Marketers call what they do “engagement,” “interaction,” “relationship-building” or worse yet, “encouraging the customer to experience the brand.” However, substitute “brand” with “Tabasco enema,” and you can picture the usefulness of such tactics and how uncomfortable your audience is with them.
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You must admit — marketers have a curious way with language. For decades it was the industry’s goal to “target” an audience, as if to say the only way to make money was to treat consumers as objects to be destroyed. More recently, although we are using more 2.0-friendly language for interactive marketing, just as often we still use “target” and “engagement,” both of which project the consumer as an adversary.
Though it seems strange and disjointed, the language isn’t actually the problem. Even when we use the “right” terms — or at least terms the hypersensitive have less to be offended by — too often to be ignored, the problem is that our goal is still the same as it’s always been.
Consumer Electronics: An Analogy
Imagine walking into an electronics store in search of some speakers for your home entertainment system. You don’t know exactly which ones you want, but you’re pretty sure you’ve got an idea about how to narrow your choices. You just have a few questions you want to ask about the ones the store has available.
You track down a salesperson and explain what you’re looking for and what type of system you have. Easy enough.
A normal person would expect to be given helpful information, but the head of marketing, hip to the whole “Information Superhighway” thing that’s all the rage with the kids these days, meticulously trained the sales team on how to approach prospects. Thus, instead of giving you the answer, the salesperson hits you with a thirty-second explanation about how great his company is. Worse yet, there is no skip button (Not that
one would help).
Sound like any splash pages you’ve seen?
Beyond Appearances
This is what clueless people think passes for “marketing 2.0.” For all our ruminations and advocacy on the blogosphere, the goals of marketing today are the same as they’ve always been: Interruption and
Transaction. They are just dressed in a different garb.
Today’s marketers call what they do “engagement,” “interaction,” “relationship-building” or worse yet, “encouraging the customer to experience the brand.” However, substitute “brand” with “Tabasco enema,” and you can picture the usefulness of such tactics and how uncomfortable your audience is with them.
The sad news is that your company’s brand isn’t nearly as important to your audience as it is to you. Unless you’re the only provider available online, which is unlikely, it’s very easy for your audience to find someone else. No amount of “brand engagement” you pull out of your magic hat is going to make people think more about you than they do of themselves.
So don’t fool yourself about this “brand experience” thing. It’s important, and it can be done, but it isn’t going to happen because you dressed your marketing up with prettier language or pictures.
Tags: audience, brand, Branding, customer, engagement, experience, hypersensitive, hypersensitivity, interactive, internet, Marketing, relationship, Target, terminology
Excellent post Cam. When I conduct sales training/workshops/seminars, one of the first things we discuss is abandoning the pitch and replacing it with listening and then responding to what we hear, tp the customer’s wants and needs.
Brand is customer perception of a business, and it begins with the first company touchpoint, whenever and wherever it occurs. Nothing will create a bad first impression more than a marketing/sales pitch.
You start off your article by stating that ‘marketers have a curious way with language’. I would suggest that it’s too easy to call oneself ‘marketer’ and that too many unqualified hacks position themselves as such because of their ignorance. Weed out the whackos and there would be far less “experience the brand”.
While I agree that a company’s brand isn’t as important to its audience as it is to a company, I strongly disagree that no amount of “brand engagement” is going to make people think more about a brand.
Let’s start from within.
Did you know, for example, that companies like SAS in North Carolina offer sports facilities, subsidized child-care, early schooling and a primary health-care centre, free to staff. The latter is increasingly being studied by other firms as they struggle to contain the growth of health-care costs. In fact, when Google was planning the Goolplex, they went to SAS for inspiration
What does this mean?
SAS’s turnover rate is approx. 4% a year, compared with 20% in the software industry as a whole. If that’s not keeping your staff engaged, then what is?
Now let’s look on the outside.
Apple keeps their consumers engaged with products that continue to push our creativity. From the start, when Apple Computers made a PC that was simple to use, their focus was always on the end user: how can we make a better PC? How can we make a person better at being creative? Then Apple Computers made different computers at faster rates and newer designs, things people actually wanted to display in their homes and/or offices as works of art.
I remember an old employer specifically buying a first generation iMac for the front reception desk so that when clients arrived, they saw it. No one else in the office had one. I call that brand engagement.
Then Apple made the iPod and iTunes. Enough said.
Then came the retail experience, launched at a time when all the “experts” said Steve was crazy to think of going bricks and mortar. That it would never succeed. Guess what? 20% of Apple revunue comes from their retail outlets.
