How much more participation can you handle?

Even more frightening, most of these pedantic brands don’t have a single microsite, they have dozens, one for every quarter, one for every brand extension, and one for every hot demographic. And then there’s a sad sack agency (or 3) that runs and “maintains” all of these sites, none of which they themselves actually enjoyed making or updating.

It’s an embarrassment of riches, really.

Just ever so slightly off topic. Couldn’t help thinking about another example where bread and advertising came together with interesting results. It’s from a PBS documentary “The Persuaders” narrated, of all things, by Douglas Rushkoff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBsRFq_I0c

It is a rather good example of how engaged people can get around some pretty basic things. (not much)

Of course the simple problem is brands expecting people to participate with THEM around THEIR products or whatever.
Proper ‘engagement’ happens where brands participate with people around the peoples interests. Simple really, but most don’t get it.

To be contrarian for a moment: As a brand manager I don’t expect (or need) people to interact/engage with EVERY two-bit brand, just MY two-bit brand. Why Old Spice and not my brand? Why Lurpak and not my brand?

I think every/any brand, regardless of how common the product or service, has an opportunity. But as Bud points out, there has to be some love underlying the effort. Whether it’s internal or managed by an agency (or a combination) there has to be real passion.

Your mostly right, I think. Yes, way to many brands do dumb, copy-cat things that most people do not have time to bother with. Participation is the flavor of today.

However, the potential is the small group that do make time. For most brands the 80-20 rule applies; most sales come from 20% of buyers. These dumb-ass participatory experiences enable brands to uncover who their 20% are. If you really, really, really care enough about a cereal to customize it, chances are you buy it a lot, or could be persuaded to buy it more. Once your in the system a good social CRM strategy should keep you in the brands clutches.

So yes, nil points to lame creative and poor execution, but if the program is part of a cohesive effort to truly get close to the small niche that truly matter, then it might be ok.

I’ve got to quickly pull you up on the soap comment. Randomly I was reading an old Edward Bernays book over the weekend and he talked about a series of sculpture competitions some soap company did way back when – people had to submit scuptures they’d made with the soap bar and supposedly millions of people participated – and this was in the 20s!

http://www.prmuseum.com/bernays/bernays_1923.html

Turns out kids loved to create the sculptures and galleries and museums loved it because it got kids interested in sculpture and professional sculptors got involved to help promote their art. All from a crappy bar of soap.

I’m not so sure it matters what the product is – no-one really gave a shit about Old Spice – they just did it well. Kingsmill? No-one really gives a shit either, it’s just that they didn’t come up with anything engaging.

I think Eaon’s right – engage people around stuff they’re interested in and people will be interested.

What Eaon said.

I’d add though that I think more brands get this than we give them credit for, the problem is all these marketers work for companies not making genuinely interesting stuff, but still have sales targets to reach.

In the battle between art and commerce, I think we rail far too much against the crap work (of which their is loads) because we’re all hoping for art, while the clients, at the end of the day, just hope the sales targets are reached.

Perhaps its too cynical, but I don’t hope for art, and instead am just pleasantly surprised when it happens. The rest of the time, there’s plenty of stuff out there that has nothing to do with brands that is created to engage me; that’s where I go looking for it.

@davidgillespie Hi. I think I rail mostly against the waste, and I don’t really hope for art as much as substance.

Some brands may simply be unable to provide that at scale. Nothing wrong with it. They should just do something else.

@Rick_Now Hi Rick, you make a good point. But I don’t believe that every brand or product has the same sort of horizon of possibilities. I think that you can create ‘an engagement experience’ around a brand/product, but for that experience to be really engaging the brand must have real substance. Passion brands have this and other brands don’t. It can’t just be about the brilliant animation or photography.

@JoshuaSpanier I love the idea that it’s like flushing out the heavy-lifters, like beating pheasants towards the Social CRM shotguns. Lovely.

I overheard someone recently say that “advertising only exists these days to drive people into our CRM systems”, which made me laugh.

I guess all I was trying to say is that ‘participation’ isn’t appropriate for all brands. You need to earn participation, you can’t just buy some, not really. Billions of brands are now competing for our participation, not buying our eyeballs – but there’s only 24 hours in the day and we need to spend at least some of that time sleeping…

As a planner on a “low-engagement brand,” I hear the “me too!” argument louder than most. Still, it is unfair to make the jump from websites to facebook interaction without at least considering the strategies and sales numbers behind fairly successful ventures. Working on a brand with a modest 300k facebook likes, I can assure you that the overall state of the world is in no way changing; still, our consumers are buying more than they used to which must mean something.

