When cool is uncool

Isn’t it a given that saying you’re cool inherently makes you un-cool? Cool people don’t have to declare their coolness. They just are cool. Does the same principle of cool apply to digital?

As we evolve into a world in which digital exchanges are interwoven into our core communicative DNA, Creativity Online raises the issue of the post-digital future. To quote Nicholas Negroponte, a world in which digital expression has been fully realized is one in which “digital would be noticed only by its absence, not its presence”. Brands declaring themselves as digitally-savvy would be inherently un-savvy through their act of declaration. Sure we made it past the dot com boom and bust, and these days social media has a stronghold on our attention, but are we at a point yet in which the use of digital technology is fluid with our every expression? Not quite.

Though we haven’t quite reached Matrix-level URL and IRL (“in real life”) integration, the brands who resonate the most with consumers have been able to successfully cross-over, linking the digital airwaves with tangible realities. Pepsi Refresh Project has real-world implications – $20 million in do-good grants – via social media applications (consumers submit their proposals via the project’s digital hub). The project is built to intrinsically have universal impact by seamlessly leveraging the global nature of the internet as an idea-sharing forum.

Does every communications program blend URL and IRL with such ease? No, far from it. But as the digital world spins madly on, we the consumers are looking to engage with brands who speak to us on our playing field – a field that doesn’t flash neon lights proclaiming to be digitally-savvy, rather a field in which digital is woven into the very turf we’re running around on.

Sarah Unger