Marketing in the Participation Age E-Book

Daina Middleton

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Turn intrinsic human desires into your most powerful marketing tool. Marketing in the Participation Age shows you how to rethink marketing. Transform consumers into active participants for your brand by capturing their interest, empowering them to contribute, and developing meaningful relationships that keep them involved. Learn how to create a marketing environment that fulfills your customers' desire to seek challenges and discover new things--and watch their participation yield greater revenues for your business. "Marketing is constantly evolving. Companies can't compete by using the same old, tired tools. This book provides fresh inspiration, with a new framework for doing things differently." --Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate; inductee into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame "Participant marketing transformed the way we did business in the marketplace as an agency and provided a framework for doing business with clients that added unique value to their marketing efforts." --Kris Pinto, founder of Moxie Interactive

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Participation Age

Chapter 1: Marketing in the Age of Participation

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 2: The Catalyst

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 3: Tools for the Past 60 Years

Share of Voice and Purchase Funnel

Above the Line

Participant Marketing Summary

Original Marketing Definitions

Participant Marketing Questions

Chapter 4: Time for a Participation Revolution

Achieving a Goal with Competence: In the Palm of Every Hand

Autonomy and the Pyramids

Relatedness: The Social Network Explosion Connects People

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 5: Participation Way for the Participation Age

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 6: D + E + C = P2

1. Discover “Findability”

2. Discover Relevant Content

3. Discover Recognition

Participant Marketing Summary: Activating the Discover Principle

Chapter 7: D + E + C = P2

1. Begin with an Active Understanding of the Participants

2. Decide on the Desired Participant Action

3. Recognize the Importance of Measurement and ROI

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 8: D + E + C = P2

1. A Brand Is a Participant

2. Participant-to-Participant Connections Are Equally Important

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 9: D + E + C = P2

Performance Marketing Summary

Chapter 10: D + E + C = P2

Performance Marketing Summary

Chapter 11: Planning

Insight

Activate

Elevate

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 12: Measuring Participation Performance

The Evolution of the Marketing Revolutionist

Participant Marketing Summary

Chapter 13: The Future Marketer

Participant Marketing Summary

References

Index

Cover image: © Aydin Buyuktas/Alamy

Cover design: Wendy Mount

Copyright © 2013 by Daina Middleton. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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FOREWORD

Today’s marketers face being overwhelmed with the challenge of how to understand and use the new and dynamic methods and channels of engagement with consumers. With her unique experience and insight, Daina Middleton develops an approach that demonstrates how to connect with individuals and groups through participation. Daina’s passion for participant marketing was developed through her leadership roles at some of the world’s most respected marketing organizations. The theory and practicality is developed into a robust and highly applicable participation framework.

Marketing in the Participation Age provides an approach for motivating consumers to connect, engage, and socialize, which ultimately results in improved return on investment from marketing investments.

This book is both provocative and informative. It is vital reading for anyone setting out to navigate marketing in a digital age.

—Steve King

Global CEO

Zenith Optimedia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My very first recollection of wanting to write a book came when I was just eight years old. At the time, I imagined it would be a historical fiction novel that involved a girl and at least one horse. I still keep a number of stories I began back then in the hopes that I might someday complete them. I never thought I would write a book about marketing until 2007, when I became passionate about discovering new methods for a new age and began using the phrase participant marketing to describe a new approach. I first acquired the “participant marketing” URL in 2007, and I am a bit self-conscious to admit that it has taken me five years to complete this project. Beyond the research required to discover the science behind motivating participation, and the historian exercise of learning about our industry, the process was largely transforming conversations from Power Point documents into the written word. Then, there was the journey of reacquainting myself with the writer in me, who is never satisfied with the end product of a subject in which the world is continually changing beneath our feet. I finally became comfortable with the fact that books are thought starters, more than perfect masterpieces, and getting the idea out there is more important than perfectly completing the idea. In the Age of Participation, the idea will continue on not just with my own evolution of the idea, but also with yours, as we all contribute to evolve the idea.

Many people contributed to this original version. This book would not have been possible without a phenomenal group of individuals who provided trust, support, encouragement, faith, and patience along the way. I would like to thank my husband, Rob, for his loving support, encouragement, and patience throughout this project and my children, Mesa, Kenyon, and Brett, for insisting that I could complete the project.

I am forever grateful to Kris Pinto and Joel Lunenfeld for allowing me to experiment with the participant marketing philosophy and methods at Moxie Interactive and to Jon Wegman for brainstorming early ideas and methodologies with me and helping bring them to life.

