desires, habits and intuitions of customers. No need to stop being creative now! It seems the best marketing strategies engage multiple channels in rapid tests, to learn more about which channel is the greatest return for the investment, but more importantly, to identify and hone-in on the types of customers (personas) that are become your attracted, engaged, and loyal followers. Who elevates your brand digitally? Who walks through your door? Who tells their friends about you? And most importantly, what is it about them that causes them to take this action? Who are they, what do you they respond, and why?

Adapt to your customer by answering these questions and you’ll build a repeatable process that will deliver greater value to their life and yours.