I love the new trend toward open-source idea refinement. It's worked for Russell Davies, who has made two (as far as I can tell) presentations using ideas that his readers helped generate. And he does a great job with attribution. In many ways, it's the perfect model for creating loyal readers. After all, we've all got something to say (otherwise we wouldn't be blogging), and we love to see that our comments are going somewhere.
This morning, John Grant over at BrandTarot is hoping to get some feedback on his ideas regarding the future of engagement. GO and CONTRIBUTE. That's what this is all about. The exitcreative summary? After offering a historical perspective, Grant offers some great ideas for where brand engagement will be in the (near) future, where things are "lived not announced." I contributed the following:
While it's true that networks are spreading information, trends, influences, etc. faster than ever, I think that there's something more to this idea of engagement that you hit on with each of your 5 engagement ideas/examples. It's the idea of a brand being completely, inextricably connected to a specific social identity. Take people who define themselves, as a group, as "beautiful people" for example. The future of REAL engagement is when a set of brands help define the identity of that social group. Of course, the constituents of that group help define the identities of "their" brands, and they all happily move into the future, constantly evolving and redefining each other based on their shared needs and wants. This idea of a dating service for "beautiful people" is a perfect example. Beautiful People define what it is and how it works. In response, the dating service helps define who is "in" and who is "out" of the group. Other brands--for instance, a fashion brand--join the group of accepted brands and are similarly engaged in the collaborative definition of identities. Overall, it's my belief that the network was always there. It's better now, and it enables these things to happen. But I'm convinced (for now) that it's about shared identities and collaboration between brands and social groups.