Power to the People

Everyday, communicators try to imagine what will engage their target audiences. What will bring an idea to life and create a lasting impression? Historically, the solutions to questions like these have been expressed through one-way channels: talking at consumers and hoping the message will resonate with them. Today though, pioneering campaigns are considering the power of interactivity to engage audiences and, most importantly, create meaningful, personalised relationships.

Back in my university days, one of my major interests was the study of hypertexts. These electronic texts changed the way we consumed literature, offering an interactive element that gave power to the reader to control their own narrative journey. Of course, all reading can be regarded as interactive in the sense that we have to come to decisions about meaning. But, without getting all theoretical, one of the major distinctions between a hypertext and, say, a traditional novel, is that a hypertext has a unique element of user interaction and control. A reader's decisions actually change their experience of order, structure and, in some cases, the representational nature of the text itself. This is much easier to imagine when we think about the world's biggest existing hypertext, one that is chopping, changing and very much 'alive' right this minute: the internet. Every day, readers chart their own course through this massive interlinked text, interacting with links to other pages and being asked to leave their mark on a range of interactive features.

This kind of textual intercourse existed in pre-electronic forms too. The cult of adventure game books was a well-established mini-craze among young people, especially in the 90s. These books placed the reader in the body of the narrator, asking them to take executive decisions by turning to a corresponding page in order to continue the plot. The challenge was to get to the end of the story still alive! Of course, modern gaming has now replaced such literary versions as the height of interactive, decision-based entertainment. In fact, so much of popular culture has now embraced interactivity: from popular television programmes asking viewers to take part in national quizzes through to satellite navigation equipment, asking users to input a range of personal preferences.

So what of the communications industry?

Well, there is an increasing trend towards campaigns that empower consumers by asking them to interact with brands. The most obvious form would be through social media channels, where communicating has evolved from the traditional, top-down 'brand-speaks-same-message-to-large-number-of-passive-consumers' model to one where brands have multiple conversations with active consumers and, crucially, listen back to what they have to say. Of course, that doesn't mean consumers didn't have a voice when brands weren't really listening – only that they didn't have the platform to interact and express themselves directly. Today, most leading brands have strategies for engaging interactive platforms like social media and have had to evolve their communications strategies as more and more companies look to increase engagement.

Brand interaction with social media is something that has commonly been seen to be the responsibility of a PR strategy, as opposed to the more above-the-line discipline of advertising. However, innovators are showing that doesn't have to be the case. More and more advertising campaigns are including interactive elements, engaging consumers and, in the process, blurring the boundaries between what is seen as advertising and PR. For example, Walkers crisps devised a campaign asking members of the public to come up with interesting and unusual flavours. Their campaign, 'Do us a flavour', ended up with the public proposing varieties such as Chilli and Chocolate, Fish and Chips and even Cajun Squirrel. To complete the interactive engagement and prolong the campaign, Walkers then asked the public to vote for which flavour they would like to see developed as part of Walkers' permanent product range. Cue massive buzz and word of mouth promotion before the winner, Builder's Breakfast, was finally announced. The fact the flavour was discontinued a year later did little to dampen the publicity fever of the time.

Some companies have gone even further, asking the public to decide on the outcomes of their own adverts. As an example of this, BT have been asking the public to decide the outcome of their TV advert series featuring a fictional 'ordinary' British couple, Jane and Adam. In one particular dilemma for example, 72% of 1.6 million voters decided that Jane should conceive, to the headlines of 'Jane is pregnant!' Fans of Adam and Jane are subsequently campaigning on Facebook to ensure future adverts see the couple stay together. As much as everyone likes a happy ending, everyone equally likes to see how their own decisions can impact the lives of others.

In a further show of one-upmanship, in the United States, Pepsi have really been taking interactive campaigns up a notch. In a campaign supposedly demonstrating true consumer democracy, Pepsi asked fans to help create a new flavour for their Mountain Dew product range, 'chosen by the people, for the people.' However, this was not simply a flavour vote. Pepsi asked fans to submit product names, colours and packaging designs, as well as the promotional ads themselves, asking consumers to transparently and democratically vote for their favourite in each case.

Other cases are abundant. From interactive Japanese websites that actively demonstrate the animation skills of those they seek to promote to online gaming experiences with content designed to manipulate the public behaviour of users, interactive marketing is here to stay and for a very good reason: it allows the public and consumers to feel a valued and active part of the communications process and not just a passive, target audience to be preached at.

Brand DNA

The theory of evolution is arguably one of the most important ideas in human history to date. It's a beautiful, all-encompassing theory that is able to explain an exceptionally broad range of natural behaviours. It's such a successful idea that its principles are often applied beyond biology into the realms of economics, for example. So I began to think about whether these same principles could be applied to explain the evolution of a successful brand?

A successful gene is one that replicates through the generations and it doesn't take much to extend this idea to the world of brands in the context of, say, capitalism. For a brand to be successful, the messaging DNA that makes it unique needs to have adapted to its consumer environment so that it can replicate as much as possible. For a brand to survive and win, it must work successfully with its environment and, at the same time, beat off competition, especially from other rival brands competing for the same consumer resources.

If a brand is well-adapted, it will replicate its core messages through as many people as possible. However, just as successful genes 'aim' to be as efficient as possible, brands do not want to avoid wasting energy targeting the wrong consumers. In nature, a predator will often attack the nearest and most vulnerable prey because it is simply the easiest source of energy to convert. Similarly, successful brands employ targeting strategies, communicating with audiences that are more susceptible to engaging with them and repeating the core messages of their DNA. Because of this, brands have adapted different survival strategies for different purposes and do not always go down the 'big billboard advertising' route, but instead engage more targeted strategies such as PR, social media and the aptly named viral marketing.

Of course, as soon as a brand's messaging DNA is replicated, whether through a piece of composed communication or the subsequent buzz and word-of-mouth, it begins to mutate – much faster than what we see in nature. This 'Chinese whispers' effect that lowers copy-fidelity can be very concerning for a brand and its DNA because, once the message has passed through a considerable number of consumers, it could have mutated into an entirely different species altogether, losing the focus of the original message.

To combat this, modern brands have continued to evolve and, with environmental changes such as social media, the most well-adapted are beginning to practice a kind of brand eugenics to control their messages further down the replication line. Rather than bring their brand into the world through a piece of communication and then leave it be, experts now influence messages on an ongoing basis, particularly through engaging online audiences and adjusting messages through reciprocal feedback. And of course, just as in nature, some brands will benefit from co-operating with other brands, for example in the case of event sponsorship. Of course, these are far from acts of altruism and even in these instances of mutual benefit, a well-adapted brand will always seek to maximise its own advantage.

Of course, successful marketing will spread where it is well received and, because of this, successful brands, like successful genes, will have longevity. The ability to spread and be passed on is more important than the length of an individual brand awareness campaign in itself – particular genes die within their bodily habitats but their copies continue to communicate on their behalf. So although some marketing campaigns will always achieve short-term success, brand species themselves continue to be sustained through long-term strategies.