I was sharing great conversation in New York at the Russian Tea Room with Shane O’Neil who is the former president of RKO Group (yes, King Kong and more movies, TV stations and bottling conglomerate) and we happened to arrive at the topic of teen-aged children and their amazing ability to adapt. I thought it would form the basis of an interesting post.
For those of you how have tracked my spontaneous “coinage” of new phrases and concepts, I thought of a new one just then: render-on-the-fly personas.
GenX-ers and GenY-ers are an enigma, in that they adopt behaviors at lighting speed—they text, email and transfer social behaviors faster that ever imaginable for marketers. We all know that technology is the enabler of this bundle, but how does it occur and can you distill it and bottle it (that one’s for Shane) into a concept other than just an X or Y?
I think that video games and instant messaging/communication have facilitated a new psychographic, a deeper concept than just a demographic, that has given rise to the ability for individuals to literally render-on-the-fly their lifestyle and how they build their world of relevance.
Video games are now delivering render-on-the-fly graphics with amazing quality and at speeds that deliver results as close to reality as possible. Have you played a game on an iPhone? A dimensional experience in the palm of your hand is what you get. (See my interview on trends for 2008 for my predictions about the iPhone that have come true). The Wii, Sony and XBox platforms are all delivering immediate, interactive and community-based experiences. More than 10 million people are registered users of www.worldofwarcraft.com and have created the largest render-on-the-fly user base in the world.
In political parallels, Barack Hussein Obama has, in many ways, become a master of forming a powerful and believable render-on-the-fly personality. In fact, his meteoric rise to political power from Chicago to Washington D. C. has been at nothing less than at render-on-the-fly speed in comparison to traditional political evolution. In many ways, Barack Hussein Obama was able to render-on-the-fly a persona that transcends modern political convention and matched a render-on-the-fly generation’s thirst for personification of a candidate more than substance of person of reality. My opinion is that today’s media was an accelerant to his render-on-the-fly transformation.
Think about render-on-the-fly branding. Can we learn anything from the render-on-the-fly concepts I’ve posted today? What are your thoughts on a new render-on-the-fly persona and what does it mean to your business?