A huge thanks to the brilliant author, super star speaker, and friend Sally Hogshead, who convinced me that I, too, could write a book and for connecting me to a number of individuals who helped to catapult me on the journey to bringing Marketing in the Participation Age to life.

I would like to thank the executive leadership team within ZenithOptimedia, specifically Tim Jones and Steve King, who are not afraid to embrace new ideas and are constantly reinventing to prepare for the future. Thanks also go to the amazing team at Performics who supported the idea, adopted the language, helped me get the project out the door, and continue to challenge my thinking every day. There is not a better performance marketing team in the world, and I am proud to work with you.

Finally, I would like to thank my mom for helping me hone my talent for expressing myself in writing, beginning at a very early age. I still believe I can do anything I set my mind to, and mostly that’s because you told me from the beginning that I could.

INTRODUCTION

The Participation Age

The living room is quiet on Sunday morning, occupied only by a 17-year-old sitting in a gaming chair in front of the couch. He wears headphones to ensure he doesn’t wake the rest of the family at such an early hour, and he is intently engrossed in game he is playing. Even though he is the only person sitting in the living room, he is not the sole participant engaged in this activity. Six thousand players from around the world are logged on this Sunday, even though it has, amazingly, been released for only a week. The game is Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. This participant happens to live in rural Idaho and doesn’t know any of the other participants currently online. In fact, most of these participants have never met one another in person. But despite this fact, each has similar motivations for participating in Call of Duty: Black Ops. These reasons are not dissimilar from why individuals choose to take part in any activity—online or in the real world—such as a game, a physical sport, or even a political movement.

According to a report from research and education firm L2 Think Tank, more than 81 percent of upscale Gen Yers use the social media site Facebook every day. That’s nearly twice the number of people who watch television or read newspaper content. Gen Yers are commonly defined as the technology-savvy generation, but what’s more important and less commonly observed is the fact that Gen Yers were born participants. They have specific expectations about their relationships with peers, supervisors, and the companies whose products they use. They are masters at using the participation engine—or the Internet—via a number of devices. As Publicis Groupe, the third largest global communications company, chief strategy and innovation officer of VivaKi, Rishad Tobaccowala, explains, “The Internet was really the first addictive media following TV, and once someone experiences the Internet, their expectations change . . . dramatically.” Reality has been altered in large part because of the connected devices we use to interact with the world. And it is now crucial that companies that operate in this new age understand the science behind participation and action.

Fortunately, the secret to unlocking participation is amazingly simple, because it’s based on basic human needs and desires. Yes, the world is increasingly becoming digital, and the barrier between the real and the virtual world is becoming increasingly blurry. But deep down, and regardless of how much exposure we have to digital technology, people are still analog and very much human. The new participants are people who expect to work and live in environments that facilitate relationships and participation. People decide which products and services to purchase based on the enjoyment these bring to them, meaning they choose with their hearts, even though they may use technology to do the research and communicate and may use numbers to justify their choices.

The Participation Age is more fragmented, personal, and connected than we could ever have imagined—and it’s always on and happening in real time. The Participation Age is about people who actively manage life by using the many technology tools available at their fingertips. Some research firms refer to this new era as the Customer Age, claiming that successful marketers in this new age will not simply focus on customers but be customer obsessed; others prefer to call them users, implying interaction is key. In either case, understanding customers in the form of simple demographics is no longer enough in a world where it’s also no longer enough to simply broadcast a message and hope that people will receive it. Competitive companies understand that they must motivate customers to act on their behalf to be successful in the Participation Age.

Many organizations understand the importance of inspiring people to participate and of keeping them coming back. Gaming companies, for instance, have appreciated the value of participation for some time, for obvious reasons. Game development that is carefully paired with accompanying marketing techniques inspires participation that results in astoundingly repeatable bottom line results. Aforementioned gaming company Activision has been galvanizing participation for years—and enjoying phenomenal results for both player participation and financial rewards. In just 45 days following the November 9, 2010, release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, players logged more than 600 million hours of game participation. The total number of hours played is equivalent to more than 68,000 years, an average of 87 minutes per day per player. At the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launch in November 2011, Activision shipped an astonishing 6.5 million copies in just 24 hours, officially making it the largest entertainment launch in history. The $400 million in just one day of sales outpaced any box office gross, CD or book sales, or video game title in history. And these impressive numbers did not even include sales outside of the United States.

Participation has been integral to the video gaming industry’s success, for obvious reasons. Without participants, there would be no Activision. Because it must, Activision actively acknowledges the value participants contribute to its brand. The company understands that harnessing participation will help it to edge out its competitors. As such, Activision’s ingrained philosophy to succeed involves conscientiously planning every program—including marketing—to activate a set of interdependent motivational elements that work together to inspire someone to join, share, take part, play a role, connect, and engage. But in the Participation Age, motivating people to engage is critical to every brand, gaming company or not.