Brands will probably never be that exciting forever; we’ve all heard Eric Ryan and Gareth and everyone else say that we need to make things not ads but isn’t the “thing” just the next facebook game by this logic? As opposed to websites, facebook offers interaction which is something that humans crave by nature. That strategic thinking is what leads them to say make things not ads. That strategic thinking shows that though even though the boring brands are shouting me too, at least some of them are thinking strategically about it and doing things that engage their consumers, even if only once. Because in a world of Porsche vs Crest, one requires a lot less thinking- which means less interaction by nature.

You’re right, its overkill, sure. But some of it is smart.

It must be tough managing a brand that’s uncool or unloved, watching the ‘digital revolution’ leave you behind. So in some way I can understand the gold rush. But I don’t understand it enough to condone it…

For brand managers of bread and hygiene products and, er I don’t know, steel rods, I’d advise resisting going from 0-100mph when no one’s listening and even fewer care. Instead, how about some small smarter steps:

1. Find what you’re good at, the thing that hopefully makes you somewhat unique. Really think about this before heading to point 2. Really.
2. Find ways to make that uniqueness relevant through whatever channels or places feel most appropriate. Humankind is delightfully eclectic enough that if you look hard you’ll eventually find someone willing to pay even the slightest attention with the right approach if it’s relevant to their niche existence.
3. Grow from there. Try lots of small things, watch what works, and don’t be frightened of what doesn’t. Move on when you fail (not many people are watching yet anyway, remember)
4. Remain humble and unassuming till you genuinely get some traction.
5. Build on wherever you find success.
6. Most importantly, if you failed at point 1, what are you doing at point 6 already? POUR THE UNDENIABLE EFFORTS THUS FAR INTO CHANGING YOUR PRODUCT TO BUILD IN THAT UNIQUENESS.
7. Repeat from top.

Or not. Hey, user-generated bluetooth flashmobs are bound to work eventually if you believe the monkeys-on-typewriters principle…

My favourite was the whole page displaying the ingredients of the product. That was U-S-E-F-U-L, not.

well, hmm. I’m coeliac. Ingredients pages are super useful for people with health issues, vegetarians, vegans, people concerned about Halal and Kosher issues.

@8FILTERS Thanks for your comments, although I wonder if you are justifying the billions of wasted dollars poured into these ‘engagement simulators’ that no-one likes or visits?

Aren’t ingredients are printed on the product packaging as well?

@PAULEJGRAHAM Hey Paul – thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. However, I just can’t help thinking that after 60 years of mass-marketing and industrialised product design, many brands/products are left with virtually no uniqueness unique. We all know this is true as we look at the junk clogging the supermarket shopping aisles. You could just get rid of maybe 70% and noone would really notice. There are 20 types of yoghurt. 15 types of cat food. 20 types of bog roll. Each will be trying to engage in a unique way but it’s all artificial. Unless there’s some substance all you’re doing is making engaging advertising and marketing – not genuinely engaging products. This comes from the sick idea that what really matters in business is how you sell something, and not its inherent value. That worked for a large part of the previous century but its rapidly unravelling now that we can compare notes and talk back and stuff.

So, I agree with your point 6 – and in fact I’d go straight there. Unless your product is actually remarkable, unless your claims actually have real substance – and unless people really want to pull your brand into their lives – you don’t have a sustainable business any more. You can use clever advertising to fake it and cover this fact up, but eventually it’s gonna get you.

Hey Paul – have you read John Winsor’s book ‘Baked In’? http://www.bakedin.com/

Regarding Ingredients, you’d be surprised how often they aren’t on packaging. I worked on a convenient store food product and beyond the useless sweepstakes, ingredients were a big draw on the website and a common question. In a sense that validates your argument, no one really wanted to participate despite the bells and whistles. However, the ingredients are arguably the only relevant piece of information on the site and probably should stay.

The rest of the post seems cogent if perhaps a touch too absolute, as implied in some of the responses.

Good post Tim, I totally agree. I wrote a spoof letter from a bloke called Brian to all ad agencies and marketers, calling this out, and was amazed by the response it got across the interwebs. It’s like everyone knows this is true, but nobody bothered saying it.

In response to Rick_Now I’d say the problem is that most brand mangers or marketing directors haven’t worked out what would possibly interest somebody enough to participate in something to do with their brand. First and foremost people want the product to do what it is meant to do, they use it on a very basic level, and have no interest in taking that relationship any further. It’s up to you to give them some bloody good reasons to do so. The reason Old Spice blew up is because they created some fantastic content – put simply – great advertising. That generated the interest. Half-witted ideas with a bolt-on ‘interactive bit’ are never going to cut it.

