The debate over native advertising reached peak volume this weekend at SXSW 2015 — Plenty more on blurred lines, if new content formats are news/not news, proliferation of in-house media studios, and plenty more.

As shared last week I see the single biggest — and most under-recognized — challenge is the need to think native. Not in the sense of advertising. More on how to accelerate engagement through new media sources fast becoming mainstream, with efficiency of native ads as a piece of the bigger pie.

President Obama might divide opinion as much as native discussions do, but when it comes his strategy, it’s clear the White House is looking to crack a new, broader code.

As outgoing head of communications Dan Pfeiffer explained in an interview with Stephen Levy, “we tried a spaghetti strategy — throw a lot of things against the wall and see what sticks, and to be very willing to take on risk that under traditional political rules you wouldn’t.”

By now, we’ve all seen President Obama’s selfie stick videos and GIFs for BuzzFeed. Within a day of posting, the videos had received more than 23m views on Facebook alone.

Why go to such lengths to engage in this way?

Tune-in power — even for the President of the United States — is diminishing fast. According to Pfeiffer, “You can no longer just have a nationally televised address and speak to 150 million people. So you have to work 15, 20, 30 times harder than previous presidents to have the same impact.”

He also testifies to a material change that’s upending marketing-as-usual: the overwhelming preference for images over words. Visual influence, as we call it, sees image-based content converging with increased proliferation and range of influential sources at a scale never before seen.

The evidence shows, whether you look through the lens of venture funding or user behavior, that a vastly different media environment is coming into focus, one that will require a new type of visual communication to earn attention.

Pfeifer suggests that visual influence demands an expanded range of capabilities. “We have a lot of people around here who write written words — speeches, talking points, press releases — and you will need people who are creating visual, graphical and video images to communicate the same message.”

He also suggests engineering engagement around all this content is a key part of the job. “You will not be reaching the quantity of people that you would reach by having a big broadcast television interview but the quality of the outreach will be better because you’ll be getting very engaged people who can take action on behalf of the thing you care about.”

It appears to be working. President Obama’s appearance on Funny or Die with Zach Galifianakis led to a huge spike in healthcare application completions, and the Buzzfeed video led to a big increase in referrals to Healthcare.gov. As Buzzfeed’s social caption on the footage stated: “How did we get Obama to use a selfie stick? Oh, because he wants you to go to Healthcare.gov.” (Disclosure: Healthcare.gov is a client of my firm Weber Shandwick.)

For all the extra effort it entails, native content plus broad engagement can pay off. So agree or disagree with President Obama, there’s much to glean from his recent moves into native content and engagement around it.

When it comes to adopting native thinking, selfie sticks are optional.

Experimentation, beyond injecting new ads into editorial channels, isn’t.

This article was originally published in The Drum leading into SXSW 2015.

If you touch media, marketing or PR in 2015, hang on for a wild ride. Cultural influence will continue to speed ahead to the benefit of an expanding universe of socially networked, visually-minded creators.

Think consumer generated content we’ve seen to date — on steroids.

As more of our media time moves to mobile our appetite for visual content, particularly from newer engaging sources, grows larger.

Well known YouTube creators — like beauty maven Michelle Phan, geek baker Rosanna Pansino and fashion aficionado Bethany Mota – gained such significant influence through their channels, and YouTube’s campaign, that their stardom extends to offline audiences.

Other YouTube chart-toppers, headlined by video game commentator PewDiePie, lead an indie list with over 32 million subscribers. Teen magnet Jenna Marbles carries a network of 14 million strong. Ray William Johnson’s viral video channel now has a 10 million-person base. In comparison, TV top ten regular Dancing With the Stars gets 12 million tune-in viewers.

This visual influence shift is not exclusively happening to the benefit of YouTube under a monopoly of new media mega stars. A long tail of niche creators with community followings on networks like Instagram, Snapchat and Vine now hold increasing sway too. Creators interested in virtually any conceivable subject or subcategory – nail art, vintage cars, fusion cuisine – are creative nodes capable of growing highly-engaged followers.

What was a trickle of micro celebrity influence on culture is a potential deluge spreading across social networks and into mainstream media. And it’s still early in the game.

A New Era of Creativity and Engagement

What’s driving the next leap forward in consumer generated content?

Mobile. We have cheap, studio-quality production capacity in the palm of our hand that has potential to unleash a full-scale creative revolution.

In some respects, the cultural impact of MTV in the early ‘80s is an illustration of what’s in progress now. While music videos pre-dated MTV by decades, the network as a potential cultural force appeared on the scene suddenly — unannounced and underestimated. What elevated their influence on media and culture? A drop in production cost combined with 24×7 channel capacity (and a little help from Mick Jagger).

From a creative standpoint, MTV delivered experimental, visual expressions that defied TV or music precedent. It spawned a new generation of imaginative multi-platform artists, content and shows embraced by network fanatics.

Similar experimental patterns are prevalent in social media today including new content genres, overnight sensations, and even addictive tune-in behaviors. Like early stage MTV producers, the best creators experiment their way into success, taking advantage of low-cost means of testing concepts through interaction and constant feedback from their communities.

Volume of Consumer Generated Content to Rise. Creator Marketplaces to Mature.

We’ll look back on 2014 as the year when we saw a boom in newly remixed media. Filtered photo sharing. GoPro enabled, adventure-seeker video. Emoji-infused messaging. More media stories enlivened with GIFs.  In a very real sense, visual language fundamentally changed.

