Brands as Media 2

I’m terribly sorry that it’s only now that I get back to the brands as media thing. I’ll spare you my lame excuses for my tardiness and get right on it.

The main thought was that some brands or companies are becoming (or could become) a platform hosting communication in more then one direction. Brands-as-media adds an indigenous content and platform layer to the brand-as-curator idea, creating co-suming between brands and their users.

The co-suming thing was picked up by Vee.Chen of Shrink the Media who mentioned it in her article Creating Time. What she says is that by “creating a space for consumers to play in and providing them with incentives to do so brands are becoming a medium to spend time with”. What Vee.Chen does is incorporate the word time into the co-suming equation, which really got my thoughts going. Thanks for that Vee, I’m much obliged!

What the word time (and some brain activity of yours truly) more or less does is bring my previous posted Maslow theory and co-suming together. In ‘What's the Next Big Thing’ I make the statement that consumers are moving into the self-actualisation (top) layer of the Maslow pyramid where they are conscious of their own needs and abilities. To fulfil these needs and maximize their abilities they actively engage in personal growth, development and eventually creating (which is the opposite of consuming).

The moment consumers choose to spend (more) time (...time!) on a platform/medium it’s possible they will engage in the ultimate form of self-actualisation; creating. In the self-actualisation layer consumers become creators and with that they block brands and companies from entering that layer.
What’s left for brands to remain in contact with their users is providing tools and platforms that the users might want and/or need.

Oh, and also, given the fact that it invites users to actively engage in creating and that it provides tools to develop and create, it’s also very web 3.0 isn’t it. Which is a good thing since we all hold our .0’s so dearly.

So there you have it, more of my thoughts spoken out loud and another page of my moleskine spared. You think it's jibber jabber or you think it does matter? Either way, let me know!

Brands as Media

Originally this would be about UGC, CGM or indigenous content (as I saw someone call it the other day, like that word a lot). But it moved somewhere slightly different...

Before I go further huddle up and listen, here’s what’s up; let’s all make a pact right here and now and drop the name CGM, okay? Why? I don’t think that the word consumer should be used in this context due to the fact that the users are actually creating which, in my opinion, is the absolute opposite of consuming. But let’s not elaborate too much on that right now.

It’s clear that indigenous content is blurring the previous clear(er) lines between companies and consumers. But it seems that there is much more happening. Noah Brier wrote some very interesting views on this, which you can read here.
Noah says that indigenous content will be integrated in more and more sites, that it will turn companies’ media spending more and more into a trial&error model and that it will become more and more a part of long term relationships. Now let me try and make some bold move about indigenous content (watch out!), which was evoked by this article on Adverblog (ou, si vous parlez francais, l’article ici), by taking this one step further with the aid of eBay.

Basically what eBay is doing, by selling their advertising space on to the users of eBay, is providing their users with a platform to communicate…and by this they actually more or less become a medium.
Hmmm, could this mean that brands (companies) could turn into platforms where they ‘co-sume’ (hey, I just made up a word…) with their users. With co-suming I would mean the company using content by individuals and individuals using all things offered by the company. A more open and long-term relationship would come into existence where both parties could aid eachother in many ways (or is that too much of a naive utopian thought?).

Eventually this could mean that a brand becomes its own medium, I think.

Okay ‘till here, for now (sorry, got a job to do…). Obviously it needs some more thoughts and ideas, but I like where this could be going.

So watch for an update on co-suming and brands as media.