Then came the iPhone. Do I need to say anything else?
What’s interesting to note is how Apple dropped the word computers from their name. They no longer consider themselves a computer brand; they’re an experience brand that continues to engage consumers with more design at more touchpoints.
If that’s not brand engagement then sign me up for fire fighter school because clearly, I’m not getting “brand engagement”.
Joe – Before answering, I want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, I didn’t say no amount of brand engagement is going to get people to think more about the brand, but that none will get people to think more about the brand THAN THEY THINK ABOUT THEMSELVES. (Not yelling, just trying to put emphasis when HTML is not allowed).
Pat – Touché.
Lewis – Right on. Broadly, I would say there are two basic steps to building a great brand:
1. Make an extraordinary promise.
2. Over-deliver on that promise.
Of course, implicit in that is “not wasting the time of the audience,” but we’ve covered that ground, haven’t we?
I don’t think a brand can intentionally make a person think more about the brand than themselves, but I do believe brands like the ones I mentioned can unknowingly influence consumer behavior. The good ones can make people do things they might never have thought of.
“I do believe brands like the ones I mentioned can unknowingly influence consumer behavior. The good ones can make people do things they might never have thought of.”
We’re in complete agreement, then. At least on that point.
You’ll notice that in order to earn that kind of influence, it had to give something that benefited the audience first. If they removed that benefit, people, tending to their own affairs, would revoke the license for that influence.
Joe: Apple is one a a relatively few “Prom King” brands that have figured out the way to get consumers to like them so much, that they are proud to “engage” with them.
Unfortunately, there are perhaps a dozen or so brands lucky enough to achieve this sort of magic. Some of it is smart marketing. Some of it is having the right product in the right category at the right time.
Cam is right. Too many people view Web 2.0 as a chance to bore the socks off of people who may actually like the brand but really only want to buy their product and be done with it – they don’t want to “engage” them in any way, shape or form.
Because, as any of my readers know: Your Brand Is Not My Friend™
Thanks, TT. I do believe that you have to earn someone’s trust before they will agree to “engage” them, ala Apple.
There are effective ways to do that, but hitting users over the head with your “brand message” at the expense of what they want is not the way to go about it.
I think Cam makes a great point. Web 2.0 gives brands a better chance to act differently and actually engage customers. But all too often brands behave in the same way they have since the 1950’s and deliver a message in an effort to manage people’s perceptions or persuade them to do something. They disregard what the customer actually wants, needs or is looking for at that moment. With this kind of behavior, I agree with TT, A brand is not my friend. But in the end, I think brands could benefit from thinking and behaving like a friend. Because web 2.0 gives brands the chance to be respectful, listen, be reciprocal and responsive. The term “engagement” is likely misused in the world of marketing 90% of the time.
Brandon – Great points.
Everyone here has enriched this post so well that I hardly feel like I can take credit for writing it. The comments are far better than the original article.
I hope people continue to develop these thoughts here and on their own. I love where this is going.
Really great points and discusssion. But I must say that I get a feeling everything in programming gets into some marketing “big thing” and then suddenly looses pace. Take CRM for example.
I don’t know what’s your experience on this, but in my environment years ago it was top 3 things everyone was selling (especially IT companies). Then it somehow slowed down and well… there are rare good examples of actually using and performing on it.
And the nicest way to sell something to the marketing department and get them involved into “wow new stuff” is to tell them: “it will raise your brand awarness”.
I think you hit the real issue when you said people expect to get “helpful information.” Too much marketing is about the company and not about the customer. It’s a one-way conversation (is that an oxymoron?).
“Engagement,” “interaction,” and “relationships” are two-way. It requires you to listen.
If you constantly provide content that’s relevant to your customers’ issues and question, you can begin to build relationships and engage your prospect.
It’s got to be about them and not about you. The pitch is dead. Long live the conversation.
I wish to add some consideration:
- we live in a moment of huge hype (web 2.0, second life, facebook, etc) and a certain number of them lives few months
- marketing depts are under pressure to apply the latest hype to show that they are cool and engaging with their customers
- consultants and agencies are sometimes supporting this quest for the holy grail
- but not all the brands are suitable to adopt these tools
marketers have to be honest enough to admit when a company can embrace web 2.0, etc and when this is not the case
Yeah, like everyone said!
Even if you truly listen and converse, I would watch the language and avoid trite expressions.