EMPOWERING CONSUMERS:

ANDY JOOHYUN LEE

Incorporating Consumer Influence in Marketing

MAR 2013

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This presentation is not about data or research.It’s the findings from observation.

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It’s about the observation on consumers, the market,

and the changes found in consumer-marketer relationship.

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Many people already talked about empowerment.But this one is different in that...

it goes a few steps further,it’s about marketing,

and it’s also about building a business.

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Empowerment.

What do we mean by that?

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It’s sharing power with people.This applies to anyone - marketer, brand, government, anyone with the power.

em･pow･er• give official authority or legal power to• enable• promote the self-actualization or influence of

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To see what it should mean to us, let’s take a look back what we’ve been through:market, consumers, and marketing.

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First, we had consumers hard to identify (and we didn’t bother to search).No voice was heard.

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Then, we started to hear voices. We listened.

And soon we began to talk to them. (It wasn’t easy.) So we gave gifts to make them talk.

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Soon we began to hear too many voices. We wanted to examine them ourselves. And we started to apply the findings to our work.

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And then we came to think,

“Why not go beyond applying?”

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Why not make them talk about us?Why not make them talk for us?

The era of empowerment

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From media’s perspective:

We have paper, radio, TV, OOH.More recently, email, website, social media, and mobile.

Direction of evolution: Higher interactivity and stronger empowerment

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Roughly, it looks like this.(Which one looks more interesting for marketing?)

INTERACTIVITY

EMPOWERMENT

IPTV

PAPER

MOBILE

WEB

RADIOTV

SNS

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IPTV

PAPER

MOBILE

WEB

RADIOTV

SNS

We are observing more interactive media,more empowering media, andmore people who want to be empowered.

INTERACTIVITY

EMPOWERMENT

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Very much in politics.But also in everyday life.

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How does this translate to marketing?Empowerment for marketing?

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We talk about awareness perception attitude engagement turning consumers into our friends making sales

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awareness is a start, but also an end (in many cases).perception is seen as a part of awareness.attitude is a product of perception, engagement is what enables further results, like turning consumers into our friends, or

making sales.

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engagement

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It is a passive interaction against the given stimulus (like contents). It does not alter the given content. This is not a natural action with inherent motives. People are genera l l y encouraged, invited, or promoted to t a k e t h i s a c t i o n . Interpersonal interaction is not always necessary thus creates only limited impact. By definition it is a marketer-dr iven ac t i on and the process is c o n t ro l l a b l e .

EMPOWERMENT

It is a marketer’s action. It gives the power (or options) to people to engage. Empowered people’s actions are voluntary. They may change the given stimulus or alter the process itself. By nature they are highly uncontrollable.

Empowermentcreates effectiveengagement.

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Urge to express themselves; desire to be noticed, recognized, and applauded by others.

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1UNDERSTAND MOTIVES TO

LEVERAGE EMPOWERMENT.

LESSON

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LEVELS OF EMPOWERMENT

Notify of “allies.”

Connect people with others.Provide options to choose.

Open a new playground.

Open your platform.Provide tools & data for them to play with.

Empo

wer

ing: P

rovid

ing o

ptio

ns to

do

thing

s Cultivate collaboration.

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LEVELS OF EMPOWERMENT

Notify of “allies.”

Connect people with others.Provide options to choose.

Open a new playground.

Open your platform.Provide tools & data for them to play with.

Empo

wer

ing: P

rovid

ing o

ptio

ns to

do

thing

s Cultivate collaboration.

Openness: Yielding authority to people

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CASE #1. THE NEXT BIG THING

NOTIFY OF THE ALLIES

The campaign tells Android users (especially Samsung Galaxy users) that they are not alone; they are not copycat users; and they are the ones who are leading the trend - giving confidence to Samsung/Android users.

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Let them customize their options.

Make people choose what they will have.Maximize the “Have it your way” approach.

Give choices to people.

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WHY “OPTIONS” WORK: UNDERLYING PSYCHOLOGY

Interactions affect human perception.Think about MCs of an event, or BurgerKing’s “Have It Your Way.”People tend to support the choice they make (even a forced one).

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Provide a new playground.

Open a platform.

Supply initial rules.

Let people do the rest.

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CASE #2. PATIENTS LIKE ME

CONNECTING PEOPLE & PROVIDE PLATFORM

This site lets you share your real-world health experiences in order to help yourself, other patients like you, and organizations that focus on your conditions.

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People already have answers to everything.It’s just a matter of connecting them: Right answer to right people at right time.

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2CONNECT PEOPLE & INFO.

