A brand application is a way for brands  to solve important problems for customers, just like a software application. The most popular brand applications these days are “apps” on portable media devices, such as smartphones. What we have in the photo above is a slightly different kind of application. It’s an innovative, inexpensive add-on unit from MIT that can perform simple, accurate eye tests using a smartphone. The unit could help people in remote areas obtain the prescriptions and the eyeglasses they need.

The unit is designed to be dead simple to use, accurate, and cheap. Here’s the full announcement from MIT.

If the device works as intended, this is a brand application that can change the world. It can help give sight to millions of sight-impaired, a tremendous boost to their lives and local productivity.

So, whose brand is this?

Whose brand is this? Well, it could be yours (assuming you work out a deal with MIT). If you want to do some good in the world, this is the kind of brand application just waiting to be picked up by a sponsor or foundation. It’s meant to be used, not sold. A company doesn’t have to be in the eyewear or ophthalmology business to adopt this device (or something similar) as a brand application. Nokia could do it. So could Google. Or Starbucks. Or Toyota. Or any other brand with global reach.

Your brand isn’t what you sell—it’s what you value.

A first step in brand strategy is to understand that your brand isn’t what you sell. Your brand is what you value. (This is a liberating realization.) You can show the world what you value through the brand applications that carry your name. Brand applications can make a tremendous difference in the world. Can they also open up cross-market and new market opportunities for the brand? Of course. Brand applications are strategic tools.

Show people what you value as a brand and they will value you. The app that carries your name could be anything. What’s important is what it does, and how that makes a difference.

Another potential brand application

I previously described a potential cheap, simple and direct brand application here.

Photo credit: MIT Media Relations

This subject is relevant to those developing personal brand applications, since one of the goals of a PBA is to be the strongest customer platform possible. Device platform limitations can get in the way.

As a follow-up to my recent post on personal brand applications (PBA’s) on smartphones, here are some rough conceptual examples showing how various industries and organizations might use PBA’s.

As I noted in my post, “The most treasured PBA’s will be exclusive apps of elite circles of achievement.” Real personal brand applications would have much more depth and dimension than I sketch out here.

A conceptual PBA for business publications

A personal brand application from the Economist or Financial Times might help subscribers deftly navigate the global village covered in detail by these publications. If I”m off to a conference in Singapore the PBA might give me an insider’s brief on local airport logistics, where to stay and maybe the best hawker centers for a dash of local food. Tell me the top 10 do’s and don’ts. Remind me how hot it gets and where to go on Clarke Quay (see above). Toss in a Metro map, main local phone numbers, and so on. You know what’s relevant for me because I read your pub. Your PBA is your sharable (neo-Keynesian) savoir faire. It should (in this concept) qualitatively enhance my visit to the Lion City–or any great city.

Would the brand charge for this? Absolutely. This is real value. Make it part of the sub.

A conceptual PBA for an office furniture brand

Office furniture brands already understand that they’re no longer in the traditional “office furniture business.” They’re really in the workspace business, with the many additional opportunities that market affords. They may even be in the innovation business, and in the collaboration business—if their products can contribute in those value-added areas. Hence the strategy set forth in this podcast about Steelcase. The PBA of an office furniture brand might focus on helping customers innovate and collaborate, so the brand becomes a trusted innovation and productivity partner inside and outside the office.

This is what I mean when I call the brand a “value stream beyond the product proper.”

A conceptual PBA for a health brand

If  you’re a health brand you can forsee that eventually everyone’s medical data will be securely stored on their smartphone or similar device, to be downloaded to medical personnel as needed. Where will your brand be when that happens? Will it already be the leading brand of wellness on everyone’s fingertips, as a vital personal brand application? At this early stage of the game, your PBA may start with something as fundamental as this.

