Thursday, April 3, 2008

Making ideas come to life

"Brands as shared objects," by Mark, gave me a thought > if we give users the tools they need to customize and make the product their own (not consumer-generated but actually building on a base product provided by a brand) then, not only are we letting them become "part of the process" but we are facilitating the manifestation of a unique idea.

A good example would be blogger.com (Google-owned). We have a platform to work from but if we have an idea to change the appearance or add something, we have the tools to make it happen. We have creative control. Part of what makes the new idea of co-creation so awesome is the aspect of ownership. Google has given us the tools to make our own ideas come to life.

And in the business of advertising, we all know how hard it is sometimes to get an idea realized. Smart brands have not only figured out how to do it for themselves but for their customers. Pretty cool.

2 comments:

Christian From Hermansen said...

Love reading your blog! Just thought I would share this post about branded utility and how Domino´s has managed to create added brand utility by developing a tracking tool for the making of a simple pizza! I like this example, since they actually fill out the gap from order to delivery.

/Christian

http://marketear.blogspot.com/2008/03/branded-utility.html

Anonymous said...

Ahhh I have one for you as well my little friend...Lego, fabulous Lego is creating an MMOG for their brand and has created a site for their fans. Not only are fans able to find exclusive info, videos with the head designer and inspiration behind the game but are also allowed to give input. So much so, designers often time post surverys to the community asking them questions about what looks better. I.e. "what type of mushroom would your reconfig (Lego speak for their mini-characters) like? How cool is that!!