Phil Guarascio, who oversees all of General Motor's advertising and marketing efforts, explained to an audience of interactive marketing experts in Chicago recently that GM is dedicated to building intense and lasting relationships with their customers. One element of that relationship will be dialogue online, says Guarascio, and eventually...

"Good Marketing will be Good Conversation"

Online - The BIG Idea - May/June 1997
by Bayard Saunders

Cyberworks, the company established by GM with the mission to grow a rich dialogue with consumers using new media, has overseen the initiatives which have kept their brands in the forefront of experiments from delivery channels to media planning to live webcasting. The challenge for creatives working online everywhere is to create the environment which encourages commitment to a brand and facilitates the intensity and persistence (no easy task in a society filled with dysfunctional families and tenuous relationships).

As we move away from the magazine publishing model of online communications to something new which blends the best elements of access to information and telephone customer service, this idea of good conversation may become the holy grail of online creative. So what will that look like? Perhaps a little like the script for "Tony and Tina's Wedding."

For those of you too busy to get to off-off-Broadway theater often, T&TW is a play about a wedding, performed not in a theater, but in an old church and a reception hall. The audience is encouraged to participate in the show by learning and singing the songs during the wedding, by sitting at the tables and eating and dancing with the characters during the reception, and by talking with the characters and among themselves throughout the performance. Similar to murder-mystery audience participation plays and other improvisational theater experiments of the 1980's, the script has some specific lines of dialogue, and some, like a jazz music score, which say "improvise on this theme."

It is a compelling experience, for the same reason America Online's and MSN's chat rooms are initially so fascinating to so many. We like a good conversation AND we like to be entertained with a good story, and if it is a true story with real people (like America's Most Wanted or Entertainment Tonight), we enjoy it even more. What more involvement can there possibly be with art, or with educational material, than to feel the effect of your input on the experience during the experience?

And like relationships, this may be a good experience, or a bad one. Any telemarketer will tell you that there is a reason major-league batting averages hover in the .200 to .300 range. Anyone would be lucky to hit a ball once every five times they swing, and that's about the average for pleasant experiences on inbound telephone call centers (much less for outbound callers). Improvisational comedians also share similar batting-average analogies relative to the audience's appreciation of their work. And it is this analogy which rightfully terrifies most advertisers, who are only comfortable with the control inherent in one-way linear mass-communications, like television commercials and print advertisements.

Black Sun Interactive and AdSmart are experimenting with a new software program for chat rooms which monitors conversations for keywords, then when it detects one it offers more information about a related product or service. Certainly the concept seems like it would be more compelling than the banner advertisement in the corner of the screen, but as BackWeb and Pointcast have learned, there is a fine line in the consumer's mind between reminder and intrusion. Also, I suspect we may uncover a newfound prejudice against these software "robots" from the humans they strive to emulate.

This is the most important element, the human factor, often overlooked, which proves itself in research and application. In all the interactive communications projects I am aware of, where the possibility of human contact exists, it is that contact which results in the most positive experience for consumers, both in research settings and in practical applications. What people like most at the exhibit in the mall is not the multimedia kiosk itself, but the human advisor who is there to assist them if they need it. They like to talk to the "operator" who is standing by to take their call. They like the "personal shopper" who gets to know them and makes gift suggestions.

The next great convergence may be the marketing websites and sales telemarketing operations of large companies. And if that happens, don't be surprised if you are looking for writers who have the improvisational performance experience necessary to educate and entertain while carrying on a good conversation, and directors who can motivate such sublime performances from your operators.