By Gabe Lozano, Co-founder & CEO of LockerDome
Tell me and I forget.
Show me and I remember.
Involve me and I understand.
The above quote — attributed to everyone from Ben Franklin to Confucius — is typically trotted out glibly to young teachers as an exhortation to do more than simply lecture their students. At some point, the words all begin to meld together, their students’ minds wander, and the message is lost because of the medium.
The same principle applies to digital media campaigns. Consumers have seen enough banner advertising that the term “banner blindness” was coined to describe users’ ability to condition themselves to simply ignore the top banner of most websites. The extent to which consumers are functionally blind to display ads is up for discussion, but the larger point remains that display ads often fail to form a lasting relationship with their passive audiences.
The same can be said for the bulk of content that media companies and brands alike flood into the market on a daily basis, rarely pulling consumers into a deeper discussion around their content. While eye-catching headlines might drive social shares and traffic, they often fail to convert into tangible value for your business.
Keep in mind that there are only two KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) measured in digital campaigns that actually make their way into the boardroom — ROI measured by growth of a qualified audience and ROI measured by revenue, which makes the necessity of a great activation strategy paramount.
At its core, digital activation is about targeting a qualified audience and asking them to experience your brand in a more profound way, typically through participatory interactions. The advantage here is two-fold: First, by stepping beyond the traditional avenues, brands have fewer roadblocks to overcome in order to reach their desired audience. Second, because engagement is active rather than passive, the target audience is more likely to internalize the message — and actually take action — whether it’s “Tweet about my great brand” or the more straightforward “Buy Ovaltine.”
Younger media companies are executing activation strategies far better than traditional media companies as a means to rapidly grow and better monetize their audiences. Less bureaucracy, quicker adoption of new technologies, and a daily survival mentality gives these leaner counterparts the ability and urgency to experiment and move quickly in effort to find strategies that resonate with their audience. NYC-based upstart, Thrillist Media Group, consisting of men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist.com, shopping club JackThreads, and fashion, music and culture destination TheCrosbyPress.com, is one such example. Following an acquisition of JackThreads in 2010, they have been able to successfully engage a qualified audience of nine million monthly uniques across Thrillist.com and TheCrosbyPress.com to drive millions of dollars in ecommerce sales. “The deeper the relationship you have with the consumer, the more likely they are to spend money with you,“ comments Paul Josephsen, VP of Integrated Marketing at Thrillist Media Group.
By adding value beyond straight impressions, these relative newcomers in the media space can make a compelling case to advertisers that begins to cover the gap in scale between a site like Buzzfeed and a media conglomerate like CBS or Turner. There are still times when massive scale is the determining factor, and digital-first properties will need to find even more ways to promise the same type of visibility that an over-the-air TV network can offer, but being able to compete on relatively equal footing with traditional media companies is a sign that these upstart companies have strong value to offer through digital activation.
Traditional media companies needn’t simply cede this ground to their fast-moving, innovative rivals, however they can wield both their enviable scale and less-traditional engagement strategies to great effect. As Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie at the Oscars illustrated, the combination of mass distribution and a focused call to action can produce a tremendous amount of activity from an otherwise passive audience. Samsung was the primary beneficiary in this case, but adding an active participatory element needn’t always include a sponsor, as American Idol and The Voice have successfully demonstrated. Giving viewers, readers, or listeners something they can lose by not participating capitalizes on the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) theory that has emerged parallel to the rise of real-time engagement.
The bottom line is that a strong activation digital strategy is quickly becoming far more than a luxury in the eyes of the forward-looking media insiders and savvy media buyers; it’s becoming a requirement. Expect to see this trend accelerate tremendously in 2014.
Gabe Lozano has spearheaded the rise of LockerDome, a social media platform built around what you like, as opposed to who you know. More than 20 million people per month use LockerDome to discover, collect, and engage around things they like with others that share the same passions. LockerDome has been called “Facebook on steroids” and a “future Wall Street darling” by MarketWatch, was named one of Forbes magazine’s “2013 Sports Names You Need to Know”, and labeled by Adweek as “in the sweet spot of the digital revolution.” In addition Gabe Lozano co-founded GlobalHack, Inc. GlobalHack is a non-profit organization that hosts quarterly hackathon competitions and an annual product competition, with plans to award more than $1 million in prize money annually.
