Until now, marketing and advertising was using traditional media (TV, press, radio, cinema, billboards, guerrilla, etc.). The thing is that now, there is a new communication canal to be considered : customers themselves.

The thing is that now customers have the ability to share opinions and spread widely over the net. Web 2.0 just brings tools to customers to acheive that. Today, 85% of all the internet sites on the web are personal websites, published by customers themselves, so the communication power they now have is… enormous.

The audience is not depending on media anymore to find and share information. The audience is not listening like it used to be.

Question is : how is marketing going to integrate their own customers into their media plan? Imagine, 1 single and legitimate unhappy customer, spreading his experience over the net… finding echos of other customers like him. This could create a disaster in terms of image communication. Brands spend millions to convince people they are the best… well, they could spend even more to recuperate such an event on the web. AOL just experienced such a case-story. I’ll post that example.

On the other hand. A real good label (even the smallest on earth), carried by customers over the net, could reach unexpected peaks… if people communicate positively about it. So if customers used to be kings… they could turn out to be Gods if brands don’t understand that communication is now more than ever bilateral.

I hope together all the `kindred spirits’ around our world can find ways to create a new awareness.

It feels to me so many people are waking up and wanting a renewed world.

Best wishes, The Artist

Your comment points out something extremely important here about the creative process. Art is or should be (imo) a free creative process. The limits (if there are any) are those chosen by the artist him/herself. It is a mode of expression a direct link between personnal emotions and the real world.

Within the advertising context, things are (it’s a fact) more complicated for the creatives. We obvioulsy can’t say it is a “free Art”. In advertising agencies, creative teams spend a tremendous amount of time fighting the blocks that keep them from accessing true creative toughts. Not easy to fit marketing expectations, a given product to sell, client’s subjective perception of the target, real target itself… within their “creative process”.

The illustration proposed by David Armano is a proposition on the creative mindset of a person trying to create something linked to a brand or product to sell. What internet and WEB 2.0 brings is a new parameter : the fact that every single customer can now interact.

From an artist perspective now (please tell me if I’m right), internet also brings a new dimention and that is the fantastic opportunity to both share their emotional landscape and to meet people on the same frequency… all over the planet.

After many years as an arts’ graduate, arts’ teacher and artist I find this scientific breakdown of creativity very different from my experience of how creativity works.

I appreciate you are relating creativity to advertising here, but if the product is something that will not add to our world my understanding it that it would fail to inspire true creative thought.

All true creative thought leads our world forward.