Companies that invite
us to play invite us to
make their offerings
our own, and then we
buy and “tell a friend”

Today’s customers do not consume; they do not listen to a narrative someone else wrote for them. Instead, they engage with products. They participate. They write the story. They play.

about it. Perhaps
we even syndicate it
on Digg or back to
Facebook. Increasingly,
such endorsements
drive the choices
buyers make.

technology, making the user experience the standard against which success is judged. Market leaders understand that in a fragmented culture the best way to establish leadership is to provide a way for people to feel safe to explore, to play—to try out everything from software to food to consulting methodologies— before buying.

In the 1950s and 1960s, ads informed us—as consumers— about the features and benefits of a particular product. Consumers were expected to listen in rapt attention. More recently, companies tried to entertain us as passive audiences—ads told stories, evoked emotions, and created an aura around a product. But in reality, we were still expected to sit there, listening raptly.

Immersive Experiences Create
Brand Champions

To say the Internet made Play, the sixth P, possible is a bit like saying the internal combustion engine made it easier to get around: It’s only half the story. The real fun begins when you find a straightaway and punch the gas to see what your cherry-red convertible can do. The first iteration of the Internet handled like a Model T, not a lot of fun but would get you from place to place. Now users are just starting to push the Internet to red-line, to open it up to see what it can do, letting it roar and hum.

An entire generation of customers grew up relating to their world both in person and online. The first words they read may have been on a website. For these customers it’s not enough to present material online. They need an invitation to participate in the experience. They need to laugh. They need to share it with their friends, whom they don’t necessarily see every day or even every year (or ever).

They want to make the subservient chicken dance. Launched by the Barbarian Group, an interactive SWAT team called in by Burger King’s advertising agency, the subservient chicken was an online smash, logging more than a billion hits. That’s billion with a B. The premise was simple—a guy dressed in a chicken suit, in a nondescript living room, responds to the commands you type in.

Funny? Yes. Profitable? Absolutely. The subservient-chicken interactive campaign succeeded where it matters most—driving sales of chicken at Burger King. But there are other intangible benefits, as it is rooted in the brand promise, “Have it your way.” Long the second fiddle to McDonalds’ world domination, Burger King now has the cachet of a younger, hipper brand. Let the five-year-olds have their Happy Meals. Burger King has its arm around the shoulder of the American dude, inviting him to Simpsonize himself.

But it goes beyond a few clever Web games. To build enduring brand loyalty, companies have to do more than provide their customers with some playful widgets. Companies must get their customers to play with each other, creating a brand tribe of shared experiences, and move it offline and out into the real world.

Videogames are all about play, obviously, but we haven’t typically thought of them as a shared interactive experience. They’re solitary—a couple of guys locked in their dorm room playing Doom and failing freshman econ together. Nintendo’s Wii is transforming this geeky subculture into a place for all by fusing both online and offline interactions.

From the first screen, the Wii encourages you to create a “Mii” that looks surprisingly, almost unnervingly like you. You can collaborate with other Wii users through the system’s free software downloads and participate in weekly themed Mii pageants. As you dig deeper into the Wii sports game that comes with