Empowerment marketing is expected to be the mainstream of marketing practices. It leverages new media and devices that empower people and their desire to be empowered and recognized. The notions of empowerment and specific tactics are explained. Related concepts such as engagement and collaboration are also being discussed to describe how they are interconnected with empowerment. A few real-life cases are introduced. [Note: Some sources of the images used in this presentation were not identified.]

1. EMPOWERING
CONSUMERS:
Incorporating Consumer Influence in Marketing
ANDY JOOHYUN LEE
MAR 2013

2. This presentation is not about data or research.
It’s the findings from observation.
It’s about the observation on consumers,
the market,
and the changes found in
consumer-marketer relationship.
ANDY LEE
2

3. Many people already talked about empowerment.
But this one is different in that...
it goes a few steps further,
it’s about marketing,
and it’s also about building a business.
ANDY LEE
3

4. Empowerment.
What do we mean by that?
ANDY LEE
4

5. em･pow･er
• give official authority or legal power to
• enable
• promote the self-actualization or influence of
It’s sharing power with people.
This applies to anyone - marketer, brand, government,
anyone with the power.
ANDY LEE
5

6. To see what it should mean to us,
let’s take a look back what we’ve been through:
market, consumers, and marketing.
ANDY LEE
6

7. First, we had consumers hard to identify
(and we didn’t bother to search).
No voice was heard.
ANDY LEE
7

8. Then, we started
to hear voices.
We listened.
And soon we began to talk
to them. (It wasn’t easy.)
So we gave gifts to
make them talk.
ANDY LEE
8

9. Soon we began to hear too many voices.
We wanted to examine them ourselves.
And we started to apply the findings to our work.
ANDY LEE
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10. And then we came to think,
“Why not go beyond applying?”
ANDY LEE
10

11. Why not make them talk about us?
Why not make them talk for us?
The era of empowerment
ANDY LEE
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12. From media’s perspective:
We have paper, radio, TV, OOH.
More recently, email, website,
social media, and mobile.
Direction of evolution:
Higher interactivity and
stronger empowerment
ANDY LEE
12

13. Roughly, it looks like this.
(Which one looks more interesting for marketing?)
EMPOWERMENT
SNS
MOBILE
WEB
IPTV
RADIO TV
PAPER
INTERACTIVITY
ANDY LEE
13

14. EMPOWERMENT
SNS
We are observing more interactive media,
MOBILE
more empowering media, and WEB
more people who want to beIPTV empowered.
RADIO TV
PAPER
INTERACTIVITY
ANDY LEE
14

15. Very much in politics.
But also in everyday life.
ANDY LEE
15

16. How does this translate to marketing?
Empowerment for marketing?
ANDY LEE
16

17. We talk about awareness
perception
attitude
engagement
turning consumers into our friends
making sales
ANDY LEE
17

18. awareness is a start, but also an end (in many cases).
perception is seen as a part of awareness.
attitude is a product of perception,
engagement is what enables further results, like
turning consumers into our friends, or
making sales.
ANDY LEE
18

19. engagement EMPOWERMENT
It is a passive interaction It is a marketer’s action. It gives the
against the given stimulus power (or options) to people to
(like contents). It does not
alter the given content. This engage. Empowered people’s
is not a natural action with actions are voluntary. They may
inherent motives. People are change the given stimulus or alter the
generally encouraged, process itself. By nature they are
invited, or promoted to
take this action.
highly uncontrollable.
Interpersonal interaction is
not always necessary thus
creates only limited impact.
By definition it is a marketer-
driven action and the
process is c o n t r o l l a b l e . Empowerment
creates effective
ANDY LEE
engagement. 19

20. UNDERSTAND MOTIVES TO
1
LESSON
LEVERAGE EMPOWERMENT.
Urge to express themselves; desire to be noticed,
recognized, and applauded by others.
ANDY LEE
20

21. LEVELS OF EMPOWERMENT
Cultivate collaboration.
Empowering: Providing options to do things
Provide tools & data for them to play with.
Open your platform.
Open a new playground.
Connect people with others.
Provide options to choose.
Notify of “allies.”
ANDY LEE
21

22. LEVELS OF EMPOWERMENT
Cultivate collaboration.
Empowering: Providing options to do things
Provide tools & data for them to play with.
Open your platform.
Open a new playground.
Connect people with others.
Provide options to choose.
Notify of “allies.”
Openness: Yielding authority to people
ANDY LEE
22

23. NOTIFY OF THE ALLIES
CASE #1. THE NEXT BIG THING
The campaign tells Android users (especially Samsung Galaxy users) that they are not alone; they
are not copycat users; and they are the ones who are leading the trend - giving confidence to
Samsung/Android users.
ANDY LEE
23

24. Give choices to people.
Let them customize their options.
Make people choose what they will have.
Maximize the “Have it your way” approach.
ANDY LEE
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25. WHY “OPTIONS” WORK: UNDERLYING PSYCHOLOGY
Interactions affect human perception.
Think about MCs of an event, or Burger
King’s “Have It Your Way.”
People tend to support the choice they
make (even a forced one).
ANDY LEE
25

26. Provide a new playground.
Open a platform.
Supply initial rules.
Let people do the rest.
ANDY LEE
26

27. CONNECTING PEOPLE & PROVIDE PLATFORM
CASE #2. PATIENTS LIKE ME
This site lets you share
your real-world health
experiences in order to
help yourself, other
patients like you, and
organizations that
focus on your conditions.
ANDY LEE
27

