What are the most important branding trends in technology marketing right now?

It's premature to call it a trend, but every technology vendor needs to make sure that they deliver on its brand promise in 2012. The brand promise is essentially the tangible benefit that a technology vendor promises to deliver to its customers. From the buyer's perspective, it's the value or experience that the customer expects to receive when it purchases the vendor's product or service. Historically, technology vendors have done a good job at articulating brand promises, At the same time, they have largely failed to deliver on those promises (although there are some exceptions to this that are listed below).

Why is delivering on brand promise so important now? There are a few market dynamics that make it a real priority including:

1. Customers now have vehicles that allow them to communicate with other customers on whether specific vendors and products are meeting their respective brand promises. Whether it's all purpose platforms like Twitter or specific tools like GetSatisfaction, technology vendors are being held more accountable than ever.

2. Dynamics such as cloud computing and lean development are removing much of the complexity from technology. As a result, vendors can no longer claim that the technology is unduly complex and that the customer should expect to experience things like bugs and service level degradation as a result. We are actually at a point where the technology can and should work.

3. Many start ups and some large technology companies are delivering what they promise. In the start up category, companies like Dropbox deliver exactly what they promise. And in the large company category, companies like Apple and Google deliver exactly what they promise.

If it sounds hard, it's not. There are many technology vendors who excel at delivering their brand promise. Some notable examples include:

Apple - You too can own the coolest, most engaging technology products
Google - The world's information at your fingertips
Dropbox - Store and share all of your media wherever you want
Intel - It's inside every piece of technology
Square - Dead simple, sexy(!) credit card processing and merchant services

I have noticed a few trends which I think will continue to gain momentum in 2012.

Branded content: as customers become increasingly insensitive to conventional advertising, branded content will be a more important way for brands to reach customers, and for brands to leverage customers who will become the messenger to share branded content.

Video: we live in a video centric society and video is becoming a primary communications medium. Inexpensive tools such as smartphones enable inexpensive, high quality videos to be produced by consumers allowing them to communicate their opinions about brands and products, which are easily shared online. This trend is fuel for the above trend.

Metrics: as marketing investment comes under increasing scrutiny it will be critical to define metrics by which the success of branding initiatives are measured.

Analytics: an emerging trend is the use of sophisticated analytics to identify how various elements of the media mix are used to boost the overall results of a campaign. For example Out Of Home communications have been shown to have a measurable impact on search engine marketing click through rates. Armed with this quality of analytics brand marketers will are able to boost the impact of branding campaigns and optimize their branding investments.

The most important trend for branding is honesty.

When buyers had less knowledge marketing and sales were the face of the brand. Now buyers can look behind the facade. Indeed their favourite way of finding out about products is now talking to others, not talking to the vendor at all. So those "others" are now an important part of communicating your brand.

That means that marketing is no longer a department - everyone who works for the company, every customer and user (current and past) and any influencer in the product area is a potential benefit of problem for the branding.

That is causing a problem for the standard business model anti-social company which wants to talk at customers but not to hear from them unless it is to purchase.

Marketing has new media - the people your potential customer will ask for advice. And they aren't fooled by advertising, direct (e)mail or POS. They'll recommend what works (for them).

Cross-platform branding.

Effective use of stability branding in apps, handhelds, social engagement and permission-based messaging, to develop an interactive matrix to increase consumer engagement and differentiation among competition.

The branding itself will change looks this year. Out will be the Web 2.0 looks of the last 5 years. Branding will be simple yet warmer and more comforting to consumers. People are looking for trust-worthy, reliable sources for products and services during these unpredictable times. Plan to invoke feelings of stability, family and old-fashioned dependability.

Transparency, plain and simple, the largest branding trend I am seeing. It's no longer about telling the customer your brand attributes. It's about letting your customers tell you what you do that delivers satisfaction and then amplifying that. It's all about satisfaction, as perceived by the customer and measured by the vendor.

Cloud Computing: This is becoming a huge brand that many companies are attaching themselves to. It is finally a digestible term for the general public.