“Despite our best efforts, the power of brands is fading.”

So said Will Travis, CEO of the experiential branding firm Sid Lee USA, speaking Thursday at PromaxBDA: The Conference. But the statement wasn’t meant to be defeating. We live in an age where brands can and must be transformed – not only once but many times over.

In a session called “Leading Change Rather Than Following It: What’s Your Transformation Agenda?” Travis laid out a millennial-friendly agenda of renewal, which can take many forms, and is different for every brand, but which has certain core principals that remain constant.

“Authenticity,” for instance, is a word that gets kicked around a lot these days in marketing, but it’s easy to forget that “authenticity is earned,” said Travis. “We’ve gotten into this phase where we’re just putting shit out all the time, but there’s no authenticity to it.” To that end, he continued, “meaning matters… and the company you keep defines you. If you’re not including your consumers in the conversation, you’re really talking to yourself.”

Brands who wish to transform can also do more to foster ownership – both in terms of their own offerings and in terms of the relationship to consumers.

“We’ve been renting space and our time may be up,” said Travis. “We need to get into owning. When you own the stage you can cast yourself as the star.”

Consumers who feel ownership in a brand are more likely to amplify its message. To that end, Travis projected a bow-tie diagram which placed the concept of “experience” as the middle/tie portion and “recruitment” and “amplification” as the bows on either side. The message was clear: A marketing experience is nothing if it doesn’t recruit consumers to amplify its message.

As an example, Travis presented assets from Sid Lee’s 2014 campaign for the Ubisoft game Assassin’s Creed Unity. With the concept of unity built into both the offering’s title and its usage (it’s the first Assassin’s Creed game to feature cooperative, multiplayer gameplay), Sid Lee went about “creating a revolution” in the fan base by bringing gamers together at the marketing level as well. A website preceding the launch allowed fans to create their own assassin characters online, from more than 5 million possible trait combinations.

More than 2 million fans visited the site, building more than 200,000 assassins. Visitors could vote on the creations, and the top 1,430 vote-getters were then incorporated into marketing materials ranging from posters and billboards to the game sleeves themselves. But the grandest brand statement from the campaign was an epic trailer that worked in all 1,430 winners. It was also interactive, letting contributors go online and use tools to pinpoint their own special assassin within the video. This detail alone produced more than 300,000 shares of the trailer.

Travis said it cost about $500,000 to produce the holistic Assassin’s Creed campaign, “which is a lot, but I’ve seen much more spent on a trailer that just sits on your platform, waiting to be seen.” With Unity, he continued, “fans promoted the solution because they were part of it.”

Another impressive example of deep brand-consumer connection occurred in Sid Lee’s campaign for Absolut, #NextFrame, which turned the global vodka brand into a platform for creativity. Through Facebook, Absolut empowered fans to co-create a new, original 3D animated film with graphic novelist Rafael Grampá, providing their input to him as to who the main character would be and what would happen to them. The result was Vincent Black, the protagonist of the thrilling short Dark Noir that generated more than 25 million impressions for Absolut upon its release and picked up a Vimeo Staff Pick badge of honor.

It all happened because “audiences were immersed in a world they could influence,” said Travis.

Cube image courtesy of Image Group LA.

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