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Branding is tightly woven into our existence today. The proliferation of brand messages has created the most media-savvy group of consumers to date. They expect to be targeted, they want to be reached, and they invariably put brands to the legitimacy test. Learning to connect with them is not an easy task; it requires diving into their world and at the same time being true to who you are as a brand or company. Authenticity is the key to brand survival.

The future of brand building is not shaping up to be sophisticated or techie. Interactivity, a hot-button marketing concept that conjures up images of online personal shoppers and computerized kiosks, is showing signs of a retro-evolution. Marketers, especially those directing their messages at teens, are discovering interactivity isn't necessarily about scannable ID badges or getting consumers to the website five times a week. Fundamentally, it's about making consumers feel involved in the brand, and this is increasingly accomplished by going to the consumers themselves for marketing inspiration. No kiosks, no badges, no URLs (ok, still a few URLs). The phenomenon of "grassroots interactivity" literally involves the audience in the making of the campaign and results in simple, minimally-edited ads that are striking because of their hyper-real, documentary style.

The foremost practitioner of this grassroots interactivity is Sprite. In their new "Sprite Voices" television/web campaign, the soda company speaks to (and represents) their target consumers in a wholly unmediated way.

Sprite's previous TV campaign mocked traditional marketing with their "Image is Nothing, Obey Your Thirst" slogan, depicting sports celebrities cynically endorsing the soft drink while they rake in piles of money. Initially, the concept worked, telling kids, "We know you're smart. We know you know what's going on." However, the campaign soon wore thin with focus groups who felt Sprite shouldn't have their cake and eat it, too. If image is nothing, why feature sports icons in the commercials at all?

In response to this audience feedback, Sprite took a different tack. Their new TV spots are straightforward, without any of the irony that marked the old campaign. Each features an amateur rapper delivering a 40 second rhyme a capella, after which the rhyme's title is flashed on the screen and the camera briefly pans down to the bottle of Sprite they're holding.

The rhymes are personal and heartfelt, though difficult to decipher for those not acquainted with hip-hop. Joseph Rollings aka Divine, of New Jersey, delivers a story about going out on payday with a girl he'd just met only to be robbed by her before the night is over. Dante Basco, from San Francisco, is perhaps the highest profile of the campaign's rappers, having breakdanced between innings at Oakland A's games and made appearances on TV and movies. He talks about an encounter with a threatening character who turns out to have been an old classmate:

I'm in the club with my crew, whatcha do
when you see another brother in the club and he's lookin' at you
Caught eyes for a second, just a millisecond,
It's enough, don't take much
for someone to feel threatened these days
Now he's steppin' my way,
ain't no stressin' I stay
'cause I'm down for whatever
But a moment like this can change a life forever. Times are hard if you're charged and filled with intensity
But then I see a smile from my so-called enemy
He be like, Ain't that true,
4th period Jr. High School?
Will a yes release the stress give way to relax
Gimme daps that I'm glad it went down like that.

The intimacy of the subject matter and lack of posturing are typical of underground hip-hop, where the boasts are less high-flying than in chart-topping rap songs. These no-name rappers are unquestionably legitimate. While rap artists who make it big are sometimes dismissed as over-hyped or sell-outs (and therefore unappealing spokespersons), these kids are clearly just doing what they love. A few have attained some local celebrity, but only one has a record contract. These are the kinds of kids who get on stage at local hip-hop events and shows, trying to get noticed and only sometimes succeeding. They represent "real" hip-hop, which followers of the movement rarely see on TV.

While many ads strive to show consumers an image of themselves, Sprite's approach is unique for a major brand. These rappers are not advertising's "everyman." Of the ten rappers featured, one is White, one is Asian-American, three are African-American, and five are Latino, four of whom rhyme in Spanish. This is a representation of America's urban make-up that is rarely portrayed in mainstream advertising. The locations are real, too—busy street corners, parks, playgrounds and front yards—as if the director had just gone out and filmed wherever people were hanging out. It connects with consumers on their own turf, in their own language, without any hype or glamour to distance the viewer from what's happening. This is grassroots interactivity.

Online at www.spritevoices.com, along with the full commercials are lyrics, short rapper bios and a chance to rate the rhymes. This is interactivity in the conventional sense, but the real interaction takes place in the ads themselves, communiques between hip-hop fans who just happen to be drinking Sprite. The undeniable authenticity of the ads establish Sprite as the only soft drink company that knows what hip-hop and its enthusiasts are really about.

Other advertisers are using a similar approach, though to less jarringly authentic effect. Bolt.com produced a series of commercials written and performed by kids to convey the promise of their product, an online community built by and for kids. New Nike Football spots show talented but unknown young players skillfully manipulating a ball with their bodies in empty parking lots and playing fields, with no music and minimal branding. Like the Sprite ads, these spots stand out because of their unique documentary style, by not relying on the same old tropes—slick production, celebrity endorsements or beautiful actors—and by letting the audience contribute. The creators of these spots seem to be aware of what makes brand loyalty in the fragmented, fickle youth market: It's not showing kids what you think they want, it's showing you know who they are.