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Proofpoint: “I’m already there!”

MM: I’m already going to one of these 12 on a regular basis.

Exactly. So, make it portable. Put it where I am. Don’t make me come to you.

MM: This really gets to a great enhancement to this working definition I have of a “brand engagement theater.” I use that metaphor, in particular, to really bring forward and highlight 4 or 5 ideas or themes of engagement. First and foremost, engagement happens at the tribal mind. You have to connect in with it. Tribes, by definition, create a social context. Second, the notion of a theater basically brings forward that, “every brand tells a story.” A story about what it means to be in a relationship with the brand. But it’s a story that evolves through various phases-acts of a play. Thereby, allowing us to use all of the cultural narratives of how we tell stories vis-à-vis a theatre. It takes back to Aristotelian poetics and classic form of a 3-act play with each act having a setup, build and payoff-all of the traditional classic models of how you tell a story.

Right.

MM: Third, a brand-engagement theater also highlights the notion that we need to tell a story to someone and, with success, we can pierce that fourth wall — between the audience and the theatre. Engagement means to pull each member of the audience into the narrative-the storyspace. Not only to pull them into the narrative as an observer, but actually as a collaborator. Then in order to do that, you needs actors that hit their marks and say their lines. You need the set-and-settings for each scene, changing as the narrative progresses through the plot. Then ultimately, we’re trying to get consumers to engage in the brand as a theatrical experience that kind of sweeps me up into a narrative and takes me someplace.

That’s right. That’s again back to the Alterian technology side of things. Ideally, that story should develop in reaction to the consumer’s engagement.

When I was a kid, we used to buy these books where you choose the story. You’d get to a certain point in the story and say, “Do you want to go left or do you want to go right?” Then if you go left, you go to Page 103. If you go right, go to Page 120.

You’re changing the story by engaging with it. In terms of dynamic content and in terms of customized content — beyond personalization. Don’t just know my name. Serve me the content that I want to interact with, in the way I want to interact with it. Then when I do interact with it, recognize that and change how you treat me in the future.

Personalization and individualization

MM: Trae, that really brings forward another controversy that I’d like to mash up and spit out a bit in a newly-digested form: personalization. I think that many people find some level of non-collaborative personalization off-putting but scary; you know, we I encounter a company that know more about me that I shared with them, it’s just weird. Like what else do you know?

Yes. Creepy. Yes.

MM: So there’s the notion of personalization, which inevitably becomes kind of creepy. There’s this other notion of individualization where now I’m kind of configuring things to serve my needs.

Right.

MM: So I’m really kind of programming the basic services of my Schwab account online, or my bank account. I’m really configuring content and services to my sensibilities and my kind of design sense and my lifestyle.

Wow. That’s incredible that you’re going in that direction. We were just having a conversation again — something that we talked about here internally.

Everybody’s familiar, at least in a limited sense, with the idea of a “preference center.”

MM: Right.

I can go in, and — like the examples you give — I can tell you to some limited degree from an operational standpoint — how I want to interact with the company. But we do a really poor job of porting that approach over into the area of marketing. “Let me tell you.” I’m a consumer. “Let me tell you, company, how I want you to engage with me.”

So I think you’re absolutely right. At least that’s what we believe. You want to avoid the personalization “creepy” factor, and actually be forthright. To say, “No, no. We’re letting you dictate our engagement.”

That gets to an underlying sense of what Lawrence Lessig of Stanford calls, “The remix culture.”

Yes.

MM: “If you don’t allow me to remix — if you don’t allow me to customize and pimp my service — then “f” you. I don’t need you.”

That’s right.

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