Here’s a link to that ‘Brian letter’, if you’re interested: http://sellsellblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/open-letter-to-all-of-advertising-and.html

Thanks for saying what I feel as a consumer, but don’t always say as a consultant. I barely have time in my world to connect with my family and friends and my life…to then connect with all the brands that are in my life makes me exhausted just thinking about.
Good comments above – I agree that often brands want the interaction to be about some new feature or wrinkle they’ve created to boost sales, rather than something the user might actually think is interesting and pertinent in their life at this moment.
Another challenge comes from the marketing folks often being disconnected from the rest of the organization. At its heart, we all know it’s easy to create a differentiated brand when we started with a differentiated product. As you point out, that’s almost impossible these days with too many products and easily replicable features. But even if marketing has insights into what would make the product different for consumers, many times R&D or Operations or whathaveyou aren’t interested in the input. “Just go and create an engagement program – that’s YOUR job.”
I also think this highlights the fact that the era of the “mass brand” is coming to an end. As pointed out, most sales come from 20% of the customers. But we’re loath to only focus on that 20% cuz we need growth, growth, growth. And we think growth is easier from marketing to the other 80% (who probably really don’t care about our brand, but just need a breakfast cereal or whatever) than really connecting with the 20% that do care. Changing that mindset is happening slowly, but with much resistance among many ‘typical’ marketers and brands.
Good discussion .

I might be going to far and opening up a whole other box of cereal, but wouldn’t part of this participation saturation problem be where a brand encourages and attempts to drum up some participation at one point in their campaign, and it is indeed just that – part of a campaign. You manage to get the attention of customers and they participate, the execution is perfect – but then what happens? They become part of a database you sell too? You make it on to their Facebook feed and try to spark up conversation which is never going to match that of how you originally engaged with them. It’s all a little artificial, but hey, I guess if you hit the numbers and get enough ‘likes’ then the bosses are happy right? We have seen some amazing and a lot of bad participation but what has the quality of the follow up been?

Cereal is a good example on this because it’s a bit like the free toys you used to get as a kid, all that really mattered was which one had the best toy in it (as long as it was a sugar based/covered wheat/oats breakfast). Once you had finished that one and another brand put something more exciting on the box – you soon followed (asked mum/dad). Much like this example – it’s hard enough to get participation right so how difficult will it be for brands to create a hit, draw in the masses and then get those customers to keep coming back for more because there will be something new popping up.UNLESS the product is truly up to scratch and delivers something special for the customer they can move on to something else and remain in your data base of numbers far to easily.

When I think back there were actually cereals I particularly enjoyed so once the toys became irrelevant they remained victorious and I may even still rather enjoy a bowl today – that’s the product and not the gimmick.

I’d like to see what happens to the Old Spice audience and how/if they manage to maintain the massive new amount of customers/prospects they acquired with their ‘free toy’ over the next year or so.

I agree that marketing tactics like creating web sites with story arcs following fictional families as they “live with” the latest mini van is a gimmick that really is a waste of time. However, some brands do indeed offer meaningful consumer engagement and experience that both rewards the participants and improves the brand. Two examples:

1) Apple
When Apple initially prohibited third-party programs from running on the iPhone, hackers refused to be hamstrung. Rather than fight a losing battle the company opted to offer user-created applications for free and for purchase through their innovative App Store. Forced acquiescence revolutionized the brand experience. Suddenly, consumers were no longer simply consuming, they were actively participating in the brand, and not merely with the brand. They now had a deeply emotional stake in actively designing the experience – and not just for themselves, but for others as well. Apple’s products are a portal to a user experience, and allowing third party apps via the App Store made the portal a lot wider for everyone. The brand benefited, developers benefited, and consumers benefited.

2) Harley Davidson
In the mid 1980s the company was suffering from the lowest product quality rating in the industry, corporate disarray and an outlaw biker stigma that didn’t appeal to mainstream consumers. That’s when a group of marketing-savvy investors came on board and revitalizes the brand by directly engaging their consumers.

The Harley team understood that just as when engineering a motorcycle you must consider the rider, when designing a brand you must consider the consumer. So, they immersed themselves in their own brand experience. They attended rallies, engaged their customers, listened to stories, took photos and began to develop a full-dimensional picture of the brand heritage as articulated directly by the consumers. Basically, the started with the consumer experience and re-designed outward.