Determining what motivates people to engage is not a new area of study. Scholars, sociologists, and scientists across the ages—great minds like Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, Geoffrey Nunberg, and Abraham Maslow—have studied why people are intrinsically motivated. More recently, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester developed the self-determination theory in an effort to explain why humans are motivated to become involved in activities in a manner that results in enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity. The idea behind this theory is that individuals are intrinsically motivated to seek challenges and discover new perspectives—and in doing so, the activity itself stimulates their desire to actualize their individual human potential. If someone is intrinsically motivated, he or she will choose to actively engage and participate, and the experience will feel rewarding to that individual. These studies have prompted the definition of specific attributes that can be used to develop conditions for social environments that, when employed, facilitate and enable participation.

Self-determination theory has been applied to and is commonly used in fields ranging from psychology to education to health care to sports and exercise. It’s also been used in the workplace as an employee retention and satisfaction tool. It has not been applied to marketing because it has not really been relevant to do so, since marketing as a discipline has traditionally been considered a passive activity. Until recently, it has consisted of a one-way persuasive message, broadcasted to an audience with the intent of changing perception and ultimately causing a behavior change that results in product demand. But over the past 10 years, every part of the product decision-making process began to involve individuals taking some form of action—and the behavior changes associated with this has only increased with mobile phone adoption. If someone wants to find out more information about a product or service, he or she can simply turn to the browser on his or her laptop, tablet, or phone or crowdsource an opinion from any social network. Technology has enabled participation in ways Aristotle never imagined.

According to the 2011 InSites Consulting Social Media Around the World Study, there are 7 billion people in the world, 2 billion Internet users, and 1 billion social network users. Of these, 600 million use their social networks at least daily, and 36 percent post company- or brand-related information. Besides the obvious desire to connect with others, getting information about new products and brands has increased social network membership, which only further illustrates that participants expect to have a relationship with the brands they use.

Never has there been a time more relevant for marketers to understand how to harness participation. Companies that focus on motivating individuals to participate with their brands will communicate more fluidly with customers and employees, add more value, and compete more effectively in today’s connected world.

However, marketers are struggling to operate in the Participation Age because they are still using traditional marketing tools and philosophies developed originally for the broadcast mediums of radio and television. Perhaps even more fundamental is the fact that marketing in the Participation Age requires that marketers adopt a new philosophy and a new way of marketing altogether. This new philosophy begins with rethinking marketing basics. It’s a mind-set shift in how companies and marketers view consumers and potential customers. Historically, marketing has been about informing an uninformed consumer—which is a rare thing in today’s connected world. A more apt description of today’s consumers would be sophisticated and informed participants who likely are more knowledgeable than the average retail salesperson and who have high expectations about their relationships with the brands they choose.

The transformation is fundamental, and because the behavior change requires that brands and marketing professionals conscientiously embrace a new mind-set and actions, I advocate starting with a language change. Words are an important first step in changing behavior. In this case, renaming consumers participants sparks a consciousness in marketers’ minds that is instrumental in the new landscape—and it helps pave the way toward changing the processes and tools we use every day.

It is challenging to navigate the complex media environment and market to technology-savvy participants who expect a real-time relationship 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It no longer works to apply the old “send out a message and hope for the best” formula. And although most companies love the concept of embracing the notion of participation, the idea terrifies them somewhat, because there is no blueprint for marketing in the Participation Age.

The premise behind the Participation Way was to create a framework that is more than just another marketing tactic, big idea, viral program, or social media platform. In absence of a new approach—and in an effort to survive in today’s complicated, fragmented, and dynamic media environment—many marketers are resorting to a defensive marketing approach. In essence, they’re just continuing to react. Even though they are operating in a new environment, they still use the old linear marketing tools, formulas, and philosophies designed to persuade consumer opinions rather than invite them to participate in a relationship. These tools are perceived as good because they are thought to be controlled by the marketer, and they feel safe to many in a time when we worry that our choices might not be sound. And they were not designed to create and sustain reciprocal customer relationships in a marketplace driven by the participant where networks and relationships matter more than the message. Marketers are masters at persuasive message development, not at activating participation or engagement.

