"Brand As API" is a conceptual framework for understanding new opportunities in branding. This model was unveiled at SXSW Interactive in March 2012 (though it was first presented in a raw form at a P&G GBS Summit in April 2011) and will be detailed in a forthcoming book.

1. a core conversation
SxSW Interactive 2012
#brandasapi
Peg Faimon & Glenn Platt
Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. WHAT’S AN API?

5. HOW DOES AN API WORK?

6. HOW DOES AN API WORK?

7. HOW DOES AN API WORK?

8. HOW DOES AN API WORK?

9. HOW DOES AN API WORK?

10. 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.

11. WHY LOOK AT APIs?
programmableweb.com

12. 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.

13. CONSUMERS CHANGING?

15. CONNECTIONS?
Brand as API is an analogy,
process, and checklist to be sure
that your brand is connecting
with your customer.
On their terms.

16. 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.

17. WHAT ARE WE BUILDING FROM?
Brand as API learns from,
but is different from...
Transparency
Crowd-sourcing
Brand Utility
Marketing with Meaning
Open Brand

18. 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

19. HOW IS BRAND AS API DIFFERENT?
How is the
Brand as API model
unique/distinct from
other current models?

25. 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.

34. How does the
analogy of API
work to evolve
brands?

35. API KEY =
Customizing and monitoring
each customers’
relationship with the brand.
Managing access.
Personal point of entry.

36. RATE LIMITS =
Open more to
superusers,
brand evangelists,
and influencers.

37. DEVELOPER COMMUNITIES =
Customer communities.

38. DEVELOPER MARKETING =
Marketing about the
open relationship
and ease of accessing it.
Marketing about utility.

39. BUSINESS MODELS =
Get over the control hangups.
Explore alternative revenues models.
Opening the brand to internal
constituents, preferred partners,
and your customers.

40. EXAMPLES =
Show people how
others connect
to the brand.

41. DOCUMENTATION =
Make connecting with the brand
a no-brainer.
Lowest possible barriers to entry
and extensive just-in-time help
to do it.

43. MASHUPS =
Can customers build
brand mashups?

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. 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

47. “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)