It paid off, and consumers continue to play an important part in shaping the Harley reality and evolving the brand by perpetuating and redefining the experience.

The best brands have always been social. Engaging consumers might be easier for Apple or Harley Davidson than it is for a brand of laundry detergent, but you can still do it with the detergent. But, pointless participatory online gimmicks aren’t the way.

Cheers.

Great post.

The only question I have regards your point that Old Spice represents an exception – a boring brand in a boring category that somehow managed to stimulate participation.

‘The man your man could smell like’ started life as an advertising idea (debuted during the Superbowl). Had there not been time for the character to grow and gather momentum with broadcast media support, people would have been far less compelled to get involved in the ensuing twitter / YouTube bun fight. Ask yourself; if a past-it brand from a boring category had offered consumers the opportunity for a character they had ever heard of to record them a personalized video in return for their tweets, would you participate?

Thinking about brands that ask for completely unrealistic levels of participation of consumers, the worst example I’ve ever come across is Pop Tarts whose ‘Pop it Forward’ campaign (asking people what they would do with 1,000,000 “toaster pastries” other than get very fat) was genuinely cringeworthy. A brand so in thrall of consumer participation that it forgot to give them any reason to do so. My ranting blog post here http://ideamagpie.tumblr.com/post/1189488450/when-participation-goes-bad Anyone come across anything worse?

@SELL! SELL! OMG thanks for that. I laughed so loudly and madly on a crowded Pendelino train between Manchester and London that the people around were very freaked out.

Your letter is brilliant and gets straight to the heart of the problem: making engaging advertising and brands is not what people want. They want engaging products.

I had to copy this bit so that others could share the joy you bring to this debate – which I think is about honesty and goes right to the core of what marketing is for:

“Now I don’t know about you, but pretty much all I’m looking for from the makers of sausages is some really tasty sausages… I don’t know if there’s been some terrible misunderstanding, where you got the idea that I’d really like the prospect of coming home from work and spending my valuable free time taking part in your stupid idea about sausages… but here’s the thing, I don’t. I don’t want to make a film, or draw a picture, or nominate a friend. Or compose a soundtrack, or re-edit your advert. Really, I don’t”

Brilliant. And yes, there appears to have been some terrible misunderstanding.

Awesomez!

@JEFFERSONHOWELL – Thanks for your comment. You appear to be saying that the ingredients pages are actually really valuable and should stay – and may, for many products/brands, be the most engaging content available and the only content worth publishing online.

That’s a brave and frightening new vision for the Web, but maybe you’re on to something. Perhaps the future product microsite for low interest, no passion, utilitarian products should just be a single page with a fixed format displaying just the basic information. Almost like a database of products.

@RUSSHMEYER Love the idea that “the era of the “mass brand” is coming to an end”. Perhaps the legacy of 60+ years of industrial brand production is a burdensome super-glut of meaningless undifferentiated brands: a brand mountain like the wine lakes and butter mountains of EU over-production.

Maybe you can get away with that in a marketplace where there is a scarcity of media and physical shelf-space, resulting in the ability of advertisers to sort of ‘buy’ differentiation even where none exists. In a world of abundant, infinite media, uncontrolled p2p feedback loops and infinite shelves it just doesn’t work any more? Or something… :)

@STYLES17 Yes, the sweet spot was a sugar-coated cereal you liked with a f***-off brilliant toy to collect (as a series).

The TV advertising for that cereal, featuring the toy, was a crucial part of the mix.

And yes, I still buy some of the cereals that contained the best toys. (Some people even still collect the toys, but that’s another story – see http://www.tonystrading.co.uk/galleries/cerealtoys/snapcrackleandpopsuperheroes.htm)

I totally agree about Old Spice. Even as I loved the campaign, I do think that it was an old media campaign run on the Internet and I wonder how useful the engagement will prove to be over time. They must be wondering too – and it is good to see that the Twitter account with its 120k followers is now active again after a long period of inactivity. It looked like they didn’t know what to do with the fan community they’d engaged… I look forward to the next chapter of that.

@THINKBIG_BLOG Thanks for your comment.

I totally agree with you. I want to be very clear: I am not saying that I am against ALL participation. I love participation – it’s one of the reasons I co-founded a company called Made by Many. It’s what we do. Participation = good. Both the examples you provide are spot-on. They are genuine communities, providing a real value-exchange for both the sponsoring brand and all the members/stakeholders. Indeed, the deeply engaged users are providing value to each other which is like the holy grail of participatory media.

