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

I’m not sure how, but I’ve recently gained a new batch of European Twitter followers.  Most of them seem to be brand / marketing types.  And perhaps because they’re European, they appear a bit more critically appealing (at least online) than their American counterparts.  Anyway, I have historically made a point of not participating directly in this kind of dialogue, but that is changing (see forthcoming posts about the book I’m planning to write).  But, I found this letter on one of my new followers pages (trndmrkr.blogspot.com).  Then the comment post with a letter of response from “Advertising” on johnniemoore.com was about as nauseating as I can imagine - read it at your own risk.  But here you have two sides of the circle: a “consumer” acknowledging and engaging with a brand despite their stated indifference, and a marketer affirmed that their consumer research justifies a bullshit engagement opportunity.

August 23, 2010 19:27:

Dear Brian,

We are terribly sorry for the misunderstanding. It turns out you weren’t the target for our advert. We’re working on making our content more targeted through digital distribution tools, but for now you’re going to have to simply take what you can away from our messaging - which was clearly about sausage - and simply not participate in the microsite and video part.

See, there are people out there in the world who have a job that involves work they find particularly interesting, and it does more for them than paying their bills. Your attitude toward work and life suggest that you wouldn’t be the type to make a video even if it brought you definite rewards. This is called a psychographic, Brian.

Also, being 27, you’re right on the edge of a technological and behavioral shift. All the people younger than you have grown up with video editing software and the ability to dynamically use the Internet and technology in unprecedented ways. It is they who will go to our site and submit a video. And they will share, and comment, and take interest in the possibilities of their creativity and the creativity of others. (That is, if we do a good job providing them with a reason to be there and to contribute. Leave that up to us).

It’s a new culture, Brian - your having children in the past few years and working a job that likely doesn’t hinge on the latest developments of the social web has perhaps kept you a bit behind the curve. Don’t worry, though - you’ll eventually assimilate. And so will 100 million others just like you. In the bell curve graph you’re what we call the “late majority.” Maybe we can talk next year. Perhaps by then your kids will be sleeping in on Saturdays and you can use that time to explore the creative, social web. We’ll be there - feel free to look us up.

Sincerely,

Advertising

Somewhere between a transcendent purpose and demoralizing charity…

Reposted from Platform for Pedagogy, June 2010

In what ways can public pedagogy strengthen communities as an alternative to consumer-exchange based relationships?

Intellectual work and culture can certainly create communities and collectivity—politically motivated or otherwise. Pedagogy itself is usually associated with some kind of process of socialization—a lovely word, really. The echo in your question seems to be about the reification of community making—at least in densely metropolitan areas—into lifestyle brands, products and industries. Orienting a cultural project against this sort of historical development in culture and popular taste on a foundational level to me seems a bit academic and uninspired. Can we imagine, instead, imparting moral and intellectual questions as a critical component of popular taste—rather than simply pushing them out into the world as that taste’s solvent?

Full interview… Read the rest of this entry »