Stop Obsessing About Experiences, Start Enabling Participation

Four Traits for Relentlessly Human Engagement

By Bryan Specht, Chief Growth & Innovation Officer at ICF Next

**Originally published in AdWeek on March 19, 2019**

At a recent conference, I watched a sage strategist from a hot creative shop take visceral joy in dressing down a fellow panelist who had the audacity to espouse the virtues of digital media.

“The Digital Age is over!” he roared. “This is the Experience Age!”

Can’t wait for his book.

These days, marketing Jedi from coast-to-coast love to throw the word “experience” around so often and so loosely that it basically means nothing. Or maybe it means everything?

Is watching a 30-second video an experience? Yes. Getting a coupon in your email is an experience, right? Um, sure. Attending a company meeting about being a preferred employer? Yep.

A website where you can buy something or make a complaint? Uh-huh.

These are all created experiences. And they are table stakes in today’s engagement game.

The problem with obsessing over the experience is that you end up mistaking the means for the end, the output for the outcome. So what should marketers, companies and causes really seek to achieve through the experiences they create? In a word: Participation.

Experience without participation is dead

Experience imbued with opportunities for active participation turns one-sided, transactional connections into a reciprocal exchange of value – what normal, non-marketing humans might call a “relationship.”

You’d go to bat for a good friend. You’d proactively sing your bestie’s praises. You’d dive across the table to fight for your family. That’s loyalty. That’s active participation.

Watching a video produced by a sneaker company doesn’t compel active participation. It may open the doors and windows of the mind. But take it further, with a courageous stand on a social issue combined with customer or population data that informs a true understanding of what matters to those humans and aligns with how you deliver value to them and, boom, the whole game changes.

Better yet, give sneakerheads a suite of online tools to create a one-of-a-kind pair of shoes that they can sell on StockX. Suddenly their social currency (as well as their monetary currency) is piling up. They are active participants with your brand, product and message. They’ll tattoo it on their calf, post it on their channels, talk it up at the brewpub and maybe even rise to its defense at an awkward Thanksgiving dinner.

This is active participation.

Experiences that produce active participation from the right people are data-driven but relentlessly human. They all start with four fundamental traits:

Purpose

Purpose lends context to what might otherwise be an everyday experience. It’s the difference between buying a coat at a department store and buying a coat at Patagonia, where you know your purchase supports a genuine commitment to the environment.

Shared value

To spur active participation, the relationship between a brand and its customers has to be genuinely reciprocal. Take Belize’s recent efforts to increase tourism. Rather than compromise, the Belize Tourism Board offered authentic experiences that attracted the right kind of visitors (travelers, not tourists), who in turn became passionate advocates for the country. Not only did Belize get more overnight stays, but its entire economy grew as a result.

Safe personalization

You don’t creep on your friends. You protect them while making them feel valued. The technologies we have at our disposal make this possible in a range of new ways, if they’re used with actual human beings in mind. For instance, to combat smoking, the National Cancer Institute combined tobacco control expertise with mobile engagement and behavioral science to send encouraging texts to help smokers trying to break the habit. The quit-rate for participants? Twice the national average.

Relevant creativity

When Skittles sought to become a lifestyle brand, it developed relationships with Skittles-loving celebrities, athletes and social influencers, and found creative ways for them to share their own love for the candy. A mix of personalized vending machines, candy-covered gifts and compelling viral content wowed fans and built cultural relevance for the brand. (Don’t just take my word for it: Ask Saturday Night Live.)

Purpose, value, safety, relevance. Weave these qualities together and you should get a better – and more precise – definition of experience that actually delivers what matters most: Active, personal participation from the people who matter most to your work.

So, to my panelist friend and his passion for the “Experience Age,” all I have to say is “Viva la Participation!”