A conceptual PBA for a museum

If you’re a museum you command an unmatched context of culture and creativity right out of the box. Everybody wants what you have. Ergo, you are hot. The easiest way for you to deliver unique value through your PBA is to make it the voice/presence of the creators whose work you now curate, and make relevant to the world. Put the insight, wit and wisdom of your artists in the hands of your members through your PBA. Most people want more creativity in their lives; help them find it. Elevate them to a creative platform—through you. For an idea, see the Twitter feed for TheCubist. Now multiply that by 100. Unleash your curators for fresh content.

A conceptual PBA for an automobile maker

A smartphone PBA from an automobile maker might include the following:

1. The owner’s manual in a nice UI, with key sections on how things work, including a troubleshooting guide
2. Emergency procedures for those unimaginable emergencies
3. Email contacts at the carmaker’s HQ for any critical issues
4. Names, addresses and phone numbers of every dealer, in case I need service on a trip
5. Service schedules and reminders; seasonal tips; downloaded recall notices
6. Updated reports from other owners on key problem areas
7. A way to track mileage and gas purchases
8. Accident reporting protocols

Alternatively, such a PBA may be offered by insurance carriers, who have their own reasons for building lasting relationships with automobile owners.

A conceptual PBA for a conference or event

Conferences and events can be messy places. A conference PBA (downloaded on payment) would put the conference at each attendee’s fingertips. Show all the attendees and sponsors with their contact info. List all the speakers and sessions, with updated scheduling changes. Provide a Twitter-like feed that puts all attendees on the same real-time page, maximizing interaction. Include links to all presentations, demos, etc. so that attendees can review these and follow up post conference. List the (major) local hotel numbers, so that if  I meet someone at the conference who’s staying at the Hyatt I can contact them without difficulty.

In other words, this personal brand application would increase the depth and impact of the conference by packing relevant conference content and connectivity into my smartphone—where it would probably stay for quite a while.

Photo: wenzday01 — Flickr

In the near future you’ll be able to build your brand with an app. No, check that. In the near future your brand will be an app. It will re-define itself as a personal brand application on a smartphone or similar device, where it can deliver unique brand value to customers 24/7. Apple’s current iPhone ad campaign, “There’s an app for that,” provides a glimpse of this brand future.

In other words, there’s a new brand game in town. Can your brand set the agenda here?

The era of personal brand applications (PBA’s)

As I’ve noted previously, we’re now entering the era of personal brand applications (PBA’s). Personal brand applications are software applications on portable digital devices that enable customers to do more, and to be more, through the brand. They represent the intersection of high technology and brands in the palms and pockets of people, everywhere, and the chance for brands to be closer than ever to customers.

Why personal brand applications are important

Personal brand applications are important because they forge a new 1:1 brand/customer relationship. Through this relationship they have the potential to create new classes of customers from the ground up, in new market spaces. In this process they can undermine traditional brands built on ad campaigns, images, messaging and mass media saturation. Most importantly, personal brand applications free brands (and the brand team) to use the full fruits of their imagination—and to use the brand to lead.

PBA’s can accelerate brand trust

As applications, PBA’s are immediate and direct. They deliver results customers can use, now, and they build core brand trust in the process. While traditional brand campaigns may work wonders in building awareness and shaping perceptions, they’re not engines of brand trust. Personal brand applications are. They can accelerate and energize brand trust, compressing what used to take years into shorter time frames.

Technology advances make PBA’s possible

Since I first wrote about the concept of personal brand applications two years ago, we’ve witnessed amazing advances in wireless technology, digital handsets, user interfaces, online services, and software systems and platforms that tie everything together. With Apple’s iPhone, App Store and iPhone developers leading the way, we’re now are seeing a first flush of innovative smartphone apps that foreshadow the personal brand applications to come.

PBA’s: the ultimate brand relationship

In many ways a personal brand application is the ultimate brand relationship, where the brand operates as both a trusty sidekick and a trusted advisor, as close as a second skin. PBA’s do more than “connect” the brand with customers. They transform the brand into a proactive customer platform of choices, directions and actions, helping the customer at a personal level to accomplish objectives and deal with life’s challenges. The brand becomes a central means (and platform) for customer growth and development.

