The Five Big Ideas
Not all ideas are created equal. The biggest idea at AD:TECH is freeing the brand. Consumers are already talking about you. They are manipulating your brand and if you are doing a good job they are making it their own. The world has gone beyond brand loyalty to use of a brand as an identifier in personal expression. This has an authenticity that cannot be imposed or created inorganically.
The number of blogs has doubled in the last nine months, and Tony Conrad asks the question, “What are you doing to empower your customers to express your brand?”
He suggested that advertisers make their song, logo and content available for fans to manipulate and extend. He showed two commercials - one created by the agency and one created by a fan - and the fan one rang true. User creativity in new media cannot be stopped. In the digital world, it is all available to everyone. And for the most part people do great things with it.
Advertises that proactively engage with the consumer put a human face to their brand. Conrad recommends that they “Get in front of it and trust.” It is still stunning to ad folks that people enjoy creating materials about and discussing products. But it has been my belief that it’s more fun to create culture than to consume it. NIN has allowed anyone to remix their latest tracks. My old high school English teacher, Mr. Retman, said that the thirty second commercial was the sonnet of the Twentieth Century. The limits of the form dictated the creativity. The desire for free form content is the desire to cast off those restrictions.
The dichotomy of freeform and relevance is not as much of a stretch as one might think. Consumers are creating content and in doing so self-selecting into groups. The ability to reach these groups effectively is the next step in targeting.
Panelists thought search will be dominated by the big three. There was a prediction that buying words has flat-lined and cannot be taken much further. The interesting areas have to do with reaching smaller more specific audiences. The marketplace seems to have a cautious buzz. Marketplaces controlled by the consumer in these self-selected groups are interesting.
