I attended the AAAA account planning conference this week. One of the presentations that caught my attention was Mark Earls of Ogilvy Europe, talking about co-creativity. One of the interesting things about this talk was the notion that good advertising does not 'target' individuals for treatment, but that it facilitates (for want of a better word) 'play' between individuals.
A little background: humans have evolved into the species we are today due to our ability to co-operate and work together. Chimps, it turns out, find it hard to stay together in large groups for long periods of time. A mutation that enabled more complex and long-lasting group activity was the key adaptation that first separated humans from chimps.
What does that have to do with the business of communications? Everything, as it turns out. Human power, throughout history, has been driven by our ability to play together, work together and co-create. With the advent of the internet, we now have more opportunities than ever for co-creation, un-restricted by the bounds of space, time or infrastructure.
Co-operation and 'play' finds their expression in our industry today through such buzz-words as "viral marketing" and "word of mouth". But what does this really all mean? Earls thinks he has the answer: good communications are about getting people to do things to and with each other. In other words: get people to interact with each other.
This notion of 'interaction' is not limited to the internet, but can live across many channels. Notable successes in getting people to engage each other around a brand happen over terrestrial TV, as :30 spots, like the Tango and Marmite campaigns from the UK have shown. What is key here is not the medium, but the interactivity in the ideas - the whole industry is now moving towards an 'active branding' mindset.
This means throwing out the old rules of creativity, in terms of how agencies create content, according to Earls:
- Its not about individual excellence in creativity, rather, its about enabling the market to experiment, interact and engage around the brand
- Its no longer about what we create and take to people, in terms of meaning or image, but about helping people to develop their own meaning and patterns of engagement
A powerful brand leaves something for people to discover and delight in. The delight in discovery leads to sharing and so the human social reaction begins. In other words, at a fundamental level, the process of discovery is not a solo process, but a communal one, in which consumers derive meaning through their interactions with each other.
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