Wandering Wandering Star

Participation isn’t enough

Having a more clear-sighted view on people’s real world buying behaviours and thus which consumers actually matter to the generation of revenue and profit begins to gives us a framework for thinking about participation.

For if we want to survive and prosper from the paradox, then we’re going to recognize that participation alone is not enough:

Don’t confuse your passionate fans for being your most important source of revenue

Treat your fans as creative collaborators, doormen to other, bigger networks, or as a channel – they are actors in your content, but they are not its ultimate audience

Go beyond servicing the enthusiasm of your fans – your brand depends on the interest and purchases of the many more people who don’t know you well, aren’t devoted to you, and don’t purchase you at all, or that often

Recognize that participation is merely niche marketing unless it is overheard and witnessed by the mainstream – find ways of enabling the enthusiasm of your fans to spill over into the populations who are less interested

Be realistic about how many will participate and how deeply – ultimately stimulating mass reaction matters more than chasing mass participation.

Build for inequality – build into creative content both high friction and low friction forms of participation. A few people will want something (perhaps even a lot) to do, but many more will want a very little (or nothing at all) to do.

Building in talk value into the idea itself is a more efficient way of achieving spread than buying it. Whatever the degree of participation sought, do something f*****g awesome that is genuinely worth talking about – seek to generate headlines, both amongst media owners, and in people’s social interactions. It’s got to be good enough for some to want to take part in, and good enough for others to care.

Don’t underestimate the power of paid for media to invite, document and publicise people’s participation to a wider audience

The participation paradox…

So where does this get us?

It tells that a very small number of people buy us frequently, and know us very well. They’ll come into contact with our brand more often. They’ll be more likely to notice our advertising. And they’ll be more willing to participate in our marketing activity.

Equally, it tells us that the vast majority of people don’t buy us exclusively, don’t buy us very often, and don’t know us very well.

And it tells us that significant growth comes not from increasing loyalty but from attracting more people who don’t buy us at the moment. That is, people who don’t know very much about us, don’t have much contact with us, aren’t predisposed to notice our marketing content, aren’t inclined to participate in it, and won’t buy us very often.

So here we have our paradox:

The people LEAST likely to engage deeply…

… are the MOST important for growth

There is a way out of this paradox. But it requires us to embrace two principles:

The battle is for interest, not attention
Fans are actors, not the audience

Designers talk a lot about Human-Centered Design where it is important to design for the needs of the person. Well, this doesn’t work when the goal is millions of people all across the world. Computers and software, phones and applications, automobiles, kitchen appliances and housewares are intended for consumption by millions. Human-Centered Design can no longer apply: what does it mean to discover the precise needs of millions of people? Instead, I have argued for Activity-Centered Design, where the activity dictates the design.

Technology dictates the activity. In turn, the activity dictates the design. When the design is appropriate for the technology, people accept it, regardless of culture.