Marketing & Brands 3.0 will be about humanizing an open-API brand

This is a follow up post from the one yesterday on advertising 3.0. Marta's comment made me think I almost forgot two key ingredients in the list I came up with:

1. brands and marketing 3.0 = "open API" brands. The "silver bullet" marketing that is still strong today (but not so much in the near future) upholds an "opaque" view of the brand, where "concealing knowledge from targeted consumers" is the tactic; the future (the one in which advertising as we know it will die in 5 years as I posted in my post yesterday) one of opening the API of brands: "the art of making money by improving decision flow for any stakeholder" (I am using Tim Kitchin's concepts that I stumbled on while doing Google searches on "VRM", "consumer democracy", etc. His presentation where he explains the concepts is at Transparent Marketing (a PPT). In other words, no more "we're the best/only one to fulfill your needs", and no more marketing as the behind-the-scenes-while-product-features-look-important approaches. Rather, opening the API of the marketing process as a humane activity, and making it transparent; humanizing it by creating consumer/user/person/social experiences, intimacy, and serendipity. A conversation with the consumer, rather than '50 era Milgram/Maslow-style communication/"persuasion" .

2. The second is the right combination of the social/humanity component with the "intelligent agent"/friend (as in the Your Data with Destiny" article in AdAge that I commented on yesterday. This post was actually inspired by Marta's comment to my post yesterday; she's right, I forgot about humanity ;-) That's probably because I am a data and analytics geek, and (almost) forgot the human and social factor. She's right, in that it's not just the intelligent data-driven app, but the mix of it with social components, where the first is really an enabler of the second.

Thanks, Marta for setting me straight.