Personal, portable and persistent

Because they operate on hand-held devices that are wireless, Internet enabled and “always on,” PBA’s are personal, portable and persistent–the critical three P’s for brands going forward. In many ways they’re the ultimate brand presence. Think of them as perpetual touchpoints where the brand plays an active role in the culture, context and creativity of an individual’s life, day in and day out.

The brand as an application

Old-school brands are often fashioned as symbols, stories and messages calculated to influence customer emotions and perceptions. That was fine for an era of mass media print and broadcast, but the digital era calls for a more direct approach if brands hope to hang with customers. Today people are busy. They’re on the move. Their lives are “small pieces, loosely joined.” They need context clarity, and structure. Brands as “messages” aren’t that useful.

Today’s brand is a value stream of deliverables that customers can use, over and above the product. As software applications PBA’s are personal programs to build customer trust by helping customers connect the dots and get things done, using value streams from the brand. They are the brand as context architect and enabler. They listen. They guide. They advance. They inspire. They empower. And they do so at the touch of a fingertip.

How will your brand application engage your customers?

How will your personal brand application engage and empower your customers? The agenda is up to you.  The potential scope of brand applications includes anything and everything that engages the customer, from the sacred to the profane and back again: spiritual, aesthetic, practical, adventurous, envelope-pushing or chilling out. You pick a context where your brand can 1) enable customers to be more proactive, and 2) provide exclusive value to create the customers that will drive your business forward.

You know your customers and their horizons. You also know your creative and contextual strengths. As their chosen brand, you are your customer’s confidant, mentor and alter (brand) ego. You have the big vision. You know what’s vital. Your PBA is your chance to lead customers on a shared (strategic) brand journey.

Content of a PBA

Every PBA is expected to be personal, relevant, focused, easy (fun) to use, customizable and continually refreshed. A PBA can do many things. Generic content areas would include (within a PBA’s unique mission):

1. Provide needed context, and vision
2. Provide relevant (riveting) truths
3. Simplify difficult choices
4. Help customers break barriers
5. Share profound/witty/hilarious insights
6. Connect and advance like individuals
7. Guide customers through major challenges/passages
8. Help customers to get things done (in high-value situations)
9. Create proactive customers (that can advance the brand)
10. Engage the imagination; stimulate innovation (to be fed back to the brand)

As appropriate, a PBA can also entertain. A suite of PBA’s may include some killer games.

Where to start in developing a PBA

Your personal brand application is a main driver of your customer creation strategy. It’s fundamental to how you design your customers. You can begin to scope out the context, functionality and deliverables of your PBA by addressing these questions:

1. In the broadest context, where are our customers going?
2. What is holding our customers back?
3. How can our PBA advance customers beyond the reach of competitors?
4. What deep intelligence do we possess that might be transformed into a stunningly unique PBA that could re-shape our markets—or create new market spaces?

Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy has strategic tools that can be used to map out potential directions available to a PBA.

Use PBA’s to expand your brand context

In brands, context is king, and a personal brand application is a hand-held context engine, ready to extend your brand context (and reach) across current and new customers. A PBA enables a brand to engage customers in new and/or deeper levels of context, beyond the product proper, and beyond conventional media and market boundaries.

Nike and Apple were proto-pioneers in PBA’s with their iPod-based Nike+. The same concept, raised to the power of an app on a smartphone, would resemble a PBA. A narrow PBA from Nike could be about running, or fitness. A more ambitious PBA might raise the Nike context to local outdoor activities in general, elevating Nike to a higher context platform. More broadly, a  Nike PBA might develop a Nike context of sustainable environmental choices, if Nike desired a leading brand presence in that space.

A personal brand application can carry the brand into new domains–consistent with its vision. And brand domains are markets in the making.

