Get Your Audience to Help You Brand
November 7, 2006
By Chris Wilson, Joystick Interactive
By now, we're all aware of the growth and power of online communities like MySpace, YouTube and Freewebs. Millions of people are now expressing themselves through their own custom websites or artistic creations, which they submit for public fodder. Online communities are redefining the way people interact in everyday life. As many prognosticators have noted, new advertising opportunities have emerged because of these trends. However, thus far it has been mostly conjecture about the future potential.
Marketers have only just begun to scrape the surface of getting involved with these communities. There's a big difference between making a MySpace page for a movie character and bringing that character to reside on the MySpace pages of thousands of people. Let's take what we've learned over the past few years of rich media marketing and start to apply it in this new online community paradigm.
Utilizing original video is one of the more effective tools to capture the viewer's attention. In the same way that rich media ads using green screened original content increase the interaction with an ad, marketers should make movie characters exportable to fans' homepages, welcoming visitors or delivering witty comments. It's a great way to allow entertainment marketers to virally brand their characters while helping viewers to make their pages a little bit cooler and more personalized.
Many of today's young people participate, to some degree, in commercialized identity. And smart advertisers are creating promotions that take advantage of this identification with brands. For example, most people wouldn't talk on their MySpace page about how much they enjoy drinking Budweiser. But when rap star Jay-Z became their new pitch man, the company edited their logos into his newest music video. So if Bud decides to make it easy for a Jay-Z fan to add that video onto their page, suddenly that page is promoting Budweiser. Give people cool interactive components to add onto their personal pages, and they're actually advertising Mercedes, Prada or "The Daily Show" to their friends. Once we've achieved that, what's to say we can't bring commerce opportunities to these community interactions? What if you have an interactive link for Nike sneakers on your site, and everyone who goes through your link to purchase actually earns points towards free sneakers?
We now find ourselves in an age where everyone has the opportunity to create their own voice online, adding another dimension to self-expression. While someone might have a job that prevents them from wearing a Pearl Jam T-shirt to work, they can still express that loyalty on their webpage. As advertisers, let's give people every opportunity and incentive to show brand loyalty on their sites. Let's make it fun for the site creators, and engaging for the additional fans who visit their sites. By hitching a ride on those collective voices, marketers have a more subtle way to achieve brand response. Empowering the people makes it their choice, not an intrusive presence on their online experience.
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