The accelerating efficiency in how this media is made is equally fundamental. Consider Saffo’s Law — a design principle embedded in Facebook, Twitter and other networks. Proposed by Silicon Valley researcher Paul Saffo, the law suggests that the smaller the quantum creative act you ask of people, the more they participate. With only a few gestures, we can both create and distribute visual content to the masses.

Saffo’s Law provides context for what’s ahead in terms of our production capacity and scale of output. According to Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet trends report, within two years we’ll have twice as much content flowing through digital and social networks as we have today. Two-thirds of it will be created and consumed by everyday Joes and Janes as opposed to incumbent cultural gatekeepers.

The cultural operating system that allows this to happen — running on new mobile, social, and visual behavior — favors individual creators and fast-moving communities.

Platform players like Fullscreen, Tongal and Niche, aim to help companies collaborate with creator communities as part of creative, integrated marketing programs. Just over a year old, Niche aggregates the world’s most prolific creators via its software platform to facilitate win-win collaboration opportunities with brands. The company has over 5,000 creators on board with an aggregate community base of over one billion followers.

Prepare for a New Creative Revolution

Watch this fast-expanding world of contemporary consumer-generated media intently.  Pay close attention and gain meaningful insights from what you observe. Then – and only then – engage these new culture creators in a consistent, authentic way.

Understanding this new visual influence in culture is fundamental to the future of media, marketing and PR.

We’re in the midst of a visual culture shift that will undoubtedly accelerate in 2015.

Are you ready for it?

The power of social media lies in finding and building connections between like-minded people. Conceptually, this aligns with how companies think about it for business purposes, and they continue to throw more money into the practice.

Investments in building “communities” on major social networks continue to escalate this year. Budgets assigned to social analytics to identify and engage “influencers” are gaining bigger slices of the IT pie. The science (and deal-making) behind finding and engaging people of influence continues to grow and become more sophisticated.

It’s safe to say discovering, building, and nurturing living, breathing networks is now a fundamental business practice.

Ironically, these networking efforts often bypass the most like-minded influencers a company has: its employees. A company shouldn’t simply use internal social networks to talk to and connect employees, but to also actively engage them to advocate — and, at times, defend — the organizations they work for.

To be fair, declaring open season with employees can end badly. Somewhat early in corporate adoption of social media, our team was brought in to help one of the world’s largest IT organizations that had ventured into the social space without a clearly defined strategy. This company had a vast, open blog network, where employees could publish perspectives on company contributions and convey views on where the technology agenda was headed.

Consequently, many of these employees did so without proper guidance, training, or governance. Employees shared proprietary company information, vented about workplace issues, and shared contradictory viewpoints. The business and reputation risk was astounding. We helped address the gap, one faced regularly by companies with a vast number of social media properties to manage.

Today, most companies have social media guidelines in place to avoid risk, along with a governance structure to manage communications across social platforms under management.

Often, these efforts discourage or confuse employees who want to talk about the organizations they work for. And they’re clearly not confined to their company’s social media properties, like the blog network example referenced. Employees are constantly connecting and talking about their companies through their personal accounts on their own time.

Recognizing the Opportunity

Recent global research from my firm, Weber Shandwick, in partnership with KRC Research, found that only 4 of 10 employees surveyed can confidently explain what their employer does and only 3 in 10 are deeply engaged. Yet a deeper look into the workforce finds that 21 percent of workers are well-informed, highly engaged, and supportive of their employers.

What’s especially remarkable is that they are also social activists for their employers. They make their engagement visible, they defend their employers from criticism, and they act as advocates. The opportunity is in harnessing that activism and leveraging it.

Let me put this in perspective: The Fortune 50 averages 265,000 employees. If only 20 percent of those employees engaged with 100 friends about work, they’d have a potential reach of 5.3 million people, using estimates from our study (by comparison, The New York Times’ weekly audience reach is roughly the same size). That’s a huge opportunity that shouldn’t be left on the table.

Many companies are already finding success with social media policies that empower employees. Just look at Whole Foods Market, Zappos, or IBM.

By encouraging creativity and authenticity, they build on their core values to define their social media presence. Whole Foods’ nearly 3.7 million Twitter followers are presented with content generated by employees that features personal anecdotes and company facts.

Zappos takes its “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness” motto to social media with entertaining and engaging content that allows employees to be the driving force behind its message.

IBM has set the expectation among all employees that sharing knowledge is required to live their Smarter Planet agenda. Each company exemplifies living its message, and each takes full advantage of the advocacy and scale that employees can bring to the table. They see the glass as half-full.

New Employee Platforms are Emerging

A suite of software products that are brand- and compliant-safe is fast emerging to enable companies to share their social media assets with employees. Dynamic Signal helps brands and enterprises leverage the authentic voices of employees, customers, and fans to drive reach, awareness, and revenue. Others, like Percolate and SocialChorus, help manage communities, content workflow, and analytics.

The business advantages of building a strong network shouldn’t overlook the most powerful army of advocates available: those who work for businesses. Brand image is built upon the truly human stories and connections provided by employees. Today’s consumer base is hungry for information and limited in its time to research, making these stories the hook that will engage both customers and your staff.

Increasing the involvement of employee “influencers,” or activists, allows you to leverage the broad scope of people your employees connect with and take advantage of employees’ social media habits. And maybe most importantly, it can help you re-engage the large proportion of employees who may feel distanced from their companies’ mission.