Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. The economy’s not that bad.
Nonetheless, we’re seeing a lot of bartering examples popping up in unexpected places. While we’re not suggesting that marketers give up cash payments for beaver pelts, we do think there’s a lesson here for how to better incentivize consumers.
Consider the Dust Jacket Project from musician Joel P. West. His album is not for sale in the traditional sense: anyone looking to receive a copy must send West a creation of their own. He explains:
To receive the free download, send in something of your own creation that describes a part of you. It could be a candid thought or a journal entry, a drawing you’ve been working on for months or a photograph you accidentally took thirty seconds ago. It could be a song or video, an image of something you are building, or it could even be a single word.
Similarly, New York City’s Trade School provides a variety of creativity-enhancing classes for the low, low price of… well, whatever service the teachers want to trade for. (In one example, a teacher provided grant writing services in exchange for assistance with making costumes.) Who says you need to go into debt to get an education?
The point here is this: in the right circumstances, you might get a lot more engagement out of your consumers by asking for something that’s not in their wallets. (And, as we learned in yesterday’s post, sometimes that relationship is more compelling than a freebie anyway.) Generally speaking, this exchange resembles user generated content, but here we’re talking about tapping consumers’ creativity for more than just commercials on the cheap. We’ve thrown around the idea of creative competitions before, and – for the right marketer – curating these types of collections can be a unique brand building experience. Maybe your brand isn’t quite so artsy, but your consumers still want to enjoy themselves. Bringing gaming into their everyday lives makes these (non-financial) contributions seem like entertainment instead of exertion.
Ultimately, if you think your brand could benefit from getting beyond a transactional relationship with your consumers, the key is – on the right occasion – rethinking that transaction.
