Bootstrapping, Modules and the Interactive Brand

Amy Gahran has a great post up on the Knight Digital Media Centre blog about what she calls “the Lego approach to sto­ry­telling” for what jour­nal­ism could look like in the inter­ac­tive age. You really should read the whole thing, but here’s the rel­e­vant snip­pet: #

…Right now, when a reporter is work­ing on a big fea­ture, she could pub­lish a few com­pelling inter­view excerpts or pho­tos as short posts while she’s assem­bling the nar­ra­tive. Many reporters already do this with their blogs… #

…Such a tool would turn your col­lec­tion of story mod­ules into an obvi­ous mosaic, not scat­tered scraps or a dry list. It would present your con­tent in a way that allows peo­ple enter­ing a col­lec­tion at any point, via any mod­ule (no mat­ter how small), on any device, to eas­ily find and explore other parts of that collection—and to see how they’re related. #

Also each mod­ule would be indi­vid­u­ally link­able and shareable—yet another way for peo­ple to engage with your con­tent. #

Personally, I think she has it exactly right (except I think it’s already possible—but maybe that’s for another post). #

This doesn’t just apply to jour­nal­ism, how­ever. It’s a con­se­quence of the ris­ing dom­i­nance of the web as our pri­mary form of pub­lic dis­course. It applies to every­thing. #

This mod­u­lar approach should shape the way we approach all pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For me, that changes how we approach brand strat­egy. It’s part of why I call what I do “Interactive Brand + Strategy.” #

The brand can be boot­strapped. It doesn’t need to be fully formed. The strat­egy doesn’t need to be a com­plete and detailed plan. You can build with mod­ules over time as appro­pri­ate. #

You define what your brand is. You fig­ure out the var­i­ous net­works you need to inhabit. You dis­cover how to hook into them and then you build. Piece by piece. Each piece stands alone. Each piece is an inter­ac­tion between your brand and one of its net­works. And each piece con­tributes to the inter­ac­tive mosaic that you are build­ing from each mod­ule. #