Forget the puffery and fine, abstracted words, so common in discussions on brand: Brian Collins loves a summer blockbuster, a long, tingling-cold pull of Coke, his Mister Machine toy, the film version of Moulin Rouge, and the acreage of massive, blisteringly bright billboards in Times Square. There is nothing finer in his sight than a strong brand tied to a scene of real culture unfolding, chaotically, human-ly: say, a Nike swoosh ascending like an aegis over a community basketball clinic. Say it slowly with me: Collins likes art and commerce, chummily, together.

He fully believes the world’s most corporate-behemoth brands crave those labor-of-love works designers shunt into a secret drawer: those clearly Not For The Man. In his view, smart companies like IBM, Motorola, Coca-Cola, and Dove are now gravitating to brand messages that can be handmade, awkward, or elegant, but above all unfolding.

Art! Capitalism! Creativity! Money! If anyone else in the room feels confused, or hesitant, or even a touch nauseated, Collins and his raft of unruly mavericks at Brand Integration Group (BIG), do not. I visited BIG’s ofiices just off Times Square for a taste of unabashed vision: a world where brands don’t beam their messages unilaterally, but instead leap through the fourth wall, into the audience, where the stories are really happening.