The Engagement Principles

Snickers candy bars headed for a nastly Snacklash? Possibly. In fact, the candy giant took sweetness and turned it kinda sour, and they do so like this:

• Snickers launches a new online effort based on the “Talk Some Snacklish” theme
• A Snickers bar spoof site appeared on the Internet (snckrz.com) that allowed visitors to place their own text into an online version of the Snickers Bar candy wrapper
• Apparently unamused, the manufacturers of Snickers (Mars) – the former Official Candy Bar of Engagement Principles – threatened to sue
• The “Snacklash” begins

The image of online disappointment: a shuttered snckrz.com

Sadly, we’ve gotta say that Engagement Principles fave candy bar Snickers missed a golden opportunity to engage with users around their ages-old (and yes, tasty) candy bar. It’s a good example of large companies trying engage on the Intertubes yet failing to recognize this one little truth:

The Creativity site suggested a “Snacklash” was headed Snicker’s way, and Mediabistro had this to say:

It’s the same old story – brand shirk the love of consumers in favor of control. Okay. Well, Snickers… if you wanted control, why not just co-opt Snckrz! and make it part of what Nick Parish from Creativity called the “pretty-but-obtuse” legitimate site?

A quick search of Twitter will turn up numerous tweets from people who loved Snckrz! Snickers better hope there isn’t some backlash in this decision to get the lawyers involved. Oh! I spoke too soon. Already, Twitters are having a reaction with responses like the image below or the newly created Snickers fail tag (#Snickersfail). Seriously. Snickers, I thought you were smarter than this?

After a couple decades working with corporate clients, I realize it’s hard to hand control over their hard-won brands to the Internet’s capricious masses. After all, nobody’s ever been pantsed by their boss in a crowded conference room for whipping the customer base back into line.

Still, Snickers should have recognized the downsides were minimal, yet the upside was fun – and yes, a handful more engaged buyers. No doubt Snckrz.com creators Poke media (a New York digital agency) are enjoying eating Snicker’s lunch, though the upper left-hand corner of their snckrz.com site includes a swipe that said “Terminated by these guys” and links to the Snickers site, a puzzling move which would drive traffic to the Snickers site – hardly punishment for the brand.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

snickers bar, snckrz.com, poke media, candy bar, spoof site, brand control, engagement

The Communities Dominate Brands blog has long been a favorite. As pioneers in the engagement marketing movement, they “get it” in a way that few others have – though their ideas weren’t always embraced.

That’s changing.

Alan Moore’s latest post chronicles the rising chorus of names who see the writing on the wall. Interruption’s not dead, but engagement is rising fast.

None other than Ogilvy (the agency) now thinks engagement is becoming an imperative instead of just another buzzword:

Ogilvy it seems have become Messianic to the SMLXL philosophy

To influence the engaged consumers of the digital democracy, push marketing needs to be replaced by engagement marketing

Said Patou Nuytemans – who I do know. So nice one Patou – thanks for spreading the word.

An aside I would like to make is that, the emphasis on pure digital
is a little cul-de-sac of straight line logic (Not Patou’s fault – I
can assure you) because we live not separate from offline and online -
we live in a world of blended reality.

That last paragraph is important. My career began just as typewriters were being replaced by computers, and my background remains heavily rooted in “traditional” B2B media (advertising, direct response).

Yet I’m still fully capable of ignoring existing media channels in favor of interactive digital media – an error in perspective shared by many of my marketing colleagues.

If Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen look to be reveling in the growing acceptance of engagement marketing as a viable partner to traditional marketing techniques, then they’re entitled.

From their blog:

All Companies must learn to move from interruption to
inviting participation. For all marketing initiatives, this no longer
means communicating by interruption, but by engagement

Is what was written in CDB, waaaaaaay back in 2005 and in fact it was something I spoke a great deal about in 2002.

What we got back from the media, clients, – well you name them, was
something along the lines of a nervous twitch or a blank stare – or
some clever dickie leaning over the table and telling me his compliment
was a “double-edged” sword because I was a pioneer and they tended to
get shot.

As Moore notes, he’s still alive and kicking.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Landing pages have long been the darling of the online world; they continue the dialog begun when a prospect clicked on an ad or link. Yet landing pages are rarely truly interactive — one of the cornerstones of true customer engagement.

It’s precisely the capacity for reader engagement that’s driving microsites to the forefront — and made them the darling of online marketers.

From a recent post on emarketer.com

If you build a microsite, they will come, they will engage and you can get the data to prove it.

That is the main finding of a newly released Keynote Competitive Research study conducted in October 2007. The company tracked reactions of consumers planning to buy an automobile within the next six months as they interacted with microsites for various car models, including the Toyota Yaris.

