A—C

Defining 'brand as interface' as layers of communication mimicking the infrastructure of the web, converting the traditional top-down campaign to utilities for bottom-up community dialogue and expression.

What is a brand platform? Did we just make that up? (Yes.) Then, what is it really? Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of communication between a provider of goods and services, and its users. If so, what is good communication and bad, when it comes to brands?

Perhaps it can be quantified by:

01— Thickness (how many layers/channels/nodes does a message/request go through in order to reach its destination, much like routing)

02— Speed (how quickly does A and B respond, after normalizing for network latency)

03— Integrity (how much packet loss, do messages get obfuscated, how do we correct errors, how do we deal with noise)

04— Collaboration (how much new, useful material is generated from interaction)

When a provider is small, i.e. an individual on Etsy, then the communication can be as responsive and simple as speaking to a friend. However, when a provider is an entity, i.e. a global brand acting as an individual, then communication is understandably obfuscated— and in most cases, not intentionally. A global brand, unlike the Etsy store owner, has a larger environmental responsibility and impact, and thus needs tools that can help to flatten the layers, speed up the responsiveness, and maintain the integrity of communication, yielding products and services that serve the public good while still for-profit, a good neighbor, rather than risk becoming a cancer within a given community. Hence, the (over)use of the term ecosystem, when speaking of diagrams used to illustrate the flow of people, data and finance through a system (platform).

The description above is in my own words and not expressly that of my agency at the time, R/GA.

The full case study is in the works.

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2024 Apr 16 22:11:16 UTC, CC BY-SA International, Andrew Chee.