The Hindu Business Line : Consumers are the new creative department

Interactive. That's the lead discipline for many clients, announces Bob Greenberg, Chairman of R/GA in the introduction to Advertising Now. Online, edited by Julius Wiedemann, from Taschen (www.taschen.com) . "After the interactive baby was thrown out with the dotcom bathwater in 2000, it took four years to re-establish the credibility of the interactive channel as a worthwhile marketing investment."

To Greenberg, the Web symbolises `technologically enabled consumer control'. He sees consumers migrating `from outbound channels like scheduled television viewing and print to inbound channels like the Internet, video game systems, iPods, convergent mobile phone devices, and PVRs (personal video recorders)'.

According to Matt Freeman, CEO of Tribal DDB Worldwide, the next ten most explored digital communication media will be: "Mobile, iTV, video games, blogs, podcasts, social networks, RFID, digital home networks, nanotech-imbedded packaging and robots. Lots and lots of robots."

Time to shake off old programmes and stereotypes, therefore. For instance, outbound marketing relied on `brand narratives' that were `brief stories usually 30 seconds long' aimed at differentiating the brand from the competition. But in the inbound space, an on-demand world such as the Web, marketers can elevate their dialogue with consumers and thus achieve `brand transformation,' suggests Greenberg.

Brands need to learn to behave differently, demands Freeman. "The leap from brand communication to brand interaction requires three-dimension, behavioural character that is not required of brands in broadcast-only media." Digital media allow the consumer to be part of campaign, he notes. "The most powerful new medium we have discovered is not digital, but rather, consumers themselves." Consumers are the new creative department, declares Freeman. A tectonic shift is on, he says: `from a media mogul-determined dictatorship into a consumer-determined meritocracy'.

In an essay titled `The Death of Advertising As We Know It,' Johan Tesch writes: "The advertising industry has tried to communicate with someone lying in a couch half asleep for a long time now. Finally this man has woken up." The secret of smash hits is `to succeed in entertaining people with something new and clever, and at the same time say something profound about the core of the product'. Tesch cautions that the ad industry has a problem `when people find new ways of consuming media where the advertisers can't follow'.

Mike John Otto's essay, however, wouldn't agree that advertising is dead. "It is more interesting than ever! The traditional thinking of online and offline is being taken over by clever direct advertising. Interactive television will forge links. What will measure a successful brand in the future are the channels it serves and how it approaches a special target group."

The new secret weapon is `in-game advertising', writes Otto. "In the game, you pass a poster that shows the latest sports car. If you click on the poster, you get to the online special where you can configure your vehicle." The real and the virtual worlds are connecting with each other, says Otto. He cites as example how in Asia `people buy the latest adidas sneakers not only for themselves, but also for their virtual self on the Net, in chats or games.'

Be ready for the new art. For, in the past, art was meant to be gazed upon, as recounts Ricardo Figueira. "Today the challenge is creating art to be shared, an interactive experience to communicate meaning, make services easy or simply get the expectator emotionally involved."

Irresistible read.

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D. Murali