The insight, wisdom, sense and sensibility of the brand creates the  context of its PBA, opening new areas of brand engagement in the process.

The difference between a smartphone app and a PBA

The difference between a regular smartphone app and a personal brand application is this: the regular app is designed to perform a specific function; the PBA is designed to re-define brand value and create a strategic class of customers. It does this by advancing customers to a new context, as in the hypothetical Nike example above.

A fashion retailer’s online site that”s accessible via a smartphone browser is not a PBA if all it does is present product information and enable online sales. Brands run deeper. What that retailer might do is aim to become an exclusive fashion guide beyond its own store, with a more global PBA. Such a (hypothetical) PBA would be several generations beyond this current iPhone fashion app.

Exclusive or free?

Many personal brand applications may be free downloads, or even web apps, but there’s a strong business argument to make PBA’s so compellingly useful that they command a premium price. The most treasured PBA’s will be exclusive apps of elite circles of achievement.

PBA platform and structure

A PBA can be a native app, written for the OS of the handset, or a web app, even a widget on steroids. Mobile OS platforms rich enough to support gaming and intuitive user interfaces include iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Palm Pre and Microsoft. Current iPhone apps show the stunning advances possible with multi-touch technology.

You may decide that your brand is best served by a mashup, or by a suite of online apps and mashups that represent your brand value stream. There’s nothing wrong with being a ringmaster of mobile brand value.

Are PBA’s social apps?

First and foremost, PBA’s are customer apps, but they are potentially more powerful with social software capabilities. PBA’s may need to work with Twitter, Yahoo Meme or Google Wave, to name only some of the potential PBA partners/resources in social software. The goal is not to lose customers in the social app, but to advance them strategically through an optimal set of resources. (They’re advancing to new markets you have waiting downstream.)

PBA’s can elevate brands to cultural leadership

A primary benefit of PBA’s is that they elevate brands to active roles of positive cultural leadership, far above brands as stylized sales stimulants or ginned up myths and messages. At the level of culture, brands have no boundaries. In this regard, PBA’s become the beacon lights of a company’s core values, insights and imagination mapped to the cultural canvas, above and beyond its products. Expect strong PBA’s from innovative companies (or organizations) with value-based brands and sustainable social vision.

PBA’s can elevate small creative companies into new realms of prominence by enabling them to “steal the customer culture” from established brand icons.

Personal brand applications: the road ahead

The advent of personal brand applications makes this is a great time for brand builders. PBA’s are poised to inaugurate an era of brand creativity focused on delivering unique customer value in new and engaging contexts, where the brands can make an active contribution to personal growth and culture. In this process, PBA’s will have the power to make brands the avant garde of business innovation.

NOTE: For some conceptual examples of PBA content, see this post.

Photo: Apple iPhone

Yes, indeed. There’s every chance that brands going forward will be more like a mashed-up mutt than a pedigreed poodle. The days when the brand was paraded as a elite breed with champion bloodlines, showcased every step of the way and groomed to perfection, are drawing to a close.  Adaptable, affable companion brands that are a mix themselves, and made to mix anew, are in. We’re entering an age of sidekick brands in which a resourceful brand mutt is the best pal any customer could want.

As newspapers fold, news mashups unfold

This revelation came to me as I was reading Steven Berlin Johnson’s SXSW speech on the future of news in the Internet era. While newspapers may be on the way out, Steven sees news itself as expanding online at local and grass-roots levels. (He provides local examples from Brooklyn, NY.) These new brands of news are like street-savvy mutts, blends of blogs, tweets, diaries, mashups, feeds and links that add meaning and context to local lives. Their forte is nap-of-the-earth immediacy, and a being-there credibility.

Brand applications: personal, portable and persistent

I see this model extending to other brands in the Internet era. I’ve written previously about a new class of brands called personal brand applications. These down-to-earth enabling brands live on digital devices as brand sidekicks: personal, portable and persistent. They go where you and I go. What they do defines who they are. Their provenance matters less than the loyal support they deliver. They may have the DNA of a dozen widgets.

