We are experience a great shift in how consumers interact with brands. Never before had we been given so much power to influence others nor had we been more skeptical of the “interrupt and push” advertising model of yesteryear. Advancements in technologies is enabling us all to broadcast our thoughts and experiences to thousands of people.
Think about the last time you had a bad experience with a product and shared your encounter in your blog, a popular forum, or your social network site page. What you wrote is (usually) public and will get picked up by search engines. Next time someone searches for “product xx experiences” there is a chance they will visit the link, see your comments, and get influenced by it. This culture of enpowered consumerism is already here and is happening today!
This observation is varified by a recent report entitled “The Game Changer” by digital media marketing agency Initative. In a panel of 3200 consumers, 76% of those surveyed said they placed their trust in friends and family, 43% said they trusted online consumer content, and only 20% said they trusted editorial content in traditional media! If we are to ask this group just a few years ago, I would suspect the percentage who said they trust editorials would have been much higher.
A lot of marketers are realizing this shift in technology and consumer behaviour but are baffled by what they need to do. The role of the game is so different from the four “Ps” they learnt in marketing class it does take a different sets of skills to play.
This shift in the “marketing funnel” is nicely summed up in a Forrester report that came out in August 2007 (that’s 2 years ago!) where the author illustrate this in a multi-funnel diagram.
The author makes the point that no longer should marketers place all their emphasis on reach and frequency but they should also look into “engagement” as the new measurement metric.
And engage we must! But then the question becomes “how do we make advertising engaging?” The key in my view is relatively simple, it’s a matter of “value exchange”. The concept is this; you give consumers something of value (not to you, but to them) and in exchange they spend time “engaging” with your brand. If they really like what you give them at a deep level (remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from mass communication classes?) such as belonginess, love, esteem, etc. they will even become an advocate for your brand.
Here is an example of how engagement gets planned into a campaign. Some time ago I helped Intel devise an online ad campaign in India. The centrepiece of the campaign was a Facebook game call “Gateway2India” with prizes being given out on a weekly basis to players with the highest score. Ads were deployed entirely in Facebook which was growing rapidly at the time.
From a “traditional” digital media planning perspective it was relatively straightforward. We bought text and image ads inside Facebook as well as banners in popular application networks. The real challenges were in the planning of engagement with consumers. We spent weeks deciding on a game format that would be fun enough to play yet “ad friendly” enough to make into a branded game with underlaying product messages. The “value” to consumers was two-folds: 1.) give them a fun/competitive gaming experience 2.) giving them real prizes to enticing to come back and pass on to others.
Winners were announced in the Facebook fan page and also the banner ads (which saw much higher than industry average click through rates). The ad creatives and placements were optimized during the campaign to ensure we get the best cost efficiency possible.
Another important part of the equation was ensuring the game get passed on. So ensuring an easy pass-along interface, leaderboards to encourage competition, building prizes even winners’ names into the banners, seeding about the game in various places, etc. all worked together in building buzz and enticed consumers to participate.
Then to measure how effective or “engaged” consumers were, our team planned out the tracking from the moment the banner is displayed down to the moment the player forwarded the game to others. We even threw in a study to look at consumers perceptions pre and post exposure to the game.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. We saw players come back week after week to participate. Some blogged about the game, some left comments on the fan’s page on how to get higher scores. And from the consumer study we did along with the game we saw much unexpectedly positive response to the game as well as the brand.
By offering consumers value in – fun of playing the game, a chance to compete with friends, opportunity to win prizes – we got in return brand exposure and engagement time with consumers. Some even became advocates and helped promote the game to others.
My declaration of the funnel’s “death” is likely premature but there is no denying that the funnel’s life had gotten quite a bit more complicated.
