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The Internet has created a flat world where access and participation is now the norm.

It’s harder to maintain hierarchies and use status as a way to block everyone out. This is an invitational world where those who welcome and embrace others are rewarded. It doesn’t matter who you are, but having the ability to connect and get down and talk to people at their level suggests a massive shift from ego/status and the “them and us” world of the past.

Given that the amount of time that those in their teens and twenties spend in these virtual non-heirachical worlds, it’s safe to assume that they want to translate this behavior into the real world as well.

This has massive implications for employers, for brands and for experiences in general.

Last night, I went to see a “band”, except that it wasn’t.

It was a guy, who I couldn’t see, all I could do was hear his voice and the music he played.

The first thing he did was invite the audience onto the stage to share it with him, within seconds there were 70 people up on stage.

He then spent the rest of the evening encouraging people to participate in a series of “fun” exercises involving dancing and connecting with others in the audience.

His “music” was merely a prop to make participation happen.

He had blown up the controlling ego of the artist and handed it over to the audience.

This is an extreme example, but it suggests there’s a massive audience out there looking for new types of relationships and new ways to participate.

Interestingly, with so much of people’s time being spent online, the value of real interaction has been raised exponentially.

It’s safe to predict that we will see a lot more mass participatory experiences in 08 and if brands can do their bit to encourage these, they will be all the better for it.  

Posted by Ed Cotton Influx and many others have been following and reporting on the Marketing 2.0 trend which suggests a new open environment of participation between brands and their customers.

The catalyst of the internet has made all the possible and brands now have the power and potential to engage in real dialog.

A few days ago I was struck by this stunning stat from the BBC News as reported by Robin Hamman, who was commenting on a presentation given by Peter Horrocks, Head of the BBC newsroom.

"BBC News can get 10 - 20,000 emails and messages a day, this still only, Horrocks says, represents around 1% of the audience..."

This suggests that we've only scratched the surface of consumer participation, obviously the BBC being a giant media company, is an extreme case.

It raises some interesting questions.

How can the BBC cope with that volume of participation?

How will it cope when it increases?

How does it or does it respond to the wisdom of the crowd, given that it's only 1% of its audience?

If we shift over from the media to the marketing world, it appears that most marketing departments aren't yet designed and organized to manage and cope with Marketing 2.0, most are still working and structured for a 1.0 world.

The Marketing Department is going to need to change radically, but there are some questions.

How do they make the transition?

When does the "tipping point" occur?

Marketing departments need fundamentally new skill sets, new positions/job titles and they are also going to need some smart technology to assist them.

Given how little bandwidth most departments have these days, it's safe to assume that there are quite a few brands out there who risk damaging their reputations because they simply aren't structured to cope with the new era of conversation and participation.


Posted by Ed Cotton Bill Tancer of Hitwise recently presented some interesting stats on participation levels on Web 2.0 sites, his research found that only .16% of all YouTube visits were to upload video and only 0.2% of Flickr visits were to upload photographs.

As we are in the “Participation Age” there seems to be a need to expand the number of participants. It’s questionable if brands are doing enough and by brands, we mean these Web 2 brands and creative brands in general; video cameras, computer brands, digital camera brands, printer brands, etc….

Obviously, the 1% rule is being played out, but think of the market potential if that 1% could be increased to 2%.

Brands in this space need to think about how they can encourage participation, this is part incentive and partly education. The education part is important and can obviously there need to be different streams for different segments; from the non-user, to the user who isn’t interested in sharing.

Clearly all brands that want to move into the Web 2 space and create community and conversation need to listen up, this stuff doesn’t just magically happen, it needs encouragement and education.

One interesting example is the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK, yesterday it launched a blogging service for its readers. For many, this could sound foolish, given the abundance of free blogging platforms, but this is smart as it’s going to attract their readers who trust DT more than the small blogging brands. In addition, in a challenging time for newspapers, there is a lot to gain by doing this and is reaching out and providing education and utility for a new group of participants.



Participation is the tangible offshoot of engagement, which has become the fashionable thing to try and measure these days.

It’s clear, if brands want thriving communities and strong brand relationships, they need do more than pay lip service to the notion of participation.

Is participation a new metric for engagement?