For years, advertising agencies have flogged the concept of 360 degree communications - of tracking consumers wherever they are and inundating them with (hopefully relevant) messages. One ad chief who has stopped drinking the 360 degree Kool-Aid is Chuck Brymer of DDB. As president and CEO of one of the world's most consistently awarded creative agencies, Brymer is in the process of moving his agency away from the carpet bombing of consumers with ad messages via a thousand different media… In the words of Brymer – “I want to get to your connections. I want to engage you in a way that inspires you to communicate with your 6 degree (friends of friends, family and acquaintances)."
For instance Volkswagen's multiple award winning Fun Theory campaign saw DDB work at extracting fun from mundane activities like taking the stairs instead of an escalator or recycling. This was done by transforming the stairs into a gigantic playable piano, and the act of recycling bottles being turned into a game with points. He says, "Back then it was about sending a message and that was the end of it. Now the message not only connects you to the brand but to your friends. If I can create a message you can pass on, participate in and play with, I've got a deeper engagement opportunity."
Similarly engagement of employees is not about carpet-bombing them with loads of events and information. Instead, it is about planning specific interventions that may ask for their contributions and involving them, so as to not only create an engagement with the event or the initiative but also with their families & friends. It must be something that they would like to tell their families and friends; about something that really excites them in their place of work. Also, it must not attempt generalization. Specific interventions for different sets of employees should be designed.That creates deeper engagement.
Engagement is neither entertainment nor incessant events that keep on happening in the organization. And, if so, it may only succeed in providing a satisfaction to the perpetrator that lots is being done for engagement (as in the case of the 360 degree advertiser) but in effect the returns would be very low. Instead engagement should be specific, innovative, sensitive and exciting, like the 6 degree principle of DDB.
Like in DDB they say – ‘At DDB we are guided by playbooks, not rule books. Rigid methodologies minimize creativity. Paint-by-numbers gets you the same painting every time.’
For real engagement it is important to do things in the 'right way' than to do the ‘right things’always.
2 comments:
sir
a query.
You have mentioned that it is important to do things in the right way than to do the "right thing" always.
you have mentioned that overloading customers with events and information is not good -which is correct. But this is actually " not doing the right thing" and not " doing things in the right way" .
Kindly clarify. Regards
Doing things thr right way always turn out to be the right things but not vice-versa. Perceptual Predispositions are mostly dangerous. Hope it makes sense. Thanks for reading and commenting.
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