Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

There’s a great post over on ExactTarget’s website about recent research into why people become fans of Facebook pages for Brands.

Unsurprisingly, there are multiple competing reasons, which run the gamut from “I just like their products/services” to “I WANT FREE STUFF”.  Some marketers may try to turn people into ’segments’, but ultimately each user is a human being, and they will never all want the same thing.

Looking at the nuances behind the behavior we can see the range of relationships (yes, I used the R word) that people have towards Brands.  Some people truly will feel motivated to reach out to make connections with their favorite brands, and they always have some sort of rationale for the level of participation that they’d like to have.  In cases surrounding our brands, we make sure that first we have identified what we can DO with our consumers, before we look to set up platforms to do it on.  From there, it’s a matter of making sure that we can provide the kinds of experiences that they expect from us, and pay off on what the purpose of the brand is.

And we even can surprise them every now and then.  When was the last time you surprised a user? How did you do it?

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A while back I wrote about Barry Schwartz and his “Paradox of choice”. Sheena Iyengar now takes a multi-cultural view on this. In some comparative studies, she shows how the American dogma of choice, i.e. the belief that having many options is good, isn’t all it is cracked up to be. Not just abroad, but even in the US.

First she presents results about social context of choice, i.e. how the results of choosing can be different depending on if it is an individual choice or not. Then she explains difference in perceptions of what is actually a choice and what isn’t and then uses a very heart-wrenching example how far the belief in the choice dogma can affect people who have to make tough decisions.

I believe what we can learn from this that choice, just like everything else, can become a paralytic when it is turned into a dogma. When choice has an individual or collective purpose it can be catalyst.

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