a core conversation SxSW Interactive 2012

#brandasapi

Peg Faimon & Glenn Platt Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies

Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

WHAT’S OUR PREMISE?

The philosophical and tactical underpinnings of APIs offer valuable insights into successful brands in the new economy. Today’s brands need to focus on developing and nurturing an open relationship with their customer built beneath the communication layer. Customers can build new, unique, and useful things with brand “primitives.” Brands, then empower customers to innovate and customers empower brands to evolve.

WHAT’S AN API?

An application-programming interface is a set of programming instructions and standards that allows developers

to access web data to build new applications powered by their

functionality.

WHAT’S AN API?

HOW DOES AN API WORK?

HOW DOES AN API WORK?

HOW DOES AN API WORK?

HOW DOES AN API WORK?

HOW DOES AN API WORK?

WHY LOOK AT APIs?

They are ubiquitous. Every time you use Facebook to login…

link Instagram to Foursquare… use a smartphone app for Netflix…

you use an API.

Programmable Web lists over 5000 APIs. APIs are assumed.

Just ask Google what the biggest complaint about Google+ was when it rolled out? No API.

WHY LOOK AT APIs?

programmableweb.com

CONSUMERS CHANGING?

MAKERS

We have become an economy of makers/doers. Today’s consumers are not passive, they are active in their brand enthusiasm and passion. It’s about doing things. Today’s consumer doesn’t want to be told what to think about their brand. They want to be able to tell the brand what they think.

CONSUMERS CHANGING?

CONNECTIONS?

Brand as API is an analogy, process, and checklist to be sure

that your brand is connecting with your customer.

On their terms.

IS A BRAND A PROMISE?

A brand is the fulfillment of the promise.

A brand is not a fantasy or ideal.

It is the reification of the intangible.

It is borne out in action, ownership, connection, and tethering.

WHAT ARE WE BUILDING FROM?

Brand as API learns from, but is different from...

Transparency

Crowd-sourcing Brand Utility

Marketing with Meaning Open Brand

WHAT ARE WE BUILDING FROM?

Building blocks from current models…

Solving problems/improving lives Being there at the right time/place Outsourcing innovation & insights

Live testing & rapid iteration Ongoing conversations Not closed campaigns

HOW IS BRAND AS API DIFFERENT?

How is the Brand as API model unique/distinct from

other current models?

WHAT ARE BRAND PRIMITIVES?

The LCD of your brand.

More than “brand essence”, these are the building blocks of the “brand essence”.

Each primitive adds value independently.

How does the analogy of API work to evolve

brands?

API KEY =

Customizing and monitoring each customers’

relationship with the brand.

Managing access.

Personal point of entry.

RATE LIMITS =

Open more to superusers,

brand evangelists, and influencers.

DEVELOPER COMMUNITIES =

Customer communities.

DEVELOPER MARKETING =

Marketing about the open relationship

and ease of accessing it.

Marketing about utility.

BUSINESS MODELS =

Get over the control hangups.

Explore alternative revenues models.

Opening the brand to internal constituents, preferred partners,

and your customers.

EXAMPLES =

Show people how others connect to the brand.

DOCUMENTATION =

Make connecting with the brand a no-brainer.

Lowest possible barriers to entry and extensive just-in-time help

to do it.

MASHUPS =

Can customers build brand mashups?

RADICAL BRANDING?

We don’t think so. Brands that will win, brands that are winning, are doing so because they are rethinking their relationship with their customers. They are not only opening the brand up to the customer, they creating the conditions for innovation by simplifying, empowering, and building bridges between their customers and their brands. Most importantly, these two way bridges aren’t fixed bridges, they move.

RADICAL BRANDING?

Connecting with the brand has to be more than engineered utility. It has to be organic and market-driven utility that represents the diversity of ways that customers feel connected to their brands. Our Brand as API framework provides a roadmap and checklist for doing just that.

CONTACT US

PEG FAIMON about.me/pegfaimon

GLENN PLATT

about.me/glennplatt

ARMSTRONG INSTITUTE FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA STUDIES aims.muohio.edu

BRAND AS API SITE

brandasapi.com

“PRIMITIVES”

Marketing Models http://www.marketingwithmeaning.com/

http://www.resource.com/o-p-e-n http://www.brandutility.net/

API Primers |Reviews |Discussion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r7QpIDEI_o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSUnBPv4iQ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKhK8E7bXZw

http://vimeo.com/33499514 http://vimeo.com/33268308

API Resources

http://programmableweb.com http://readwriteweb.com

http://mashery.com

Examples of APIs for Best Practice Analogies http://twillio.com (Marketing and Documentation)

https://stripe.com/docs/api (Documentation) http://urbanairship.com (Making it Easy)