The Conversational Web

Marketers have understood the importance of the interactive space in integrated campaigns for years. However, there have been diverse viewpoints as to how to successfully approach and measure this new space. Ogilvy has presented two new concepts that are becoming familiar to marketers around the world. These concepts (“Dada, Data, Alpha, Beta” and “From the 4 P’s to the 4 E’s”) highlight engagement and experience as brand differentiators.

An example highlighting these new ideas surfaced this week. Yahoo Answers, a social site devoted to learning saw the posting of a question that generated a considerable amount of interest (shown in image).

The question and subsequent responses showcased a concept marketers struggle with in this new space – How does an item move from awareness to engagement?

Most notable in this example is the variety of motivations site members had in engaging with this question. The original response was to insult the original question and user that posted it on merits of education. It was generally assumed that the member posting the question was poorly educated as evidenced by spelling and grammar errors combined with the misunderstanding over the existence of a country called Georgia.

Shortly after the original responses came cynics claiming the post to be nothing more than trolling. Online trolling is an effort to generate confrontational conversations. Most efforts are tasteless, lewd, and tread on delicate subject matter. Individuals that troll claim “they do it for lulz” (derived from LOL or laugh out loud).

Following the cynics were the proponents of trolling. A number of responses credited the user that posted the question with having done a good job of inciting dissension.

Thereafter was a balanced mix of responses questioning the intelligence of the original user and discussion around whether it was a real question or not.

So why is this noteworthy and how does it relate to marketing? This question showcases an important principle of the interactive world today. There are nearly as many motivations for engagement as there are users. In this case, 195 responses to the question were posted before Yahoo took down the question. The Yahoo Answers forum is generally considered to be a success in terms of generating user engagement and driving loyalty to the entire suite of services Yahoo provides. As a whole, the forum provided a venue for a diverse base of users to engage, interact, and serve their own selfish interests in one location. Some users got to feel superior, others got to take control, and yet more felt they were able to help, while a portion were just doing it for the lulz.

While currently not available on the Yahoo Answers site, this question is far from gone. It has been linked and posted to Digg and BuzzFeed in addition to nearly a hundred copycat questions on Yahoo Answers. Each of these new locations has generated further discussion among new users with an even more diverse set of goals.

The one commonality among all locations has been the ability of the original effort to drive past awareness into engagement. While this question has spread past its original location, the amount of comments and media it has since generated is astounding. The original question has now spawned mashups that include maps, video, and images.

What we take away from this is yet another example of objectives and context being set by users. Flexibility is key in both delivering messages and in the messages themselves. Whatever the main objectives for an interactive project may be, they must be capable of evolving as users in an interactive space make content their own.