A new formula for creative success: combining the chocolate with the peanut butter.*

One of the most exciting new frontiers in digital creativity is brought to you by something called APIs (application programming interfaces). To a technical person they mean one thing, but to a creative marketer they mean this: you can create an entirely new mashup simply by combining your content with someone else’s. Granted lots of people have taken advantage of Google Earth, or embedded the code for a YouTube video, but the big one was CNN and Facebook allowing you to share the inauguration ceremonies with all of your friends, even though you might have been physically isolated in your cubicle. With streaming video on one side of your screen and your friends’ real time comments on the other, you had the modern day version of a “collective experience” made possible not by either CNN.com or Facebook, but only by putting the two together. You were doing something and were aware of everyone else doing it at the same time. A perfect example of the fastest growing movement in marketing: content strategy. It may be that from now on the most interesting media experiences that any of us create are achieved by simply putting the chocolate and peanut butter together. Which means it’s time for all of us – not just the technology folks – to learn what’s possible and start thinking this way.

* must admit that I stole this phrase from my friend Michael Ancevic