Influx

There was a time we used to tell clients that our brand campaigns needed time to take root and sink in.

Time to blossom to their full potential and reach maximum impact.

What if people are just being exposed to more stuff at a faster rate?

How does that impact how they regard brand communication?

Can people stand watching a campaign evolve over time or do you have to have a quick hit?

Consider this quote from Tim Leberecht

“Everything that happens is happening immediately or not at all. Live-Chat, live-streaming or 24/7 life-casting (Justin.tv)–we want it all and we want it now. The time between action and reflection has shrunk to zero. Beta is eclipsing meta.”

Surely, the ever- shrinking window of personal communication must be having an impact of broad scale communication?

Can we even be bothered to see phases of a campaign build and roll out over a two-month period from tease to reveal and on?

As people live with Twitter, blogs and Facebook pages that chronicle every moment of their lives, marketing communication either makes it into the conversation or is completely discarded and ignored.

Even when we step outside of the conversation cloud to do other things, we bring those things back into the conversation only if they are interesting enough.

In the “Age of Conversation”, brands only need to ask themselves one question now.

Can they contribute to the conversation?

There are only three ways to do this now in a sustainable fashion.

1.    Provide useful things that help people learn things for themselves that they might want to share with others. Make sure these aren’t constant and offer multiple experiences based on time, mood and need, so they never get dull or old because they are dynamic and constantly refreshed.

2.    Be perpetually entertaining by providing a constant and interesting barrage of entertainment that’s so good people have no choice but to consume it and share it.

3.    Do both.

Do anything else and no one is going to be paying attention.

So, if you are an ad agency here’s what you need to do.

1.    Invite some of those angry Hollywood writers into your fold, the ones who know how to entertain.

2.    Hire dozens of talented individuals who know how to build compelling and useful brand experiences.

Because, these will be the only two ways you will be able to sustain consumer interest, relevance and engagement for brands in a world where “we want it all and we want it all now”

Posted by Ed Cotton