For the past five years, I have been working with clients struggling to work in the “flavor of the month” media environment: search, social, mobile, viral, and so on. In this complicated world, stressed marketing managers are doing what they have always done because it’s familiar and perceived as tried and true, even though it no longer works. Yet there is a framework that brands can use to motivate participation. It’s a formula I was seeking as a marketer working at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and it is a framework that my company currently uses to work with leading global brands that are striving to become revolutionists in the new marketing world. The Participation Way allows marketers to focus on a simple, new approach designed for motivating people to take action. It has been translated for marketing and provides a new language for the organization that can be used as the basis for training, planning, activating, and measuring marketing. For those brands that have embraced the concept, it has provided the foundation for a new type of dialogue within the organization, one of hope and inspiration that leads to clarity around action steps instead of the futile search for the next big idea. Let’s get started!

Chapter 1

Marketing in the Age of Participation

The moment it all crystallized for me stands out very clearly in my mind. It was early 2005, and I was still working in marketing at Hewlett-Packard (HP). I had to organize a meeting for a large global product launch for the Imaging and Printing Group and was specifically focused on helping the team develop launch plans for the United States. It had a significant digital marketing concept central to the big creative idea, which was something new. Big ideas, however, were not new; in fact, finding that magical big idea was the ultimate marketer’s goal. The quest to uncover it usually began with a television concept that we would extend into the print and digital environments—if it worked. We had been counting on this formula for a number of years, and it had generally been a recipe for reasonable success.

But this time was different. The entire idea itself was about eliciting a response. The brilliant concept was designed to ignite participation from the individuals whom our message was trying to reach. This was not a “send out the message and see what happens” campaign. The idea itself was big, brilliant, and beautiful—but insufficient. In addition to the fact that we were asking for feedback, our audience actually had the tools to take action. This was significant, and that campaign suddenly made the notion of integration incredibly important.

Even before this campaign came about, I had acknowledged the growing challenges related to media interconnectedness. I understood how crucial integration was to achieve ultimate program effectiveness. Yet as important as it was, and as easy as it sounded, integration had suddenly become incredibly complex.

I was beginning to appreciate the challenges facing marketers in the new environment. The big idea, messages that had previously worked so well, were beginning to fail for several of reasons:

1. Despite the fact that digital was—and is—outpacing all other mediums the television “big ideas” conquered all. Even today, creative agencies are generally masters at crafting persuasive entertaining pieces designed for television, a medium meant for leaning back and being entertained. They usually don’t even consider or invite audience participation. Ironically, in this case, the idea and tagline of the HP printing campaign was, “What do you have to say?”—which referred to the individual expression reflected in someone’s printed piece. The tagline was a literal invitation for people to participate by building and printing individual creative pieces. HP invited participants to “say” something using creative units that didn’t function well; they hadn’t given much thought to how they would actually receive the “response” or engage in the dialogue. The harsh truth was we really didn’t want them to tell us “what they had to say”; we just thought the tagline was a good way to articulate self-expression, something that generally resonated well with individuals using printers. As good creative agencies usually do, the big idea struck the central nervous system of a cultural theme a little ahead of its time. Customers really did want a “say” and wanted to participate. We just weren’t prepared for the response, nor did we go about creating an environment that conscientiously fostered participation.

2. Digital was the stepchild no one wanted to own and an afterthought. Big creative agencies invested heavily in their creative and production talent in 2005. Their experience was in television and print. These agencies generally outsourced, often even contracting offshore, with small shops to create the web experience, that is, to do the actual coding for the ads or the sites, usually as a way to save money. This meant that the end products sometimes didn’t work correctly on the web and the concepts were never developed for the relationship medium. In addition, these other agencies usually built and managed other important digital cornerstones. The digital experience was built for creative units that were beautiful to the eye, meaning they were built in Flash and therefore invisible to search engines. So even if they did function properly and looked beautiful, no one could find them.

I discovered this the hard way—with a bit of a twist. Shortly before the campaign launch, we discovered that we had a poorly designed web experience and made the seemingly easy decision to hire another firm to take over. However, the coding was done in Portuguese and actually finding a firm with experience recoding Flash in that language was not as easy. We never would have outsourced the television component; we did this only with the digital assets, which firmly illustrated their priority and value in the marketing mix. And although this has changed somewhat today, it’s not as much as one might expect given the importance of digital and search. According to the 2009 Global Interactive Marketing Organization and Agency Survey, most brand organizations have fewer than 10 employees working in digital. Despite the fact that digital mediums are growing, digital spend is still relatively small. In fact, a recent ZenithOptimedia ad forecast indicates that 95 percent of all future advertising growth will be on a screen (television and Internet). This study does not yet track mobile advertising growth, but it is projected to grow exponentially. This reinforces the importance of television and the increasing importance of interactive mediums.