Keynote said the Yaris microsite demonstrated that "the more engaged people are with product and brand microsites, the more satisfied they will be and conversion rates will be higher than for people less engaged."

Engagement metrics remain hard to define, though most vendors seem to be cobbling together a mix of standards, including time on site, pages viewed, messages left, etc.

What’s fast becoming universal among brands is the desire for true engagement — and the recognition that quality content is the cornerstone of that engagement.

Microsites are often better suited to delivering engagement style content — and in engaging prospects in a conversation — hence the rapid growth.

User Driven vs Seller Driven

I’d suggest the success of microsites in a Web 2.0 world is largely a matter of user control; landing pages force a narrative on the reader, while microsites are user-driven, and can offer elements like two-way conversation, social networking features, etc.

In fact, the emarketing post cites a 2007 Marketing Sherpa survey on Viral Marketing Tactics that generated great results and — surprise — microsites came out on top (highest "Great" results with 37%; lowest "Dismal" results at 10%).

It’s a common journalistic tool to end a story with a compelling quote, and this is ours: Keynote Senior VP Don Aoki said

"With interactive advertising, the consumer must be presented compelling content to draw him or her into the interaction. The consumer must be engaged," he said.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Are marketers who fail at engagement marketing doing so because they’re unwilling to look through anything but “old-school” marketing eyes? Is the illusion of control holding back today’s marketer?

That’s the contention of Arthur Ceria in an interesting Chief Marketer piece:

Culture Clash: Building a Bridge Between Brand and Engagement Marketing

Deliver a Compelling Reason
What constitutes a compelling reason to participate in a brand’s marketing efforts? Getting consumers to engage is one of the places where old school marketing collides hard with the new reality. Old school believes marketing is all about the brand, so the brand must always be front and center. But any engagement campaign that’s centered only on discussing the brand will fail.

Likewise, any campaign that offers people a confined and controlled experience will fail. We have to run engagement-marketing ideas through our own BS filters. Is anyone really going to want this information, this offering, this activity? What’s in it for them?

Successful engagement marketing must provide something of real value—entertainment, education or an opportunity to connect with likeminded others. Effective engagement marketing is never myopically brand-centered. The most successful engagement campaigns happen when a company connects the lifestyles and/or values that define a brand with consumers.

My belief — that engagement marketers appeal to consumers via shared passions and values (the spaces around the brand instead of the brand or products themselves) — relies heavily on authenticity, a notion many marketers don’t embrace.

Still, you see it working beautifully in the strategies of a few companies I’ve outlined here (on the high-tech Nike+ running site and Pyramyd Air’s non-threatening content hodge-podge)

Ceria puts it nicely when he says:

Old school adherents want to control the conversation. But you can’t
have a conversation if one person sets the agenda and determines what
everyone else should say. Consumers are no longer willing to listen to
a brand that is talking at them. They want to participate in the
process. If brands don’t open the door to these conversations, people
will take their involvement and interest elsewhere. And there are plenty of other places for them to go.

Marketing has long focused on the little manipulations needed to “break through the clutter” or to trick someone into opening an envelope — often leaning on products and the customer service staff to create brand engagement.

Today, those same marketers are struggling to cede control to consumers — and this long after the consumers have already stormed the battlements and seized that control.

Stay engaging, Tom Chandler.

Deceptive marketing practices are on the rise, contends a Brandweek article which includes several quotes from yours truly. In an age of increasingly jaded customers, I said the practice harms all marketers — and that it runs counter to truly engaging with consumers:

"The public is exposed to so many messages that when a growing percentage of those messages turn out to be deceptive, the result is yet another upward ratchet in consumer cynicism," said Tom Chandler, a 20-year ad copywriter and consultant based in Mount Shasta, Calif., who operates ChandlerWrites.com. "That growing suspicion of marketers and brands has become so profound, some companies can’t even get customers to open envelopes containing real documents."

Engage, Don’t Deceive

One of the pillars of engagement marketing is authenticity; deception doesn’t create engagement (for long),

There’s also the larger question of brand value; I have to ask why anyone would risk their expensive, carefully cultivated brand with a cheap trick designed to get an envelope opened?

"What I don’t understand is why organizations allow deceptive practices to undermine their carefully [and expensively] cultivated brand images in the first place," said Chandler. "I recently received a series of envelopes from a large credit-card bank where I held an account. All shared the same alarmist stamp that "Important Information" about his account was enclosed. "Of course, it wasn’t important information," Chandler said. "It was a series of cross-selling pitches. After a month or two, I canceled my account."

While some marketers will always be tempted to cut ethical corners, it’s simply not possible (nor desirable) in the engagement marketing world.

