By Scott Goodson, Special to Gulf News

It’s a new era where consumers will punish a company for taking a wrong stand, but also for taking no stands at all.

Unless you’ve been on another planet the past few weeks, you already know the story of how a student killed innocent people in a Florida high school. Consumer backlash followed the shock and horror.

Consumers went aggressively after MetLife Insurance after learning that the company offered the National Rifle Association (NRA) members pre-negotiated discounts. In the aftermath of the killings, they targeted Hertz and Enterprise Car Rental, United Airlines and Symantec security software, which abruptly announced plans to cut ties with the NRA.

Putting aside the political aspects of this story to look at the marketing side of it, I have to wonder: Going forward, how might this affect the way advertisers think about fundamental questions like “What do we stand for?” And “Who do we stand with?”

If brands haven’t fully answered those questions, they’d better. We’re living in an Age of Uprisings. And the uprisings extend beyond politics or social issues, spilling into the world of commerce.

Today, if you do something that ticks people off, they’re going to rise up against you.

They have the will, the passion and the social media tools to wreak havoc on your brand. And it may be in response to something you haven’t even done yourself. You may simply be associated, through advertising or some other form of support, with the offending party.

How will marketers react to all of this, going forward? In my book “Uprising”, I interrogate this new world for marketers. Should they respond by becoming more cautious, by trying to stay far way from anything that could ever, in any way, be perceived as controversial?

Trouble is, that’s also the quickest way to make a brand invisible and irrelevant. If you play it safe in today’s boisterous marketing environment, it’s true that you won’t have crowds rising up against you — they’ll be too busy ignoring you. In the attention economy no one will pay attention.

That’s why I think marketers will need to do something more counter-intuitive. Brands should become more activist, not less. But they should do so in a thoughtful, considered way that is likely to put them on the same side of passionate issues as their customers.

A movement strategy starts with figuring out what your brand’s core values are: What are you for? What are you against?

Traditionally, marketers have been reluctant to take a stand against anything because it can feel controversial or divisive. But the truth is, some of the boldest marketers have been doing this kind of thing successfully for quite a while (think of Apple, which in its early days came out strongly against conformity and the “Big Brother” world of computing).

And today, more than ever, consumers are looking for brands that share their values and outlook. They see those values expressed clearly in brands like Emirates (“Hello Tomorrow”).

But too many brands don’t seem to stand for anything. And so they end up being defined and judged — and sometimes found guilty — by association.

At my agency StrawberryFrog, we’ve found that when brands are willing to take a deep look at themselves — their culture and their values — and, simultaneously, are also inclined to really pay attention to what’s going on in the lives of their core consumers, it can lead to epiphanies.

This is what we should be talking about to our customers. This is what we should be helping them do in their lives. When that happens, they begin to have their own clear mission. They’re in a position to do more than just run ads; they can launch an initiative, or better yet, a movement.

To really be part of this age of movements, your brand has to be willing to get out there and mix it up. I’m not talking about spouting words in an ad or even just throwing money at a cause d’jour. I believe brands now must demonstrate their values and beliefs through action.

Use your resources to help customers become more active and involved in the issues they care about.

Create platforms for them. Help them form communities. Set up events where they can rally behind an idea or principle.

I believe brands must connect with that passion and activism somehow. If you fail to respond to this shift in the culture, you run the risk of being out of step with your customers.

Your company could end up looking like a “status quo” brand in a revolutionary world.

The writer is the founder and Chairman of New York based StrawberryFrog.