What the kids are saying about brands online

One of our star copywriters teaches a first-year course on the subject at a local university. She presented some of our approach to acting as a Real Brand in a consumer-in-control world and got some great reactions. Here are some of the verbatims from the new school of advertising folks:

• “To my surprise, I’ve been finding myself watching Flash video banner ads rather than reading the content of the page I visited.”
• “Imagine YouTube-like banners everywhere. Go technology!”
• “For brands to thrive interactively, they need to be customizable. The consumer needs to be able to easily bring that brand into other facets of their lives, and on multiple devices.”
• “Linking and embedding multiple profiles (like Flickr, MySpace, YouTube) in easy and entertaining ways is the direction they should go…all about the ‘You’ persona.”
• “Brands are built by consumers and consumers are people/living things. Brands need to show more ‘life’ online to become or stay relevant.”
• “Although the consumer-leading-product-innovation model seems to be the new phase, I think the human desire to escape and share stories shouldn’t be ignored.”
• “If a brand has a Facebook or MySpace, it might be a good idea, because customers can get into their sites, comment and feel close to the brand and create a relationship.”
• “Advertisers need to choose sites well so they don’t degrade their image.”

It’s great to see this kind of thinking as consumers and future participants in our field. We weren’t talking like this back when I was in school. I look forward to seeing how this kind of a platform approach informs inspired ideation and real value creation between brands and consumers.

Thanks for the guest post, EmJ.