Then hackers started fooling around with the device using it to do
things Microsoft never intended.  This kind of transgression would
usually elicit in nasty “cease and desist” letters and hefty lawyers
fees, but this time Microsoft did something different.

They released a software development kit (SDK) to help outsiders modify their product and created an accelerator
that offered seed money, office space and training to promising young
innovators.  Clearly, something important has changed.  Brands are no
longer mere corporate assets, but have become open platforms for
collaboration and creativity.

Brand Image and the Big Idea in the Age of Mass Media

After World War II, most of the globe went through several decades of
seemingly boundless economic expansion.  Consumers had ever more money
to spend and business expanded to meet the demand.  It was the dawn of
the branding age and marketers strove to make their products popular
with a populace hungry to join the consumer culture.

It was also an era of mass media. There was a limited amount of TV
stations and programming was geared to mass audiences.  Popular
broadcasts could reach more than 50% of the population, so if you put an
ad on the air you could reach just about everyone with a few spots.

The “big idea” was king.  Advertising pioneers such as David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett
developed powerful brand images that transformed the landscape of
commerce.  Great creative work combined with mass audiences proved to be
a powerful combination.

Brands soon evolved into consumer icons and created enormous profits
for the companies that owned them.  Not surprisingly, corporations
became very protective of their brand images, controlling them tightly
and protecting them fiercely.

Communication Planning and the Quest for ROI

With the 1970’s came the Arab oil embargo
and difficult economic times.  Financial accountability became central
to marketing strategy.  Consequently, marketers began to pay more
attention to cost efficiency and cost per Gross Rating Point (GRP) became the coin of the realm,

Then, in the 80’s and 90’s, cable and satellite technology
transformed the media landscape and fragmented audiences.  No longer
could you be sure that your target consumer would see your message.  The
“big idea” became secondary to effective media selection and targeting

In the new environment, media agencies prospered and communications planning
was born. The principal strategic question became “where is our
consumer and how can we engage them.” When you can’t reach everyone,
reaching the right person in the right way becomes of paramount
importance.

How Facebook Became the World’s Biggest Website

Technology, of course, would change the game again, but it wasn’t
immediately obvious exactly how that would happen.  For its first
decade, digital was mainstream media’s poor cousin, offering fairly lame
consumer experience monetized by banner ads that weren’t especially
effective.  Marketers watched closely, but mostly kept their budgets in
TV.

A harbinger of change came in 2005, when News Corp bought MySpace,
the leader in the exciting new category of social media, in which
users, not professionals, produce content. At the time, the $580m
investment seemed pretty smart.  With News Corp’s corporate heft and
business acumen behind them, MySpace seemed poised to dominate.

Then came something unexpected.  MySpace competitor Facebook made the unusual move of opening up its site to outside developers through application programming interfaces (API’s).  Those developers, in turn, built clever new applications that improved the site and increased revenues.

With one brilliant stroke, Facebook became more than just a website
or even a brand, it became a platform.  By May 2009 Facebook passed
MySpace on its way to becoming the most popular Web destination in the
world.  In 2011, News Corp sold MySpace for a reported $35 million, a
loss of more than 90% of their investment.

From the World Wide Web to the Web of Things

When Tim Berners-Lee
first developed the World Wide Web in 1989, he conceived a vast
connection machine that would allow people to communicate on a universal
platform.  A decade later, he felt he had not gone far enough and so he
created a second Web, which he called the Semantic Web, in order to let machines communicate seamlessly as well.

Just like his first creation, this new Web of Things, is starting to take hold and manifest itself in four new areas that touch consumers lives:

Smartphones:  At the center of the Web of Things is
our smartphones, which is not only a communication device, but a sensor
platform.  In effect, we are using them as “universal remote controls”
for our digital environment.

Smart Homes: New super-efficient chips
are putting connectivity everywhere and our home appliances will be as
much a part of the Web of Things as our tablets or smartphones.  There
are already a number of products that allow us to control aspects of our
home (e.g. security, lighting) remotely.

Smart Cars: Our cars are becoming an integral part of the new Web of Things as well. Ford’s Sync and Toyota’s Entune, which are already installed in production units, connect with both the web and with smartphones.

In Japan, McDonald’s is experimenting with a system that will allow for downloading menus and in-car ordering.  Ford is reaching out to medical device makers
to collaborate on apps that help diabetics monitor glucose levels (a
serious problem behind the wheel) and monitor allergens in the air for
asthmatics.

Smart Retail: Probably most pervasive trend is the digitization of the retail environment.
From in-store apps to recommendation engines to elaborate in-store
augmented reality displays and a rapidly evolving mobile payments
environment, brands are learning how to interface with every aspect of
the shopping experience digitally.

Now many suggest that Apple will integrate near field communications (NFC)
chips into their new iPhone, which will allow consumers to effortlessly
make payments and interact with digital retail environments without
cumbersome QR codes.

The New Consumer Conversation

What this all amounts to is a new form of conversation
that brands are having with consumers.  Marketers have long known the
importance of listening to consumers and being responsive to their
desires and needs.  However, up till now, they had only crude methods
such as surveys and focus groups available to them.

Consumers are now providing a wealth of information to marketers in
real time.  Their comments on social media can be aggregated and then
analyzed using sophisticated new natural language processing
algorithms.  At the same time, their smartphones are communicating with
other machines around them, offering a wealth of new data.

Make no mistake, these are conversations and in more than an
abstract, philosophical sense.  In 2003, Google asserted in a civil suit
that its search results are a form of free speech
and won a favorable opinion.  Today, a vast array of recommendation
engines is affecting what we watch, buy and do based on machines talking
to other machines.

These new types of conversations don’t replace the ones that came
before, but augment and extend them, allowing brands to identify,
evaluate and act on changes in the marketplace with speed and
effectiveness unthinkable in previous decades.

The Brand as an Open API

Digital technology is forcing marketers to rethink their historical
approach.  No longer are they providing Pavlovian stimuli in the hopes
of a profitable consumer response, but are instead looking at their
brands as platforms and ecosystems, with the consumer playing an active
part.

These days marketers need to think beyond simple metrics such as GRP’s and CTR’s, but also in terms of collaborative technologies like SDK’s and API’s.  New platforms like Innocentive and Kickstarter
are enabling companies to source, test and fund new innovations by
utilizing the vast collective intelligence in the marketplace.

In this new semantic economy,
scale of a particular enterprise is nothing compared to the potential
scale of connections to a multitude of collaborating, co-creating
entities, be they 3rd party developers, hackers or even everyday
customers.

Brands are no longer images or even ideas, they are platforms and,
increasingly, the most successful ones have open architectures that not
only allow, but encourage active consumer participation.

– Greg