Faris Yakob was in my office yesterday speaking to our U.S. Group Chairman in a private meeting I happened to pass by.  Yakob is a guru in the world of communications and new media.  What will the spread of ideas look like in the near future?  How different is it now versus years, months even days ago?

The photo I’ve included was a splash in the media world in 2006. It was at the moment of this drawing that Yakob coined the term ‘transmedia planning,’ a term he goes into relative depth about in his thesis (easily digestible in presentation format here) and in his blog. His thinking, now one we are a bit more comfortable with, is revolutionary. 

Yakob sees the children of today as a new species, one that hasn’t simply evolved but rather that has skipped an entire evolutionary step. Evolution is something that manifests over time, new forms being inherently built upon prior ones. Children of today, however, growing up in a world of hyper-connectivity, have jumped far ahead. And there’s no going back. This new generation is made up of active idea consumers and generators, surrounded by screens and empowered by simple acts “like ctrl c and ctrl v.” This new generation has an entirely new cultural disposition, thus, an entirely new language and process of communicating. This is an idea that by 2010 we are all relatively aware of.  We also know that it demands for an entirely new way of communicating ideas. That’s where Yakob’s theories, heightened by the acclaimed MIT professor Henry Jenkin’s further discussions on his blog and in his book Culture Convergence, have led to a new model for the understanding of IDEAS. 

What is an idea? According to Yakob, “Ideas are specific thoughts triggered in the mind, the desired product of any communication interaction.” But the future has arrived, throwing an entirely new ethos to the words “communication” and “interaction.” We can no longer send a message in a singular direction, rather, we must seed thoughts.  Transmedia planning focuses on seeding particular aspects of an idea to various channels that will enliven community interaction whereby each member of the active community is bringing a piece of the puzzle to the table. Within this community, each participant helps propagate messaging by adding to the story being told.  In the world of communications, this story would be a brand story, and each channel contains a relative and enabling aspect of this story to be shared, talked about and passed along.

But for mass media planning, how does engaging communities help a brand? To most of us, the answer is obvious.  An Idea that works as an enabler, or a community that brings value to a participant lends to a positive association with the source of the said idea, aka the brand. We have seen the light folks, and there’s no going back.  We have no choice now but to experiment and dive head first into creating collaborative platforms of communicating and communicating ideas collaboratively.  The way I think of this part is like a ‘cultural syringe.’ We must find ways to seep into culture, not as explicit forms of mass marketing, but believe ourselves to be idea-generaters. We should attempt to pave the way for further ideas to be shared, mashed up and played with. We can no longer expect boxed ideas to be delivered. Ideas going forward will inevitably be altered in this new form of pass-along, as we no longer live in a world that is simply “word of mouth.”

While Faris speaks of Ideas, I’d focus on culture.  Let’s look at the three definitions given by Wikipedia

• Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture.
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

Concentrating on only the last two bullet points, ideas are the crux of culture.  Culture is based upon a shared and integrated set of ideas.  So in a way, if we communicate correctly - thereby planning a system of ideas that, in turn, lead to behavioral effectiveness, we may set new-foundations for cultures to take place.  That is exciting.