Yes, brands will be judged by how loyal they are to you–as they should be.

Photo: ANDI2WHIPLASHEDAWAY — Flickr

Saul Hansell in the New York Times describes it:

National Public Radio has introduced a nifty little feature that lets you create your own custom podcast of NPR content on topics that interest you. Type in Obama or Madonna or whatever, and you can sign up for a stream of NPR clips that match your keywords that can be downloaded to your computer, smartphone, iPod or Zune.

The future of brands lies in digital devices

As I’ve noted previously, the future of brands lies in digital devices. Brands will be universal enablers, as close as a second skin. It’s nice to see NPR taking a step in that direction. Of course, people don’t want mere “clips” from the information stream on those digital devices. They want a new context of insight into the world around them. That’s a large part of NPR’s brand challenge.

“No one wants a relationship with their mustard.”

Kara Swisher uses this quote (from an ad agency exec) to begin her post, Social ads not cutting the mustard? She examines why widgets and other forms of “social advertising” haven’t (yet) lived up to their billing.

She continues:

This odd but spot-on observation was about why big packaged-goods advertisers–who are the really big spenders of the ad business–might be less than interested in leveraging social-media advertising and its promise of deep engagement with consumers.

No one wants to interact over mustard or mayo or ketchup or most products that pay the rent up and down Madison Avenue.

Brands and the big picture

In a narrow sense Kara is quite correct: we don’t need to chat with our jar of Grey Poupon, or have it update our Google calendar, or follow us around on Twitter. But no one really expects that, either. Such a focus on the jar or the tin is myopic. In the big picture of things—where brands play—relationships with products like mustard are very important indeed. They’re the essence of brands. What counts is the context of the relationship, and the ability of the brand itself to make that context sustainably engaging.

In brands, context is king

From a brand perspective, the blanket statement that, “No one wants a relationship with their mustard” is self-limiting. It precludes brand opportunities. Consumers can be open to such relationships—if they’re meaningful. Using mustard as an example, mustard brands have been designed to be very rich in relationships for decades. They certainly want relationships with their customers, beginning with brand trust and brand loyalty. And they certainly want their customers to have relationships with them—beginning with the brand experience of a consistently tasty product. These relationships are money in the bank.

A context for mustard?

The most straightforward context for mustard is to partner with customers in the discovery of taste. The brand is a guide and adventurer, rather than a mere purveyor. This opens up multiple opportunities in the desired brand journey.

Building the brand enthusiast

Customers who use a particular mustard will often swear by it, testifying to their relationship. If they also use it for marinades, sauces and dressings, the mustard will play a significant role in their recipe repertoire and cooking lifestyle. This places the mustard in the brand Nirvana of the enthusiast, and believe me, in that space will be a relationship. Weber understands this quite well, for example. And would Weber ever think, even for a second, that people don’t want a relationship with their grill?

How potent is your brand?

The issue, then, is the context of the brand relationship to be fostered, and the (many) meanings that might brighten and sustain that relationship. Using our mustard example, it’s the customer potency of a mustard brand that comes into play. Does it just sit there in a jar or tin as a mute yellow paste or powder? Is the brand boiled down to a static identity, slogans and packaging. Or does it reach out beyond the package to make life more interesting? If there’s imagination behind the brand, the answer can be “yes.”

Brand engagements are not sales pitches

Of course, no one “wants” any kind of new relationship—until that relationship comes to them with a unique engagement proposition. That takes brand initiative. If you treat the product as a commodity—purely to be sold—then your brand “engagements” will be little more than sales pitches, and there’s not much engagement in that.

It’s doubtful whether “social advertising” will make that much of an impact. It still carries the baggage of an advertising agenda, and that limits its brand potential.

