Is Your Brand as Powerful as a Lightbulb?

How is your brand like a lightbulb?

Marshall McLuhan, in his famous work Understanding Media, argued that a lightbulb as a perfect example of a medium with no message (i.e., no content). The lightbulb has no “message”, and yet it has a dramatic social effect; it creates spaces for gathering and interacting at night — it creates “community” — where otherwise no community would exist. To quote McLuhan, “a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.”

Wow. Powerful stuff.

I wonder if brands can have the same effect. Can a brand create an environment — a community — where one didn’t exist simply by being the medium?

In other words, could a brand be the vehicle through which people come together? And if so, does it even matter if the brand contributes to or participates in the conversation? Is the brand obligated to create content for its community? And if it does, does the message of that content matter? Will the community collapse if the brand does not create content? What benefits will the brand enjoy by “being a lightbulb,” so to speak?

Purina’s PetCentric social network is an example of a brand that created enabled communities that didn’t exist previously. Purina became the lightbulb.

But are all branded communities the same? How is PetCentric different other social media experiments? Why do some branded communities attract an audience/community, while others don’t?

What do you think? How can brands replicate the community-building power of a lightbulb?

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