Since I posted a summary of Nick Vale’s categorisation of creative ideas I’ve been obsessing about one category in particular; platform ideas.
Perhaps its the allure of the word ‘platform’ and the implied promise of an idea that is fundamental enough to build an entire campaign or even a brand on. One of the results of this obsession was a challenge by Iain to express the concept of a platform idea in a single sentence. So I’ve been giving it some thought;
Platform has both a literal and a figurative meaning. The literal is one that is familiar to us in the digital world – a platform is wikiparently “hardware architecture or software framework (including application frameworks), that allows software to run.”
In other words – it’s enabling.
Then there is also the figurative meaning as in the platform of a political party; what do you stand for.
In other words – it’s values.
So when we bring brand values and enabling computing platforms together we enter the area of what has been referred to as brand utility. And by brand utility, I mean the literal application of the brand’s values online; in an interactive environment, communications don’t need to stand in for the brand they can actually and quite literally ‘be the brand’. So at some point they stop being communications about a product or service and actually become a product or service.
A while ago I wrote about brand utility in the context of Deitre Ramms and his description of good design,
“what a brand does online can be an actual embodiment of its brand values. Put simply – can brands be useful online in the same way that their products, services and brand are useful in the real world?”
As we have explored the world of social media over the past two years it seems to me that this idea of ‘being’ the brand, rather than ‘representing’ the brand becomes specifically relevant. However in taking on board this idea of enabling values I am tempted to replace the term ‘social media’ with ‘social technologies’. As I mentioned in a post last week I think that there’s a risk we’re obsessing with the changes to communications that social media brings at the cost of ignoring its more fundamental ability to change companies. We’re more excited or prone to explore the ‘media’ rather than the ‘social’.
To redress this, a term that might be more useful is ‘social software’ or ‘social technologies’ which could be interpreted as
social = values / technologies = enabling
All of this theorising is all very well and good – but how does it translate into activity that improves the bottom line of our clients?
The best examples of these are when the marketing becomes indistinguishable from the product. The best example I cna think of is Last.fm. I won’t go into the details of how scrobbling and the Last.fm open API work as both product and marketing – but I did dig up an interview that I did with Spencer Hyman of Last.fm which I have reposted here.
I came acros a more recent example and a great explation of what I am talking about in Ad Ages’s recent Agency of the Year issue (Jan 19). Digital AOY is R/GA. Bob Greenberg explained R/GA’s approach to developing platforms which helped to crystalise what I have been thinking about.
In a further interview, Barry Wacksman, R/GA’s chief growth officer explained “We want to create transformational experiences that are either so useful or so compelling that they change consumers’ relationship with the brand,” says . “We saw the industry chasing more gimmicky stuff. That’s great, but it’s not transformational.”
R/GA describes this positioning as ‘apps not ads’.
Confirming my long held suspiscion of the value of ‘virals’ as a social media, R/GA questions ‘the time-worn notion that brand or product attributes need to be dramatized’. “We build a platform and then suggest how to market it. You don’t need to have a metaphor. We don’t start with the messaging, we end with the messaging.”
I think it’s telling that Greenberg is an architecture geek; Corbusier‘s mantra of form follows function is a neat parallel of enabling values; build it to be what it is – not to look like what it is supposed to represent.
So with these practical examples in mind let me boil the concept of a platform idea down to a single sentance:
A platform idea is one that enables the brand’s values.
Or to paraphrase McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’; the platform is the platform.
If Last.fm had their shit together they would be actualising their brand in ways such as Last.FM F&B establishments. The potential for customers to group, socialise and provide music input for establishments is a catalyst that most online brands haven’t figured out yet because so few of them meet people online, and then hook up in real life.
Facebook parties, political gatherings, sheep tossing afficianados it doesn’t matter. Give people a reason to actualise their online relationship and the revenue streams are self evident.
Most digital thinking hasn’t spent much time working on this because the volume traffic illusion means they keep chasing bucks online hoping to hit big like adsense. Aint gonna happen.
Think smaller, think entrance charges or splitting the takings revenue and rolled out nationwide or international it starts to look like an interesting business.
Last.FM pubs??? No brainer. Still waiting for them to even pilot the idea so they can learn about the unexpected stuff that happens.
….Rant over. Sorry if about the friendly hijacking.
A thoughtful piece, Leo. I’m currently sitting on a train, so my immediate response may be less considered than yours, but could not another one sentence definition of a platform idea be: An idea that allows a brand to demonstrate its values rather than just talk about them?
Love the post, and there’s much therein to ponder (and debate). It seems to me that the idea of a marketing “platform” can also be expressed in more prosaic terms: it’s the “Big Idea” from which all marketing activities – SM, PR, advertising, direct mail, POS – flow. (Don’t you love it when people use Caps and quotes in order to emphasize concepts? Sorry.)
To get to a really cool, effective platform idea, you need to figure out how and where a brand’s strengths intersect with the target market’s interests and concerns. Once you can see the overlap between brand and audience, you can come up with a creative platform (Big Idea, whatever) that satisfies both. It all comes down to something that Leo bangs on about incessantly: the need to find the sweetspot where brands and stakeholders alike can realize value.
Thanks for the feedback gents – Charles – YES! YES! YES! – something happened when the Internet started to erode traditional media monopolies and I think that there is a big clue in the term that the music industry is muttering; 360 degree deals. When what you have is a creative idea, but not a stranglehold over the means of exploiting that idea – then you need to get creative in how you leverage it – especially as the other pat revenue response ‘advertising and sponsorship’ slips quickly over the horizon.
Cheers Paul – you’ve summed up an entire weekends pondering and writing in a sentence. I think I need to spend more time on trains! I like the use of the word ‘demonstrate’ is still a kind of showing word – like a demnstration model – but hen it does make a distinction between something that is donme for marketing and something that is done for sales. Ages ago we thought that one of the things we should be aiming for was an idea that blurred the line between marketing and product – if it was a bit confusing – iTunes – then it was probably on the money.