Let’s define “brand engagement”

An engagement is a bringing together to create new action. The engagement of a marriage sets the marital union in motion. Gears engage, and off we go. A “brand engagement” gets the customer moving forward, toward more proactive modes of being and doing. It’s a long-term engagement, for company and customer alike.

See also: How to define brand engagement.

The limits of widgets

Kara’s point—and it’s one well taken—is that most of the “interactive” features of “social advertising” have yet to demonstrate any real and unique value to mainstream manufacturers. They’re still, in Kara’s words, “much more gimmicky and lightweight than innovative and deep.” (I’d venture that most users feel the same way.)

In their present incarnations, most widgets inhabit a no-mans-land between quick code, basic utility and cheesy ads. The best ones are useful, but struggle to extend that use-value into anything approaching an engagement or relationship.

From widgets to “personal brand applications”

I see the current crop of widgets as mostly dead ends in terms of building brand value. They’re a species that has no long-term future. However, they do foreshadow something bigger and better, which I call personal brand applications. It is at the application level that companies, brands and customers can forge new relationships that are indeed innovative, and deep.

Photo: McBeth — Flickr

As I discussed in a previous post, companies are increasingly turning to digital brand platforms, programs and applications to augment brand interactions and brand experience, and to deliver new forms of customer value. In this post I want to focus on a new type of digital brand application which I call (in my best generic English) personal brand applications.

[UPDATE] See new post: Building your brand — there’s an app for that

Also see:

• NPR creates a personal brand application
  
• Personal brand applications: conceptual examples
• A personal brand application from Whole Foods

What are personal brand applications?

Personal brand applications are software applications that deliver unique brand value to customers in ways that are personal, portable and persistent. Their intent is to form a brand partnership with the customer, with a depth of interaction far beyond conventional channels of brand communication. They become the customer’s virtual sidekick, mentor, confidant and guide. They watch the customer’s back, they go where the customer goes, and they are “always on.”

As a complement to other brand programs, personal brand applications are a new way for brands to connect with customers 24/7. They are 1:1, direct and immediate. They have the potential to forge deep brand connections that can transcend the influence of advertising, packaging, “branding” and similar old-school brand modalities.

A form of next-generation brand

Personal brand applications can be considered a form of next-generation brand, incorporating a magnitude of difference in personalization, engagement and interaction. Currently, a leading brand might include a brand outreach website, numerous email feedback loops, a customer forum, widgets, and maybe even weblogs. These are certainly steps in the right direction, but they barely scratch the surface of what personal brand applications can accomplish, both for the company and the customer. (Think of the difference between the rotary dial phone and today’s mobile phone. That’s the kind of difference we’re talking about.)

A live link between brand and customer

The goal of a personal brand application is to establish a persistent live link between a brand and its customers. This is the brand as a second skin. Its mission is to help advance the customer in a direction the customer has chosen, in a way that also (strategically) builds the brand.

A personal brand application is a working relationship of equals. It’s a partnership in context and substance, an application of brand value that takes what the company stands for and delivers it as the brand’s wisdom, wit, insights and vision to the customer. It does this through the digital devices that enable the customer’s lifestyle, thus making it easily accessible and a constant companion. Through it, the brand can become a personal transformation engine for the customer, taking precedence over heavily mediated brand affiliations.

Of course, all this assumes that the brand incarnates the kind of values that a customer can bank on.

How do personal brand applications work?

A personal brand application would work something like this: The brand offers customers a rich online palette of personal directions and goals, consistent with the brand context and mission. The customer maps out his/her intended personal path and objective. Maybe it’s to enjoy the product fully, or to get promoted, or to lose weight, or to find a mate, or to achieve spiritual bliss, or to become more confident, or to become the next Steve Ballmer or Steve Jobs—or whatever. The palette of choices represents the brand vision, and those avenues where the brand is prepared to lead the customer. Focus is key. Less is more.

Where does the content come from?

