Last night, I was at a truly inspirational industry event hosted by the lovely people at Canvas 8. Their speakers included an ex creative director of Publicis, a professor in consumer behaviour and a doctor that specialises in semiotics.
The general theme of the evening is that consumers are transforming, and we as communications professionals need to go with the change. Interestingly, there was less emphasis on the recession and much more was spoken about history, innate human nature and the need for greater engagement.
Fordism and mass consumerism essentially has not promised us the blissful paradise that it set out. Instead of satisfying our every desire, in the context of retail, it has ultimately turned people in to unengaged mindless zombies. However, people need stimuli and to truly tap in to innate human nature, they need to be engaged. There are many ways of doing so such as co creation, although not just merely at a media level but to a deeper business level that can dictate things such as price and actual products. Dr Pepper for example are allowing people to vote for which agency they should align with and Local motorsin Detroit, briefed the consumer to design a car, which they in turn built! Now that's consumer generated content to it's fullest. People also need to be surprised in the retail environment through activities such as the T-Mobile flash mob dance or pop up stores.
We are also living in as evermore integrated online and offline world. The Proteus effectsupports the idea that our emotions won't differentiate our feelings both online and offline. Thus concepts such as augumented reality and virtual worlds will become ever more important in the future. Technology has enabled us to be much more communicative and given us greater opportunity to engage with consumers and this is something we should truly embrace, as ultimately this will drive greater resonance between consumers and brands, which in turn will increase advocacy, sales and ROI.
The overarching idea is that people should be treated as that, people, and not seen as dollar signs that are ignored. By listening to people more and engaging with them, more profitable business models can be attained. Put people first. Threadlessis a brilliant example of a model that engages consumers to design T-shirts which in turn are put up on to the website for sale. Notably, every single one of the T-shirts put on to the website sell. It's about making things much more than simple products with practicalities and uses. The Hollywood exchangeis also another example where the voice of the consumer has turned out to be surprisingly more accurate than the experts when predicting the next box office hit.
The message is simple - listen and involve those who will be buying your product.
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