Cautiously listening to Alan Moore
I have started acknowledging that there must be other people out there with a similar approach to marketing and brand engagement. Although, I find it uncomfortable to align myself with their strategic analysis and prescriptive methods: “This is what the world is like and if you want to better market to contemporary consumers you must adopt their forms and engage in their games.” Instead, I prefer to think that brands can learn from a genuine engagement with the world and that by opening up small spaces for dialogue and resource exchange, the very structure of the organization will necessarily adapt. Alan Moore, a marketing consultant in the UK, seems to understand this ecology but is playing his hand for a particular audience. He primarily serves the business interests when he advises:
Community based engagement initiatives goes beyond marketing communications and will become the primary means by which all organisations will engage with their audiences. This new paradigm requires a multidisciplinary approach, as a consequence, we get a clashing of cultural and ideological gears, companies aren’t prepared to deal with the friction that allowing their staff to connect internally of externally generates. Further, Knowledge gaps widen which means assumptions are made, and key strategic decisions are executed that damage the longevity, and even existence of companies. (“we thought it was all about technology”) The perilous state of the media and broadcast industries in the UK is but one example.
Perhaps these are some principal ideas that fall out of this particular conversation are:
1. Create platforms/services/tools that enable people and are built upon human principals of sharing and co-operation
2. Engagement is based upon tenets not technology
3. Community co-creation around a central purpose is very powerful bonding agent
4. Be Grassroots – be truly useful
5. You have to re-organise
Alan Moore in conversation with Jason Kirby explores what this means to him.
We need to embrace the interactive age to break with traditional, ineffective interruptive communications, using engagement techniques to change behaviour and outputs through involvement. In a participatory culture, people embrace what they create.
Community Based Engagement Initiatives (part 1) [16:38m]: Download