The temptation to brainstorm the next
Facebook in a creative session when responding to the latest brief seems ill advised at best. So, news that
Coke has launched an
Instagram competitor caught us off guard. Perhaps mobile photo-sharing is a big enough pie for them to happily take a slice and share it with the huge audiences in their owned channels that are yet to embrace this brave new world?
But, given the challenges that start-ups now face raising funding in an environment in which there’s increasing scepticism that those ad revenues will ever meet that magic point that turns an accelerating audience into a profitable business, perhaps now is a good time to reconsider the brand’s role in the start-up gold rush. Lots of great ideas struggle to convert an initial rush of new users into a consistent, engaged user base and it’s this engagement that investors will be looking at when bullet-testing the appeal of an idea. Getting to critical mass is still a faith game.
But what if an investor entered with the kind of reach that the best brands have access to through their owned channels, one that was able to help bridge that difficult period between the early adopters succumbing to ‘the next thing’ and a meaningful long-term relationship with normal users? Followers of the
‘growth hacking’ ethos who believe that early stage start-ups should disregard traditional marketing techniques and focus on tweaking usability and unlocking the ‘must have’ experience their product offers will disagree, but a brand patron might be a helpful partner here.
There are some great examples of brand-initiated apps, most of which follow the rule that an app should either be useful or irresistibly enjoyable while also born from the brand’s DNA. But there are so many great ideas out there in start-up land that will never reach an audience does the brand ever really need to build functionality from scratch?
Certainly, if we’re not aware of the ideas that are coming from this period of intense creativity then our own creativity will suffer. Worse, we may miss opportunities for our clients’ campaigns, platforms and experiences that create value for everyone in this chain – especially the audience.
