Bad Donkey Social - the story of an unlikely team motivated by the vision of navigating new social frontiers; an intrepid startup of pioneer thinkers guided by professional wisdom and driven by millennial smarts. It is a story being written, with a beginning that rests within a cold March evening.

A retired ad-exec attends a lecture on the future of social media held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Driving home, though stuck at a red light, a cognitive green light flares; the “aha!” moment arrives: “What if, instead of text, we could communicate with symbols, icons, art and even brand logos…like cavemen…not on cave walls, but on social walls; not with stone-carved etchings, but with digitally generated images? What would it mean to go back to the future?”

What would it mean to bring the evolution of human textual communication full cycle: from cave paintings on stone walls, to written text, to the printing press, to the digital age, to interactive content on social walls? Could we pick up where the cavemen left off, pulling a thin thread through 30,000 years of communication, changing the way we communicate? In other words, what would it mean to inaugurate a potent new cyber language? We’ve been considering these questions; the answers are close on the horizon, the tech ship speeding us there is ETC® aka Enriched Text Content®.

ETC Technology infuses custom interactive content inline with words. An innovative keyboard function makes value-added communication exchanges easy to create and share. The ramifications of this technology are vast in scope. For example, think about a digital conversation––one that, instead of just text, can be easily infused with interactive images, symbols, art, brand logos and more. What kind of creativity might this inspire, giving users unlimited freedom of expression, turning everyday interactions into fresh, fun, and enriching conversation? How could users warp language with digital memes, making each exchange an opportunity to be fun, creative, or represent oneself with a particular image, or even brand logo?

This brings us to another avenue for discussion: native brand evangelism––in other words, bottom-up advertising. What would the effects be of straying away from the traditional top-down approach? ETC expands viral sharing of personal market beliefs on the native level, increasing both brand reach and relevance. When a brand logo can be inserted into a conversation, it is no longer just a representation of that brand, but becomes a representation of the user as well. It decentralizes advertising, allowing users themselves to participate in the marketing process. ETC breaks down the walls of centralized advertising; can it also break down the walls of centralized communication?

What would it mean to inaugurate a new cyber language, one that has the ability to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers, effectively making valuable communication exchanges possible across international boundaries? Beyond words, ETC affords the ability to interact on a multi-dimensional basis––can it afford, perhaps, a universal language?

These are the questions that sparked a journey back to the future, and what continue to inspire the journey of a retired ad-exec and his millennial team. The journey is an exciting one, driven by a vision on a cold Wisconsin night. Now, that vision is becoming clear. Bad Donkey anticipates a change in the way we communicate: we anticipate a time when the art of language evolves back into language as art.

Learn more at baddonkeysocial.com