What does “communiting” mean? whatever you think about the future of business… whatever you think your brand means to the masses… whatever your strategy is for marketing to youth… one thing is certain… we are in the midst of a major shift…
In some ways it’s like we’re back in the 1600s when everybody was racing to discover the new world… google is the french… twitter is the spaniards… facebook is the english… microsoft is the dutch… freakin’ apple is the portuguese… the ocean is the internet and computers and software are the ships… and they are all sailing to find and conquer new land…
New times call for new thinking… looking to the past is no way to secure a future… look at the movies: there’s a new “planet of the apes,” a remake of “conan the barbarian…” while on TV, there’s a new “charlie’s angels,” and a new “hawaii five-O…” it’s as if we aren’t imagining anymore… where have all the creative minds vanished to… or… who stopped investing in the dreamers???
today is all about accessing the physical representation of collective consciousness. before… collective consciousness was a concept… now… it’s on your smartphone and it’s called twitter… twitter is a physical representation of collective consciousness where you can tap into the consciousness of millions… you don’t have to guess what’s on the minds of people today… people are connected… to stay relevant, you or your business or your brand need to be part of the connection… you need to be part of the conversation… or start conversations… you need to invent, or amplify culture…
brands need to listen to community… there is a whole new concept of brands and businesses that bring community together… you don’t have to go about the traditional way of marketing and advertising… today, you need to turn a moment into momentum and momentum into a movement…
i think we need to go from marketing to COMMUNITING… we have marketed so much that we have killed communities… we have marketed so much that we have harmed our customer… we need to conduct business in a manner that enables and sustains communities…
COMMUNITING is about COMMUNICATION between people and companies that enables or sustains a COMMUNITY… in the intersection of people and company’s in a conversation is where COMMERCE is found. COMMUNITING will be the new standard.
Excerpted from October 17, 2011 issue of Advertising Age, Opinion column by guest author, Will.I.Am (Ad Age copy desk deferred to the author’s preferences on style and punctuation. Over two years ago, Wendistry posted another piece of marketing brilliance from Will.I.Am: ”The Continuous Marketing Campaign” and chooses to defer to his style as well.)
About Wendi McGowan