Hack My Brand

Marketers are embracing benevolent hacking for innovative, entertaining, and practical solutions.

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Between WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and LulzSec, hackers have certainly grabbed their fair share of headlines in the past year. But if those are the only hackers you’ve heard about, you’re missing out on the real hacking revolution: a decentralized army of benevolent hackers who are using their skills to improve cities, companies, entertainment options, in-store experiences, outdoor experiences, advertisements, and just about any other entity that could benefit from a tech facelift. In response, savvy brands and organizations are beginning to invite hackers to get crazy with their proprietary data, hoping that they’ll uncover previously unknown patterns and profitable applications.

market manifestations

• Kinect the Dots: No device has captured the spirit of Hack My Brand quite like the Microsoft Kinect. Originally conceived as a controller-less alternative to the Nintendo Wii, hackers quickly saw more potential in the motion-and-voice capture capabilities than Microsoft had even realized. No, really: Microsoft admits as much in their latest ad for the system. In fact, that spot perfectly encapsulates the Hack My Brand mentality, especially when compared to ads from their rivals at Apple. In the latter’s case, the products are always the heroes delivering “magical” experiences right out of the box. With Kinect, the “magic” is still in the process of being discovered, by people who often have no affiliation with Microsoft.
• Hack Your ‘Hood: With a combination of financial shortfalls and partisan gridlock hampering local governments, many administrations are turning to hackers to uncover new efficiencies and services. While New York City has received the most attention, as usual, we’re doing it better here in Chicago. The Apps for Metro Chicago project as publicly shared over 250 data sets with developers in competitions to create apps that tackle issues like parking, potholes, bike paths, and more, with prizes ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

implications

In our Seamless Tech trend, we mentioned that it’s best when technology gets out of the way and just works in the background. The same goes for Hack My Brand, as many organizations are recognizing that they need to get out of the way of the subset of their consumers who want to help them via hacking. Still, we admit that sharing your company’s proprietary data is an intimidating prospect, even if you’ve taken the proper precautions to scrub confidential and/or private information. But if city governments are comfortable enough to share their data sets, and a company like Ford is willing to let their tech-savviest consumers hack something as competitively advantageous as their Sync system, is this idea really that risky? Is it only a matter of time until we see a B2B marketer who’s brave enough to host a hackathon and ends up unleashing an exceptionally powerful application for their customers? We think so.