3. Media was an after-thought in the process. And as I mentioned, it was frequently done by a different agency—and wasn’t considered and involved until too late in the campaign process. Media innovation around the big idea had great potential, but because the creative agency was the genesis of big ideas and consequently the owner of strategy and innovation, the media partner was brought in at the last moment for efficiency purposes. Any opportunities for further integration were subsequently lost. This, too, is improving today. In the 2012 Cannes Lions competition, the advertising industry’s largest global annual awards show and festival for professionals in the creative communications industry, there were a number of creative entries in the media category and media entries in the creative categories. This is an indication that more campaigns—and certainly the best—are now effectively blending creative, media, and technology.

4. All marketing assignments were designed as a form of persuasive entertainment. This is the most fundamental reason for the impending failures. Marketers assumed that people were waiting to be entertained passively with a big idea that might influence an opinion—and that they were basically uninformed and required assistance in making a decision about a product or service. For decades, marketing’s role was to aid people who simply needed information about a product in order to make a decision. This is where the idea of awareness originated. Programs were not designed to build a relationship with a person; we never asked ourselves what action we wanted them to take or thought of developing a two-way relationship. It never occurred to us to build programs fundamentally designed with participation in mind. And why should it have? Marketing tools, processes, and philosophies had developed and matured long before people used their computers, smartphones, or tablets to conduct an Internet search or ask their social network for feedback on a certain product or service.

On this particular day, I was working on integration planning. I began assembling a list of individuals and their respective agency partners who worked across multiple marketing disciplines required to launch the campaign. Individuals who managed their discipline needed to understand the other functional plans in order to see how the overall marketing program was connected. The more connected and integrated a program is, the stronger it becomes, especially in the new digital landscape. For example, paid search and organic search required coordination and integration for optimal effectiveness. Yet since my organization managed paid search, it was tied to advertising and marketing and therefore it was integrated with advertising flight schedules. The corporate information technology (IT) department managed organic search, and the campaign was not even on their radar. Nor did they consider it their role to integrate with the campaign at all. In general, search should be coordinated with direct marketing, which was managed by yet another group; with public relations; and so on. Somehow, all of these teams and their agencies had never even met one another until the day I brought them into the same meeting to discuss launch coordination and integration.

To plan the meeting, I had to track down individuals who managed various disciplines and identify their respective marketing partners. Eventually, the invitee list reached 60 people. How was I ever going to schedule a meeting for this many people? Even if I did get a reasonable attendance rate, how would we ever get through or plan the coordination in a way that both added value to individual functions and made the overall plan stronger? This was the moment that I realized that although we were operating using traditional marketing tools and processes, the world had changed. I knew that in order to plan, develop, and launch successful programs, marketing was due for an overhaul.

The meeting actually took place. I don’t believe all 60 individuals made an appearance, although a number showed up in the room and others joined via phone. As each team discussed their individual plans and other teams asked questions, the overlap became very evident. In many cases, individual managers were not even asking the right questions about their individual programs, because they lacked information about other programs that ultimately affected their own. The tools, philosophies, processes, goals, and approaches—even the language around marketing—simply were not working any longer.

We have long known that big companies always have silos, and they’re less than optimal at internal communications, which can often limit even seemingly obvious connections. Similar to any company, these teams were simply doing their jobs as they always had. The difference was me. I was no longer content with the “old” way. I struggled for a way to help others see the light, but I didn’t have much success. The same conversations with the same words just occurred over and over again, which led to us using the same tools we had been using for years.

Words have always been important to marketers, who are masters at finding the right words, the right essence, and the right feeling to change perception. If you could change perception, then it was generally thought that a change in action would eventually follow. This is the core essence of any marketing brief: persuasive words that describe how one feels and how we want that person to feel after receiving our message. Marketers talk a lot about what we do and are doing to others. I was listening with a new ear, though, and suddenly it all seemed to have no meaning in the new world: Above the line, below the line, big idea, marketing message, viral, reach, frequency, target, audience—even consumer—I was just as guilty as everyone else, unconsciously using them over and over every day without really knowing what they meant or where they came from.

The marketing and media landscape in 2005 was decidedly less complex compared with today’s highly networked complex environment. The rise of social media, the mobile explosion, and the fragmentation of media globally are increasing complexity. Perhaps even more fundamental than the landscape in which we work in is the basic mind-set shift of the focus for all marketing efforts: the consumer. The evolution of consumer sophistication and expectations is demanding a change in our marketing fundamentals, more so than any other single factor. Having lived or been born with technology tools that arm them with a constant supply of information, today’s consumers now have new expectations about their relationships with the brands whose products and services they use. They have evolved well beyond the uninformed, passive, undecided individuals they once were. They are new participants who expect to join, connect, share, take part, and engage with other people and brands. They believe that their voice makes a difference—and they’re right.