One of the definitive works of Psychology was written by Viktor Frankl  and is called “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

Frankl was an inmate during the Holocaust in a Nazi concentration camp and uses that experience to, in part, shape his life philosophy.

Now, I am far from an expert in this field and read the book over 15 years ago, but my key takeaway then was this simple concept.

“No matter how bad the situation is, you can always control how you respond to it.”

When everything else is gone, your reaction is still up to you.

Now, the issue of brand messaging and a tale of Holocaust survival are clearly orders of magnitude different, but as I read Amber Naslund’s excellent post on “Social Media and the Reality of Control,” Frankl’s words came to mind.

If you are a brand manager today (and we all are, right? Think Global Micro-Brand"), it’s pretty obvious that you can’t control what is being said about you. You never could, of course, but now you can see what others are saying, which changes the discourse dramatically.

That’s frustrating and scary.

But, if Viktor Frankl were your brand manager, you’d ask yourself, “ok, how can I respond in the best possible way?”

That’s the challenge for ALL of us, no matter the size, as we enter the billion channel universe.