"How do consumers engage with brands in an increasingly digital world?"

It's the question, that the FEED09 report published by Razorfish, is hoping to answer. If you have the time, the report is well worth a read and is an experience in itself (the art direction on the report is quite comical at times). However, the assumption of this post is that you don't have the time to read it all, and as such we'll boil down what we believe the key takeaways are.

Digital brand experiences create customers. 

Digital brand experiences are not just "awareness" or "conversion" plays, but customer-creation plays. According to the research, the overwhelming majority of consumers who actively engage with a brand digitally show significant upticks across the entire marketing funnel. Marketers, therefore, need to dramatically rethink their future strategies, shifting the majority of their efforts toward actively engaging consumers and not just paying for eyeballs (eyeballs are not enough, engagement is). 64% of consumers report making a first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience.

Digital can make or break a brand

65% of consumers report having had a digital experience that either positively or negatively changed their opinion about a brand. Of that group, a whopping 97% indicated that their digital experience influenced whether or not they eventually purchased a product or service from that brand.

Action-ize, don't advertise

According to the report, branded experiences (or actions) are the new advertising. And consumers are increasingly insatiably hungry for them.

People, in general, want to be marketed to

Conventional wisdom holds that consumers don’t want brands encroaching on their personal lives this is far from the truth. According to the study, nearly 40% of consumers reported having "friended" a brand on Facebook and/or MySpace and 26% have followed a brand on Twitter

Conversation, Is overrated

Social Media consultants and strategists will always tell you that social media and digital experience is about "conversation". Not true, says the report. One insightful finding of the report was the observation that a good chunk of consumer don't actually want conversations.... they want deals. On Twitter, 44% of respondents indicates they follow companies for special deals and bargains. On Facebook or MySpace, this accounted for 37% of respondents. Is your organization one where you could be offering deals?

Though we already knew these facts anecdotally from our clients' successes, the report brings a well needed quantitative consumer perspective to the digital engagement discussion table. After all, these days consumers spend, on average, as much time online engaging with digital as they do watching television. Digital experience matters. If you are interested in finding out what your organization can do to create compelling digital experiences to engage your current and future customers, contact Work at Play today