Wise Buddha

Forward looking brands who are really in touch with youth culture and how to reach youth understand the role the web plays in reaching this elusive group. I’m thinking brands like Nike who are masters at understanding how emerging channels and technology are a conduit for reaching the under 30 market. How they do it is a separate discussion, they nurture productive relationships with leading edge agency’s who understand this space. Compare this to the uptight shortsighted corporate approach that Agencies adopt in small markets like Vancouver where survival trumps any other consideration. When did agency’s forget that they are in the idea and lateral thinking business!

Recently Nike has developed campaigns that seamlessly integrate their product messaging amongst communities such as myspace, the rise of these communities is phenomenal. In my view marketers need to understand the seismic shift in behaviour that is happening under their noses instead of stressing about the next 30 second spot. I am not going to bang on about how poorly I think many agency’s serve their clients and also the lack of evolution in their business models - I’ll save that for another time!

What I do want to point out is the amazing growth not only of online communities and the massive online participation amongst the mainstream but also how this participation and technology has created new applications - in this case ‘Mashups’.

Michael Calore writing for Wired Magazine has published a great article about Mashups and in particular the Top 10 examples based on that online powerhouse community Flickr. If you don’t know what a Mashup is try this - “a hybrid web application that uses data from an outside source to drive a web service. Mashups can be created using data culled from RSS feeds, public databases, or any open data source.” It sounds complicated but the results are amazing check out the article here and the industry it has created