Thanks largely to evolving technology, change never stops and mashups are one small but growing consumer trend that is changing how people express themselves. Brands have also been embracing the mashup in their quest to build closer relationships with audiences.

A mashup essentially takes APIs from multiple websites and ‘mashes’ them to make a unique, innovative application.

A couple of examples of how brands are embracing the mashup:

Radiohead Reckoner Re/Mix

Radiohead openly embraced its audience’s desire to collaborate at an intimate level by selling ‘strings’ of its music separately and inviting people to create their own remix and enter this into a competition.

The interactivity extends beyond the micro site, allowing people to post their personal remix on their Facebook or MySpace profiles.

Crowdfire by Intel

Crowdfire enhances the music festival experience for people who attend by using multimedia to extend the experience to screens at festivals, and then online.

At the festival, you can upload your pics and videos and sit back while they’re viewed across the festival screens. After the festival, you can go back to the site to see everyone’s photos. Crowdfire acts as the aggregator of the material so people can go to the Crowdfire site and link their photos to their own social networking profiles like Facebook and Twitter.

Mashups aren’t the only way consumers’ relationships with brands are evolving, but they are an effective way of enhancing people’s feelings of intimacy with a brand.

Posted by: Carmen Campbell
Thanks to: Radiohead, Crowdfire