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I am interested in the idea of brands delivering something in their products that I am terming- malleability.

Meaning, do they allow themselves to be easily adapted and changed for new uses?

This is basically hacking.

The Wii is one of the more interesting ones of the moment because of its cultural presence and the interesting infa red and motion sensing technology that it has.

Here Johnny Lee shows a stunned audience at this year's TED conference, a couple of very cool hacks.



I think his comment about spreading the hacks through YouTube is especially relevant.

Brands could create whole ecosystems with communities of users who play, develop and share ideas in this way.

Perhaps, it's no longer about a closed box, but something that's open and can be constantly played with and its limits tested and explored.


Posted by Ed Cotton One of the more colorful aspects of the 2.0 world of blogs and unbridled consumer creativity is finding the occasion when a random individual picks on a brand, creates a space to play with it and stretches it above and beyond the original attentions of its owners.

A great example of this is Ikeahacker; a blog devoted to “playing” with Ikea’s flat pack furniture, in ways that don’t appear on the official list of instructions.

It’s the furniture equivalent of voiding your car warranty by installing nitro tanks. While many of this efforts is playful and come out of an endearing relationship with the brand, others might be of the “Fight Club” variety, all cynical and full of spite.

This type of attack was unleashed recently with this film that apparently exposes the contradictory motivations of consumer goods giant Unilever.

While Madison Avenue maybe cooling on the consumer-created trend, with the fabulous exception of the newish Apple’s iPod Touch spot (see below-original upload first- agency-consumer co-produced version-second), people are still going to do this stuff, regardless of whether you pay them, entice them and brands are just going to have to live with the consequences. The genie is out of the bottle, live with it.
 

Posted by Ed Cotton In their original incarnation, brands were signifiers and guarantees of quality, something consumers could rely and depend upon.

In the later part of the C20th, two forces emerged that changed branding.

The first was the drive by marketing experts and ad agencies to suggest that brands needed emotional differentiation in a world where all brands were functionally similar.

Secondly, businesses discovered that a quick way to improve shareholder value was to strip out as much of the costs as possible.

We are now starting to feel the consequences of both these actions. We are starting to see a "brand vacuum" emerge, a fault line between what brands say they do and what they actually do. The rapid rise of the Internet is making it hard for brands to manage and control this ever widening chasm.

Recently, the notion of marketing experts that brands are at parity and that it’s therefore impossible to provide rational brand differentiation is being severely tested.

If the global factory, producing all our goods, China, can’t be trusted for safety, what does that say about the quality of the brands produced there?



What If airlines can no longer guarantee that their planes fly on time?

How about if banks can’t guarantee that their customers will be able to withdraw funds from ATMs?

We’ve got so enamored with the development of emotional connections and business strategists have driven down costs to such a point that brand trust, the fundamental platform for brands has been eroded.

While brand experts may still wax lyrical about Lovemarks and emotional bonds, isn’t it time to go back to basics?

I don’t think you can become a Lovemark without being a Trustmark first.

Agencies may hate me for saying it, but the rational has just suddenly taken on a whole new level of importance.

For brands, proof has now become the order of the day.



Posted by Ed Cotton Make magazine is one of Influx's favorite brands.

Last year they took their brand live with a Fayre in San Mateo that attracted 20,000 people. The event is a chance to meet and interact with an extraordinary group of hackers and creators.

You can see some of the flavor of the event from these photos.








You can get tickets here for this year's event that takes place May 19th-May 20th in San Mateo.