Is there a silver lining in the rising tide of misleading (however slightly) marketing practices?

For engagement marketers, I believe there is. The more jaded and fearful consumers become, the more secure your engagement marketing bond.

You might believe engagement marketing is the province of big companies — those who can afford big-dollar social networks and viral videos produced by top-notch Hollywood talent.

Happily, nothing could be further from the truth.

Witness the industry dominance of Pyramyd Air — the retail leader in the airgun niche.

Airguns??

It’s not glamorous, but like any niche, as long as you’re in it, you might as well be in it to win.

Which is exactly what Pyramyd Air is doing.

Engaging With Customers – Affordably

I first found Pyramyd Air prior to teaching an online marketing class; they became a case study in the benefits of high-quality content marketing for my mostly small and medium-sized business owners.

Despite the fact I also trumpeted Nike’s glossy, high-tech running site, Pyramyd’s tactics became the focus of our discussions. Why?

Because Pyramyd is doing what almost any business can do.

For example, Pyramyd’s Web site is not exactly a thing of beauty, but they leverage engagement marketing techniques better than all but a handful of Fortune 1000 firms.

They engage customers with a wildly informative daily blog (written by industry expert Tom Gaylord), twice-a-month podcasts, numerous "how-to" and product review articles (in an editorial style) and even short video snippets.

Pyramyd’s site isn’t pretty, but to search engines and airgun junkies, it’s pure art.

The Blog Leads the Way

Tom Gaylord’s daily blog clearly taps into the passions of his airgun readers; most blog posts generate more than 100 comments, and the comment count on popular posts exceeds 300.

Those are startling numbers given the size of the airgun market (as a niche, it’s not exactly in the same league as celebrity gossip or technology).

The blog itself is conversational in tone, and though I don’t recommend this to my clients, it’s even hosted on a free Google Blogger account. (Really – don’t do this.)

Pyramyd offers a page of helpful articles and another filled with monthly podcasts.

Gaylord’s blog posts are crammed with information, and slaughter some of blogging’s sacred cows. They’re long (by blogging standards), and though he breaks up the text with frequent subheads, his subheads (and copy) lack hype or strong benefits.

It’s an excellent illustration of engagement writing; he’s not talking to an audience as much as sharing with them, and avoids withering his credibility with excessively amped copy. In fact, he recently wrote a blog entry largely condemning a new air pistol with: "As the Typhoon stands today, it has very little to recommend it."

His readers crave information and a demonstrated passion for the sport, and he provides both in spades.

In short, Pyramyd Air isn’t selling airguns or pellets; the product here is rampant, authentic passion for airgunning — which then translates directly into airgun and pellet sales.

Does it drive revenues? Consider this: despite taking over several nearby spaces, Pyramyd has outgrown its building and is moving to a newer, bigger building.

That, my readers, is a problem any business would embrace.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Are corporate “loyalty” programs really effective? A recent Direct magazine article suggests the answer is “sortof. And no.”

Does engagement marketing offer any hope?

Loyalty Marketing: Still Growing — But Growing Ineffective?

Designed to drive customer retention, loyalty programs offer a premium (frequent flyer points, rewards points, etc) to keep customers connected and “loyal.” Of course, incentive-based loyalty programs suffer an obvious flaw; your competitors can simply offer the same incentives, and you’re left trying to differentiate yourself.

The problem? Nobody’s truly connecting with anybody; most loyalty programs are little more than marketing payola — a kickback to customers for choosing one vendor over another. The result?

This From Richard Levey at Direct Magazine :

Americans now hold 1.3 billion loyalty program memberships, up from 973 million in 2000. And with 109.9 million households in the United States, that equates to around a dozen each.

So all is well in the loyalty arena, right?

Wrong. Regardless of how many they belong to, each household is active in fewer than five programs, according to a census by retention services firm Colloquy. And that marks a drop from 2000.

It appears the loyalty of “loyalty” programs is falling. So how do you maximize your loyalty program? How do you make it “sticky” — so customers keep coming back? And how do you bind a customer to the brand?

Give Them Rewards — AND Engaging Content

Engaging with customers via their values and passions creates a bond far stronger than 5,000 bonus miles, but combining the two strategies is the marketing equivalent of superglue.

The good news is that engaging with the participants in your loyalty program doesn’t involve digging them out of the general populace; they’ve already identified themselves.

How Do You Engage?

Engagement occurs primarily via two-way media channels, and anyone willing to make the sizable investment in a loyalty program should consider taking it one step farther.

Imagine an airline loyalty program might (blog, social network, etc) featuring the potential uses of loyalty points — and inviting members to share the “rewards” they enjoyed thanks to their points.

