Oldest and simplest?

From the list I made yesterday I think it's clear that brand participation covers a whole host of activities and differs massively between brand types as it differs in its effect.

One thing that I asked myself this morning was, "what's the oldest form of brand participation?"

Off the bat, all I can think of is radio phone-ins where the listeners get to pick the tracks played. This is gold dust for radio producers as it really gets people glued to their radio sets and costs the radio station nothing - it's a truly simple piece of brand participation: the premise being "it's your radio station, and we play your tunes" - quite literally.

Interestingly I read an article about the London-based radion DJ Christian O'Connell, who's just moved from XFM to Virgin Radio. He's a really interesting + an ever more successful DJ who, in this article in the Guardian newspaper, had a go at lazy old school DJs who used out-dated old radio formulae, and who as a result were losing listeners. He compared what they were doing to the successful stuff he's doing, and one of the key things to note is how, in several different ways, he makes the listener feel like it's their show - like they own it.

Examples O'Connell gave were things like a competition he ran called "Rock School", in which he got school rock bands to send in their songs and then got his listeners to vote for them. This wasn't just another simple competition - this was about inspiring kids, supporting up coming old school music talent that has largely been forgoten in the wake of Pop Idol etc.
Uber-importantly, Rock School fitted the XFM brand to aT. This was exactly the same as another competition he ran called "Song for Europe" - in which he got musicians from aroun dthe UK to write a European Football Championship anthem. Again, it was irreverent + grass-rootsy + was about getting listeners to GET INVOLVED.

So, is radio a media we should all learn from? Maybe. For me it certainly goes down as one of the oldest and simplest users of brand participation principles . . . and a further thing to learn from what O'Connell was talking about, is that radio stations are now having to try harder to keep their listeners engaged with their brand, just as other kinds of brands are having to dig deeper and innovate to capture that ever-increasingly hard-to-reach and fickle consumer.