Well, the beauty of the second wave is that people have adapted too - an e-volution, you might say. We've learnt to timeshift, to surf, to burn, to Google, to text and to hit the red button. This opens up amazing opportunities for communication, and the digital industry is responding by providing new and ever-evolving ways of accessing, customising and mixing content.
Whether establishing your own media space, contributing to a community or hijacking mobile phones (blue-jacking), everyone is part of the creative process. Remember the time when the height of celebrity among your peer group was to be spotted on television standing behind the DJ on Top of the Pops? Now anyone can simply project their identity by blogging. In the digital democracy, one man and his blog can have a voice that competes on an equal par with big business, as The Guardian recently discovered in the Dilpazier Aslam case: the trainee journalist lost his position with the newspaper in July, after bloggers revealed the truth behind his membership of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Creatively, this is all still virgin territory. A recent Nielsen/NetRatings survey of 1,000 regular bloggers found that 66 per cent of them did not understand Really Simple Syndication (RSS), so Start has been working with the BBC to make RSS easier to understand and to encourage more people to use it. If you're into, say, football, you can go to the BBC website and copy and
paste live content feeds into your browser.
The beauty of this is you can mix streams of content to create a personalised experience. From a brand point of view, it answers the BBC's public-service obligation to build a strong digital Britain with access for all, not just those with economic power.
When this thinking is transferred into the commercial sphere, brands can really add value
through customer service. Lingubot pioneer Creative Virtual is developing chat technology
that is capable of delivering automated online conversations. The digital team at Start has taken
this and developed internet advertising formats that allow users to interact with a brand like never before. Suddenly, online customer service becomes a brand's spokesperson and sales assistant.
Take this one step further and banner advertising becomes an open market. Why expect your
customers to come to you, when you can go to them?
We are currently working with on-demand ecommerce solutions to do just this; taking technology and adding creativity to find innovative routes to market. Come the e-volution,
the most trusted brands will be those prepared to be the most open. We have just designed a site to help the broadcast community interpret and deliver the BBC's brand promise. Its objective is to democratise ownership of and responsibility for the brand. To achieve this,
Start has created a living narrative for the BBC that dramatises the idea
of public value.
This marks a significant moment: the world's most respected media organisation has recognised that it is no longer just a broadcaster. The BBC acknowledges that it doesn't own itself: we all do. Now the BBC's focus is on developing ways for people to take part in society; creating personalised learning tools that move at the pace and according to the interests of their users; connecting communities at different levels and across channels.
Arm's-length to embrace
So how should a brand employ creativity? We all know it is important to raise awareness of what a brand is and what it stands for. To persuade customers to identify with a brand and accept it into their own lives, so it becomes part of the distinctive way someone does things. To date, this is the traditional brand and marketing model.
However, new technologies help brands move from an arm's-length relationship with individual customers to an interactive one, encouraging customers to bond with each other based on their shared interest in a brand. Once established, these community ties help to optimise the lifetime value of each customer.
Trusted brands such as Virgin Atlantic are already benefiting from an emphasis placed on building relationships and communities. Start writes and designs I-FLY, an offline and online magazine that provides the inside track for people who like to fly Virgin Atlantic. Editorially, it belongs to the members of Flying Club, the airline's members programme, encouraging them to share their travel knowledge and opinions as a community. The next development could be a branded travel Wiki that plays host to this type of value exchange.
It may be early days for group publishing websites, but perhaps there is still mileage in the old adage: "Look after your customers and they will look after you".
Certainly, Virgin Atlantic's previous experience of taking a back seat in the relationships between members of its Flying Club community was a resounding success: Milesmorefriends, a member-get-member community based on humorous e-cards between friends, continues to yield significant returns for the airline.
The recent British Airways advertising asks "Have you clicked yet?", to which the correct response, as you casually download the latest podcast from your fellow frequent flyers, is: "No, have you pulled?"
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Don't be put off by the jargon that surrounds the latest digital opportunities. The revolution isn't about technology, it's about understanding people and communicating with them individually.