28. CONNECT PEOPLE & INFO.
2
LESSON
People already have answers to everything.
It’s just a matter of connecting them:
Right answer to right people at right time.
connecting people with right information
connecting people with right people
connecting data with right data
ANDY LEE
28

29. OPEN YOUR PLATFORM
CASE #3. CURATORS OF SWEDEN: THE MOST DEMOCRATIC TWITTER ACCOUNT
To prove Sweden’t core values (open, authentic, caring, innovative) and actively position it as a progressive country, Sweden
handed over its official Twitter account to its citizens. No censorship. No limit.
Ordinary Swedes are @Sweden one week at a time. Tweet by tweet, the image of Sweden is built: dynamic, innovative, and
deeply human. 26,000 followers from 120 countries in 6 weeks. Real interaction, thousands of conversations. Featured in all
major media around the globe for an equivalent PR value in excess of $19,800,000.
Cyber Grand Prix in Cannes 2012.
ANDY LEE
29

30. OPEN UP. GIVE UP CONTROL.
3
LESSON
Yield authority to people.
(Open your fridge and let people cook
with your food.)
It sounds risky. But it’s the only way.
People are not listening to our branded messages anymore.
So open it up, and guide them to the right direction.
ANDY LEE
30

31. “Sweden Twitter Experiment Goes Painfully Awry”
Mashable, June 12, 2012
(http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/sweden-twitter)
ANDY LEE
31

32. PROVIDE TOOLS / METHODS / DATA
4
LESSON
TO PLAY WITH.
Give tools for people to create their own benefits,
utilitarian or psychological.
ANDY LEE
32

33. PROVIDING TOOLS
CASE #4. HELP, I’VE CUT MYSELF AND I WANT TO SAVE A LIFE
Seen by over 50 million,
sales increased 20-fold,
the number of marrow-donor
registrations has tripled.
It shows how important
and effective it is to
make people’s
participation easy,
meaningful, and
relevant to their
lives.
ANDY LEE
33

34. COLLABORATION
CASE #5. ADBYME
ANDY LEE
34

35. PROMOTE COLLABORATION,
5
LESSON
ANYWAY POSSIBLE.
Think of your campaign as a jigsaw puzzle.
You provide pieces. People complete.
All they need is a guideline.
We allow and even encourage people to
collaborate with our content.
ANDY LEE
35

36. Social media is the perfect place to practice empowerment. People are
already there, and they already have the connection to impose their
influence. Plus, it is an open plaza where everyone has same power to
connect, select, and play.
Therefore, the task is to make those people work for our brand. And it’s
collaboration and crowdsourcing - fostering collaboration with
the brand, and with other people.
The marketer’s job becomes “designing and guiding the path (of
collaboration).”
ANDY LEE
36

37. It is an active interaction toward the given
stimulus. It usually alters the given content. Voluntary
or not, people’s collective action is required.
Interpersonal interaction is required and will
create even further alteration of the content. It
is often a marketer-driven but generally a people-
driven action, and the process is generally
uncontrollable.
COLLABOR A TI O N
ANDY LEE
37

38. DESIGN THE PROCESS WHERE
6
LESSON
PEOPLE WILL MOVE OTHER PEOPLE.
The key objective should NOT end at making conversation.
It is to move people to influence others on your behalf.
ANDY LEE
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39. In a digital world, it is the people that control your brand.
And a marketer’s job is to lift those voices and put them in the spotlight.
It is not just about throwing in a stimulus. It is about listening and
responding. It’s to watch how your brand is evolving within people’s
conversations and to lead them to your preferred direction.
This is today’s way of branding. And any attempts to control or
manipulate the conversations will only leave you, and your
customers dissatisfied.
ANDY LEE
39

40. Collaboration is most effective (but most difficult) since it is a voluntary,
uncontrolled process. (Marketers cannot tell what will come out of it.)
Despite the risk, collaboration is crucial to digital marketing as most of
today’s marketing occurs in social sector and the practice significantly
amplifies the people’s experience, increases involvement, and
enhances attitude.
When guided right, the process produces highly positive outputs for both
consumers and the brand.
ANDY LEE
40

41. Therefore, marketers only can guide the evolving process of the
communication by actively participating in it. And the role of digital strategy is
to manage the process.
Likewise, the digital ideas should also be participated and grown by
consumer collaboration. the strategy should be open-structured. It should
invite and motivate people to play with it.
So, it is not the well-crafted marketing messages that influence people but
the well-thought-out marketing process: The scheme that plots
where, how, and by whom you’d want your people to be influenced.
ANDY LEE
41

42. People will control your brand.
Listen, respond, and lead them.
It’s not the message. It’s the process.
Never manipulate.
Promote collaboration.
Guide them through others.
ANDY LEE
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43. EMPOWERED EMPLOYEE
CASE #6. SAMSUNG FACEBOOK CANADA
“I’ve got many Samsung stuff.
So can I have a free Galaxy S3?
BTW, I drew a picture of a dragon for you.”
“Sorry, that’ll make us broke.
But thanks for the epic picture and
I have drawn this one for you.”
A few months later, a free & customized
Galaxy S3 phone to the consumer.
One empowered
employee creating
a huge viral hit.
ANDY LEE
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44. “E M PO W ER ”
ANDY LEE
44

45. BE READY TO ACCEPT
“OUT OF CONTROL”
AS A NEW NORM.
ANDY LEE
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46. thank you
@ecarus
eccarus@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/ecarus