The gap between a brand people notice, and one they use is wider than most briefs acknowledge. Noticing is passive. Using is different. When a brand gives people something to do, join, create, or benefit from directly, it stops being something they observe and starts being something they're part of.
Here are five creative tactics that turn brands into things people do.
- Creativity-as-Participation
- Value-as-Participation
- Community-as-Brand
- Mission-as-Movement
- Culture-Hijack Launch
1. Creativity-as-Participation
Give the audience a creative platform — and the brand becomes the host of something bigger than itself.
Project Imaginat10n — Canon, Team One, 2013
A camera brand can talk about image quality, sensor performance, or optical precision. Canon chose a different brief: what if the brand gave people a creative platform that let them see themselves as makers rather than consumers? Project Imaginat10n invited public photo submissions and turned selected images into short films with the help of both celebrity and non-celebrity directors, making the brand the connective tissue between an audience's creative instinct and a professional filmmaking outcome. The outcome was that the brand stopped being a device maker and became an enabler of imagination and storytelling at scale.
Heinz "Draw Ketchup" (Rethink Canada, 2021) asked people around the world to draw ketchup from memory. Most drew Heinz without being prompted — the campaign turned creative participation into the most credible brand dominance study ever run. Skittles' Colouring Book (DDB, 2020) released a grey, brand-free pack during Pride month and invited fans to create their own rainbow versions — absence turned into a creative brief, and the audience became the campaign.
