Cooperative platforms

“Digital is not a silo”, the term has quickly moved from just explaining how digital is merging with other channels, exemplified amongst others by projects such as Esquire and Mini. To explaining something much bigger:

How digital platforms don’t exist in isolation, but are cooperative platforms, the backbone in the network of activities inviting the participant into an idea or context.

A silo is a platform where the communication to a large extent happens inside it’s walls, where its mostly concerned with it’s own storytelling and effect, removed from the other platforms. TV, Radio and print can all be interpreted as such stand alone channels.

Digital on the other hand, doesn’t exist in isolation, it’s a set of cooperative platforms. And we need to utilize this kind of platform strategy if we are to meet the challenges presented by next generation advertising as suggested by Tom Himpe in his book Advertising Next. We need to build our stories in a more complex range of interfaces between the product, or the products services and the customer. We need platforms that all work and function together in order to create the larger, more complex story, the true story.