Digital Engagement Evolvement

Mark Khoo, Singapore

Consumer actionsim at the heart of change online

The term consumer actionsim came easily to me as I’ve always seen it as the next stage of evolvement in digital engagement, from the standard blogger outreach of the past to community engagement of today. I have always been an advocate of brands engaging on the digital platform, even before I joined Edelman as a student, blogging about various digital campaigns and what worked or didn’t worked.

The main issue with most campaigns was that while it might have been a great one time effort by the brand, there was no sustenance on their end to continue engaging. Microsites and Facebook groups were left hanging while marketers congratulated themselves from that successful campaign. Digital PR sits at the heart of this next stage of evolvement and consumer actionsim is the pivot which the new digital outreach rotates on.

This year’s recession marked a turning point where everyone had to do more with less and consumer actionsim through community engagement made sense.

Community engagement on the digital platform

A great example is our Xbox client in Singapore who wanted to engage with the online community in Singapore. Whilst the objective was to drive new and repeated visitors to the main website, there was a need to provide engaging content for users to engage on a platform.

A Facebook fanpage was set up for this purpose and by providing simple and engaging content which included latest games, event updates and simple prize giveaways; we have managed to grow the community to over 8000 members in less than 5 months, with a target of 10,000 members when we started.

While the numbers speak of the success, the real consumer actionsim came when we needed to test consumers’ reactions to an event or when we had a potential issue which needed troubleshooting before it got out of hand. At one of the consumer IT trade shows; Xbox was pushing a promotion where users who traded in their old consoles would get certain rebates off the new Xbox Elite. The aim was to get existing console owners who owned competitor’s consoles to switch to Xbox, hence there was a higher price rebate for competitors. This sparked a slew of complains in a matter of hours and we had to rectify the problems were we provided additional benefits to please our existing customers. Could you imagine if this happened on the show floor itself?

This trend f community engagement is becoming more significant, not just for consumer brands but for government agencies and B2B technology brands. These companies recognize that in this stakeholder world, while the primary stakeholders are still vital to reach out to influence others, there is a great opportunity to reach out to the end users, the consumers trough consumer actionsim.

Consumer Actionsim is forcing blogger engagement to change

Bloggers are still key stakeholders as influencers to various communities which a brand needs to reach out to. However, the mode of engagement has to change from both clients as well as bloggers themselves.

Having been fairly active in the local blogger scene before joining Edelman, I understood what ticked and what didn’t with the local bloggers.

Quote from friend and local blogger Daryl Tay on our Posterous blog Digiramblings,

“Speaking purely as a blogger, I'm really frustrated, no I'm more than frustrated, I'm sick and tired of agencies reaching out to me for events, products and services which are so far from something that I might be interesting that it really grinds my gears. Agencies need to learn this is as cardinal a sin as pitching the technology editor a piece of fashion news (and I don't mean tech-news with a bit of fashion in it).

The way of doing outreach aside, the events themselves have to change. This one off 'come to my event and touch my product and read my press release' has to change. And bloggers need to make it known that they're tired of it by not going, rather then going for the sake of being invited to the next one.”

In addition to this, there is a need for bloggers to evolve as consumer actionsim grows on the digital platform. Bloggers need to ensure that not just they have more than a touch point to reach out to their readers, they also need to start thinking lie a brand and how their business model might need some tweaking to fully maximise their outreach.

The change on both sides is spurred by consumers wanting to be engaged more and this presents an opportunity for further engagement on both sides to see how best to thrive in this changing digital landscape.

We’re at the heart of it all

The change is happening right now as we speak and I’m sure we’ll get more case studies of online and offline convergence of consumer actionsim.

No longer a supporting role, PR can do much more by creating engaging content for consumer actionsim where we now sit at the heart of all campaigns. Digital is not just an afterthought, but as a medium well thought out throughout the campaign as part of the overall community engagement online.