A brand’s ability to be “virtual sidekick, mentor, confidant and guide” will stem from the vision, values and actions that make that brand (and company) special. (Mediocre brands, or those built as facades, cannot compete in the personal brand application space.) Based on a customer’s choices, the brand uses its own content, plus contextually aggregated feeds (e.g., Yahoo Pipes) to architect and deliver what the customer might need in his/her journey. This may include related information from brand communities and brand value networks.

What kinds of content are involved?

That depends on where you plan to lead your customers. At the utility level, it’s the insider know-how that makes your product better in the hands of the customer. If you’re Toyota, it may be a Camry’s way of having a conversation with the new owner. If you’re the Economist, maybe it’s a career track to the corner office, globally conceived. More generally, it might be something like Lifehacker, albeit focused through your brand. Beyond that, your inspiration might span the range from the Magic 8-Ball, to the situational ethics of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, deciding to be feared or loved, or to French kissing tips. Hey, it’s a creative world. If you’re a creative brand, this is your cup of tea. You’re taking your customer to a higher level and having fun along the way. This is your chance to shine and to be, as Seth Godin would say, “remarkable.”

How does the application reach the customer?

What’s the delivery device? A smartphone might be a good choice. An iPhone might be ideal. Laptops can work. Fluid access to the Internet (broadband, Wi-Fi, 3G, or EDGE) is essential. Software-wise, it might be done with super-widgets, but I would expect a new digital form factor to evolve, with new levels of interaction. The desired process is not one of simply feeding stuff to the customer. It’s engagement and interaction that we’re after, the kind that grows the customer, grows the brand, and grows the business.

How does the brand benefit?

What does a company gain by offering a personal brand application? Here are some potential benefits to the brand:

1. Deepens brand/customer interactions
2. Creates new avenues for brand affiliation
3. Positions the brand in emerging markets
4. Can outflank competing brands on their turf
5. Enables a smaller brand to leapfrog larger brands with deeper forms of meaning
6. Can block brand disruption from below
7. Prepares customers for new products in the pipeline
8. Through the brand, moves customers beyond the reach of competitors
9. Through customer interactions, enables the brand to learn and grow dynamically.

How does a company begin?

Start small. Focus on a content space that you can dominate. Prototype an offering in a selected segment. Listen to customers. Learn what works best. Iterate. Grow.

If you want your brand to innovate, you need to make it hackable. You have to cultivate brand hacks. Make your brand so your customers can grab it, bend it, and extend it, adding their initiative and intelligence to develop new forms of brand value.

Brands, culture and customers

Donna Bogatin has a nice post on how customers “configure culture” by altering product offerings—or inventing their own products—to meet their needs.

Donna cites a Radar Research report that lists these elements as typical of “configurable culture:”

1. Instantaneous
2. Editable
3. Global
4. Networked
5. Multi-sensory
6. Interoperable
7. Archival
8. Customizable
9. Hackable

These are also the qualities of a brand on the move.

Use brand API’s to cultivate brand hacks

The easiest way to cultivate brand hacks is to invite customers into your brand via brand API’s. Brand API’s are interactive application program interfaces. They provide convenient latch points for customers to grab onto brands and proactively shape the brand to their needs, in the process advancing themselves through the brand. The best brand API’s help convert customer initiative into brand initiative, through better brand content, context and value.

Make this process a team effort where your brand is a method for solving shared problems. Shape it as a partnership where you and your customers are on the same page because you’re writing it together.

Hack the context to create new value

When you develop your brand as a platform for brand hacks, the hacks you aim for are new contexts for your brand and your business. In other words, brand hacks are ways that customers can extend the scope of your business, by finding new applications and contexts of value. Through brand hacks, customers become your allies in innovation. And innovating a new context can be just as valuable as innovating a new product—and sometimes more so.

Brands are code

We should never forget that brands are code. The more brand programmers you can enlist, the more avenues your brand can explore.