Andrew's Idea Rush
At the MRS Conference last month I was invited to take part in the Ideas Rush an exercise where you have 5 minutes to talk about one idea and you are only allowed one slide to help you communicate it. I decided that my idea was going to start with a balloon and end with a massive bang. I asked the 70-80 delegates in the room to stand up; muster up as much energy as possible and then blow up their balloons with it. After they had tied their balloon I then instructed them to write 1% on it with a black marker pen before then placing the balloon on their seat.
The name of my idea (you guessed it) was the 1%ers (or “Adfluentials” as we call them at Face). As brands’ leading edge consumers they place an increasingly important role in the co-creation process. To find them brands need to start looking at consumers in a fundamentally different way – not just as potential customers who want to buy something from them but as people who want to have a relationship with them.
The 1%ers are not passive respondents but active equals in your brand and they sit at the top of a brand relationship pyramid. They are:
1. Generally passionate about your category;
2. Passionate about your brand;
3. Have a set of skills that you could harness in co-creation
4. Have a large peer network
The key to getting the most out of your 1%ers is to worry less about how you are going to influence them in the hope that they will influence the rest of your potential customer base and worry more about how you are going to let them influence YOU.
If brands are prepared to let the 1%ers influence them, then the energy and the impact they can create for the brand could be as much if not more than the energy and the impact we created in the room by sitting on our balloons all at once. BANG!