My frustration, which precipitated this rant, is with the advertisers and marketing agencies trying to make everything participatory. It’s a senseless and lazy way to do things, and it doesn’t work. As active, networked consumers we can now call time on the crappy stuff. It only worked when you could simulate success by buying media to support these initiatives. That’s not sustainable in the long run. Hurrah!

Read SELL‘s brilliant letter if you haven’t already. It’s very funny:

http://ideamagpie.tumblr.com/post/1189488450/when-participation-goes-bad

McCain have clearly been been inspired by Kingsmill Confessions with their new campaign asking us to participate with their Rustic Chips: http://j.mp/ibR5d0

I think this extends past experiential/ engagement tactics. Consider all those brands that feel compelled to ask questions, start discussions, and try to publicly respond as customer service representatives. It’s already hard enough to sift through well-thought-through content & content posted by actual friends. Why should I tell a representative from AXE what my new years resolutions are on Facebook? What do they plan on doing with that information?

You might be interested in a piece I wrote on this subject a few weeks ago “Why PR is Ruining Social Media” – http://thejordanrules.posterous.com/why-pr-is-ruining-social-media

regarding the ingredients on cereal boxes – often, they’re not listed. Also, many products update their coeliac-friendly listing on the site rather than the product packaging – it’s a lot faster than changing product package design. It’s more convenient for me to be able to check something online before asking my friend to pick up some cereal at the shop and check the box for me. If a friend calls me to check if I can eat whatever they’re cooking for dinner, i can check out the products on the website and tell them whether I can eat it without having to hold the box. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked up ingredients lists for soy milk brands while waiting to buy a coffee.

I currently do UX for an agency that handles a cereal client, and the things that come out of the work:

- recipes are hugely popular.
- ingredients listings are quite popular.
- promotions for kids are quite popular. Collect the tokens for a free cap, that kind of thing.
- health calculators are surprisingly popular.
- company information, particularly if packaged in a school assignment type format, still gets a respectable amount of traffic.

Other than that, I try to avoid suggesting gimmicky flash games and garbage.

(apologies, 8filters is me too, was logged in to the wrong account)

This is the best post I’ve read this year. It’s all so true.

The number of meetings I’ve sat in where brands scratch around for any old content they can get their hands on is embarrassing. We must have a content calender! We must fill it with anything we can find, the purpose doesn’t matter, the fact no one reads it is irrelevant lets just get some content and hope that people come and consume it.

Even more worrying is the way ‘content’ has become an answer to business problem, whatever your problem ‘content’ is your answer, its got to the point where people don’t even say what the content is, there is no idea, the answer is simply “we need to create some content”. Wtf? Its as useful as being asked to help with a crossword puzzle, being given the clue and replying its definitely a word, I’m just not sure which one, but I know its a word. Saying the answer is content isn’t an answer at all.

Ok so if its not content it must be something actively engaging that people can participate in? We all know that people want to participate with brands. No they don’t. They don’t really care. They’re too busy thinking about things that matter like that gypsy programme on TV. That’s the truth. I’m glad someone has said it.

@TIM MALBON hey Tim, you’re right – my comment was basically an arch way of suggesting that Point 1 and 6 were the only options for most “me-too” brands. They should give up and go home if they don’t concentrate on those – neither social media, nor web participation, nor the NextBigThing™ won’t solve their lack of innovation…

So what you are basically saying is “in the mid 90’s most marketing was crap and didn’t work, back then it was because websites had nothing to say – but now it is 2011 and most marketing is crap and doesn’t work, because brands try to get us to say too much”. you have a good point in some respects but in recent years it has always been the case that very little got cut through (people have always had strong bullshit filters and shortish attention spans), it is just now the way we measure that failure is different.

Good point well made. If you’re in a space where people choose what they do or don’t spend time with, then you’d better be sufficiently interesting or useful. Random customisation or upload your own version options fail that test. @pauljegraham is right that brands need to take a frank look at themselves before asking people to play with them. Humility goes a long way.
I don’t know if the ‘participation is the new CRM’ argument is entirely valid. In How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp, the evidence is that the top 20% of consumers only account for about half of a brand’s sales, and many of them will be consuming all they can. So your loyalists are loyal anyway, and your growth is more likely to come from penetration amongst occasional consumers. Old Spice didn’t benefit from a rush of commitment from the lady scented bodywash superuser community, it did something entertaining that lots of people could access and enjoy without too much effort.

Wish I has time to read your whole post but the headline really says it all.