Nicolas Roope: “Kickstarter is such an important symbol of a shift that is fundamental to the notion of advertising as we know it. So many of us have grown up with the idea that advertising is a way to instill, stand out, and preference for relatively undifferentiated products. Advertising was the thing that made something exciting and different, not the thing itself. Kickstarter is like a reverse mirror image to this. It takes the position that if a product is awesome and exciting enough, not only will it draw a community of buyers but also advocates so passionate they’ll make the investment necessary to create the product in the first place. The results: a community of buyers, advocates, and investors all in one. This is a massive threat to our model but there is so much to learn from it. And perhaps our clients should also be thinking harder about how to dynamize the relationship between digital and products so that stories can better permeate the whole product experience, not just the promise.”