Brands in our hands

I was waxing lyrical today about consumer control in reponse to this article: Customized Branding: Consumers Get Creative Control on Brandchannel.com

http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=407

"I agree that it is the experience that is open to customisation, however, it is the brand that is allowing this sort of interaction. With this ability for the brand / product experience to be malleable, we're reaching a time of brand / product synonomy - think back to Hoover's ownership of the vacuum cleaner market. With the opening up of further interactivity and creative avenues for the consumer and the brand - we're putting them on a more level playing field - because there's a dialogue rather than a brand-monologue. This means that brands are set in even more violent competition against one another for category ownership and consumer involvement. The barriers are down and things can only get more interesting!" Louise Kennedy, Brand Consultant - February 25, 2008

I think that consumer involvement in the future of brands is what this industry must actively accomodate and encourage. The more brands allow themselves to be involved with their consumers, the more receptive consumers are going to be to messaging because the more confident and less cynical they're going to be if they're part and parcel of what the brand says and does.

Brand experiences allow consumers to be intimately related to brands, and so brands become much more part of the fabric than they typically would be and are otherwise today without such interactivity.

The explosion in media opportunities through the increasing evolution of technology is opening these experiential doors. And if we consider my previous post, about the importance of media owners and agencies, we can truly see why this is the case.