Populate it with engaging content, and suddenly, loyalty program members form a community (adding value to the loyalty program), sharing experiences. Did a loyalty member enjoy a vacation because they redeemed their points? Did another visit a long-unseen family member?

The beauty of social media is that your participants add their stories (and credibility) to your own, enhancing your brand and creating a bond that’s pure marketing superglue.

Technorati Tags: social networking, blog, blogging, loyalty program, loyalty marketing, rewards program

David Airey’s blog delves in the SONY Playstation 3 mess, and showcases a devastating anti-PS3 YouTube video that’s been viewed better than a half-million times.

This comes on the heels of the Sony Flog (a fake fan blog) that seriously pissed off readers (click to see the typical reaction from the gaming blogosphere).

Clearly, Sony’s practicing a little-known variation of Engagement Marketing: Anti-Engagement Marketing. More after the video:

Ouch. Or, Holy Crap.

It’s hard to quantify how devastating a fan-produced video like this can be, but add Sony’s moronic foray into flogging (a flog is a fake blog) and their subsequent (and high profile) outing, and they’re about to see just how bad it can get.

Engagement marketing is about connecting with the passions and values of your customers using interactive Web 2.0 tools.

What Sony discovered was that you better not abuse those tools (or release a product that actually inhibits social networking among your customers) or they’ll be used against you with great effect.

Technorati Tags: sony, ps3, flog, david Airey, web 2.0, engagement

Economists call them “switching costs” – the monetary, physical and convenience penalties that keep customers “loyal.”

For example, ordering a new computer is fairly easy. But transferring all your data, installing your software and getting it set up exactly the way you want is time consuming.

It’s a switching cost.

It used to be you were stuck with a single cell phone company if you wanted to keep your cell number.

That was a strong switching cost.

ChiefMarketer.com thinks the era of zero switching costs is here:

Zero switching costs, an economist’s ideal where consumers can buy products and services from multiple vendors without paying penalties for doing so, is increasingly becoming a reality. The Internet has given customers access not only to more information about products and services but also to tools to help them efficiently find, compare, and buy these products and services.

It takes a zero-switching-cost world to find out what your customers really think about you. Once exposed to this world, established companies quickly discover that their brands, distribution, and capital are inadequate to win — as has happened to Blockbuster in its battle against Netflix. Those 10 people may have waited behind me in line that time, but it’s safe to say that a number of them won’t be waiting in a Blockbuster again any time soon — if ever.

The point? A zero-switch customer isn’t bound by anything.

Low Loyalty.

Example: you might find a DVD player at an online store where you bought your last half-dozen home electronics, but the shipping cost could seem a little high.

A few clicks later, you’re at a competitor’s site discovering if you’re right or wrong.

In that environment, organizations increasingly saddle themselves with expensive methods of retaining customers – incentives like loyalty programs, purchase incentives, expensive guarantees, etc.

Yet all they’re truly doing is creating temporary loyalty (until a competitor one-ups them)

Enter Engagement.

Engaging customers (perhaps through shared values and passions) attaches a customer to a company instead of a product.

For example, If I’m one of the growing ranks of “green” consumers, I’m more likely to engage with a “green” company – and the highest marks will go to the one that proves its “greenness” through a two-way dialog.

You can advertise your greenness all you want – and it will have some effect – but it’s far more expensive (and far less reliable) than engagement marketing.

Engagement means you don’t force a perception on a customer as much as help them reach it themselves.

That’s longer-lasting loyalty than the temporary loyalty created by incentives and advertising campaigns.

In a world where consumers grow increasingly jaded by the barrage of messages meant to “grab attention” and differentiate similar products, the price of success via traditional “interrupt” marketing channels keeps rising.

Yet the costs of engagement keep falling.

In a zero-switch environment, engagement creates real loyalty, while interrupt channels create “temporary loyalty.”

Which returns the higher lifetime ROI?

Chief Marketer article source: Zero Switching Costs Are Here

Technorati Tags: engagement, chiefmarketer.com, loyalty

I posted below about the FTC’s reluctance to take any official regulatory stance on Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.

Interestingly, a few other sites covered the same story very differently. The Advertising Age story (my source) didn’t even mention the FTC Staff Opinion (pdf alert!), which suggests that those getting paid to offer recommendations must disclose that financial relationship.

No industry likes to be regulated, but this could help prevent the downward spiral in credibility that would to hamstring online marketing efforts (in much the same way even legitimate e-mail is questioned amidst a tidal wave of scam-mail).

Right now I’m on a deadline, but will visit this more later.

I don’t see a huge impact on Engagement Marketing, where “secret” relationships would tend to hurt rather than help the process along. More later! Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: ftc, wom, word of mouth marketing, marketing, advertising age