LESSON

connecting people with right informationconnecting people with right people

connecting data with right data

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To prove Sweden’t core values (open, authentic, caring, innovative) and actively position it as a progressive country, Sweden handed over its official Twitter account to its citizens. No censorship. No limit.Ordinary Swedes are @Sweden one week at a time. Tweet by tweet, the image of Sweden is built: dynamic, innovative, and deeply human. 26,000 followers from 120 countries in 6 weeks. Real interaction, thousands of conversations. Featured in all major media around the globe for an equivalent PR value in excess of $19,800,000. Cyber Grand Prix in Cannes 2012. 29

CASE #3. CURATORS OF SWEDEN: THE MOST DEMOCRATIC TWITTER ACCOUNT

OPEN YOUR PLATFORM

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Yield authority to people.(Open your fridge and let people cook with your food.)

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3OPEN UP. GIVE UP CONTROL.

LESSON

It sounds risky. But it’s the only way. People are not listening to our branded messages anymore. So open it up, and guide them to the right direction.

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“Sweden Twitter Experiment Goes Painfully Awry”

Mashable, June 12, 2012(http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/sweden-twitter)

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4PROVIDE TOOLS / METHODS / DATA

TO PLAY WITH.

LESSONGive tools for people to create their own benefits,

utilitarian or psychological.

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CASE #4. HELP, I’VE CUT MYSELF AND I WANT TO SAVE A LIFE

PROVIDING TOOLS

Seen by over 50 million,sales increased 20-fold, the number of marrow-donor registrations has tripled.It shows how important and effective it is to make people’s participation easy, meaningful, and relevant to their lives.

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CASE #5. ADBYME

COLLABORATION

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5PROMOTE COLLABORATION,

ANYWAY POSSIBLE.

LESSONThink of your campaign as a jigsaw puzzle. You provide pieces. People complete.

All they need is a guideline.

We allow and even encourage people to collaborate with our content.

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Social media is the perfect place to practice empowerment. People are already there, and they already have the connection to impose their influence. Plus, it is an open plaza where everyone has same power to connect, select, and play.

Therefore, the task is to make those people work for our brand. And it’s collaboration and crowdsourcing - fostering collaboration with the brand, and with other people. The marketer’s job becomes “designing and guiding the path (of collaboration).”

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COLLABORATION

It is an active interaction toward the given stimulus. It usually alters the given content. Voluntary or not, people’s collective action is required. Interpersonal interaction is required and will create even further alteration of the content. It is often a marketer-driven but generally a people-driven action, and the process is generally u n c o n t r o l l a b l e .

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6DESIGN THE PROCESS WHERE

PEOPLE WILL MOVE OTHER PEOPLE.

LESSONThe key objective should NOT end at making conversation.It is to move people to influence others on your behalf.

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In a digital world, it is the people that control your brand. And a marketer’s job is to lift those voices and put them in the spotlight.It is not just about throwing in a stimulus. It is about listening and responding. It’s to watch how your brand is evolving within people’s conversations and to lead them to your preferred direction.This is today’s way of branding. And any attempts to control or manipulate the conversations will only leave you, and your customers dissatisfied.

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Collaboration is most effective (but most difficult) since it is a voluntary, uncontrolled process. (Marketers cannot tell what will come out of it.)Despite the risk, collaboration is crucial to digital marketing as most of today’s marketing occurs in social sector and the practice significantly amplifies the people’s experience, increases involvement, and enhances attitude.

When guided right, the process produces highly positive outputs for both consumers and the brand.

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Therefore, marketers only can guide the evolving process of the communication by actively participating in it. And the role of digital strategy is to manage the process.

Likewise, the digital ideas should also be participated and grown by consumer collaboration. the strategy should be open-structured. It should invite and motivate people to play with it.

So, it is not the well-crafted marketing messages that influence people butthe well-thought-out marketing process: The scheme that plotswhere, how, and by whom you’d want your people to be influenced.

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People will control your brand.Listen, respond, and lead them.It’s not the message. It’s the process.Never manipulate.Promote collaboration.Guide them through others.

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“I’ve got many Samsung stuff. So can I have a free Galaxy S3? BTW, I drew a picture of a dragon for you.”

“Sorry, that’ll make us broke. But thanks for the epic picture and I have drawn this one for you.”

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CASE #6. SAMSUNG FACEBOOK CANADA

EMPOWERED EMPLOYEE

One empowered employee creating a huge viral hit.

A few months later, a free & customized Galaxy S3 phone to the consumer.

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“EMPOWER”

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BE READY TO ACCEPT

“OUT OF CONTROL”AS A NEW NORM.

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