Do consumers really need to participate?

It’s been flavour of the month for a few years now but we’re still seeing brands use the misguided objective of consumer participation and ‘engagement’ within their communications and as a direct result of that, they continue to ask far too much of consumers themselves.

Like any objective, ‘engagement’ needs to be measurable – what exactly do we mean by engaging somebody? And to what degree? Getting a ‘like’ on Facebook is not going to tick that box as the widely circulated example from Futurelab illustrates…

Futurelab’s analysis of the 20 most-fanned celebrities on Facebook reveals that the number of “core fans” is significantly lower than the actual fan count. To compute the core fan count, the number of times each fan has commented on the page was calculated, and then the average taken - any fan whose comment count is higher than the average was classified as a “core fan”.

As of 12 May 2011, Eminem had over 41 million fans and Lady Gaga over 39 million fans. But the  average number of posts per fan for Eminem’s fan page was 1.17 while the average number of posts per fan for Lady Gaga was 1.82.

Eminem’s core fan count (i.e. fan whose comment count is higher than the average) is a paltry 575 and Lady Gaga core fan count is just 1,231. That’s just 0.001% and 0.003% of their overall fan numbers.

The lack of engagement doesn’t stop there. Because of the way content from fan pages syndicates into Facebook users’ news feeds. Unless someone has actively interacted with your page, they won’t receive your updates.  So the content is unlikely to be amplified and spread amongst fans and their own networks.

Brands need to recognise that a great idea can achieve active participation amongst the few, the challenge is how to best amplify this idea and participation in a way that will connect with the broader audience, often through mass communications that use the idea to reflect on the business as a whole. There are parallels with sponsorship – it’s often quoted that you need to be spending twice as much on the activation of your sponsorship as the contract cost itself. I touched upon O2’s use of their ‘priority’ service last week and after reading an excellent post Martin Weigel’s blog “The Enduring Power Of Stuff That Isn’t Useful And Why ‘Utility’ Will Not Overthrow Magic”, I thought these two further examples from Best Buy and Nike were also particularly pertinent given how well known both examples are, and how they are often cited for their successful participatory nature.

By 2010, Best Buy’s Twelpforce had responded to over 29,000 questions and accumulated 26,837 followers on Twitter. But consider this, it was the largest electronic retailer in the country - it takes a lot of shoppers to generate revenues of $4.4 billion in the month of December 2010. Consider too the sheer breadth of its offering, and that there are 245,267,292 people aged 15 years and over in the United States many of whom will presumably be in the market for some kind of electrical goods. And remember that the service was promoted through TV advertising as well as in-store-messaging. Suddenly it begins to feel as if that utility was actually delivered to and experienced directly by a relatively small population.

The Twelpforce had a much wider role than helping specific users, the mere availability of this service worked to elevate the brand’s reputation as being knowledgeable and responsive amongst a much broader population, even though they never took advantage of the service.

Another example is that of Nike+

According to data from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, in 2010 no less than 46,002,000 Americans ran or jogged 50+ days a year. Set against this, Nikeplus.com has a total global membership of close to 2,000,000. So given that the vast majority of the world’s runners clearly have not adopted Nike+, again one has to ask - does the big contribution of Nike+ lie in delivering an undoubtedly brilliant piece of utility to a few millions of committed, serious runners? Or does it lie in what that innovation communicates to the broader market for running gear? And what it does to sustain and bolster Nike’s running credentials - the roots of the company?

So rather than judging participatory ideas on immediate ROI or expecting mass participation and widespread ‘engagement’, brands need to instead consider the potential wider impact that a relatively small participation base could achieve.