09.06.2011 by Petri Lattu
Reason to participate.
Digital, schimigital. Everyone has a website and a presence in the social web.
Just being there is not a good enough reason to be there however.
The field we work in has existed for around 15 years now - creating presence and experiences in the interactive realm.
But the methodology is still pretty much the same than it was at the dawn of the digital age. Technologies have changed, as have the channels we work with but what is lagging is that brands often still see themselves as top down broadcasters first.
The agencies often focus on creating architecture and brand surface sans a real interactive content or concept.
This is a challenge, since the audience according to basically all research trusts brands less all the time. One way communicative efforts are more and more seen as something that interrupts and disrupts.
All doom and gloom then?
Hardly. Brand design today is as much creating an experiential framework than it is just determining the color and the shape of things.
Reason to believe has transformed to reason to belong.
Experiential brands - not brand experiences.
First we discover that companies have a soul and an ideology. We interpret the brand essence into a living, breathing persona - basically dig out the essence on which the consumer not only makes a choice but feels good about making said choice.
This is the core on which all activities are based on.
We must also take care of not dropping the audience once it is reached, making sure that there is a reason to continue the interaction.
End result is a participatory brand, one that is truly horizontal with the audience, one that behaves with logic and coherence.
This makes it possible for the audience to like the brands beyond offering a like button.
Communication seen as a behavioral framework liberates the thinking from placement to significance and interaction, and interaction is in the end of the day is the core on what our business was founded back in the day.
As agencies, we are evolving from the technicians of the digital age to the strategists and drivers of brand dramaturgy - maybe the embers of the revolutionary fires are still glowing.