Why Brand Solar Systems Are The New Funnel

Here are eight brands cre­at­ing ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with employ­ees, con­sumers, and influ­encers.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Just like the sen­ti­ment behind astro­naut Neil Armstrong’s infa­mous “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” line on the moon, the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try is itself in an era of pro­found change, which, in turn, demands an entire­ly new way of con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing the brand-con­sumer rela­tion­ship. That’s accord­ing to Mark Bonchek, chief cat­a­lyst at ThinkO­r­bit, a firm that helps brands cre­ate social busi­ness strate­gies.


Cit­ing Boston’s Big Dig pub­lic works project, which changed the face of down­town Boston and the sub­se­quent adap­ta­tion GPS sys­tems had to make for new roads, Bonchek said the mar­ket­ing land­scape has under­gone sim­i­lar changes, “but we’re still walk­ing around with old men­tal maps of how we do mar­ket­ing.”

Like a GPS sys­tem, these “new men­tal maps” will require upgrad­ing the “old soft­ware in our brains.”

What’s more, the pace of change in the mar­ket­ing indus­try is accel­er­at­ing with short­er com­pa­ny lifes­pans and quick­er tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment.

This isn’t repaving the road,” Bonchek said at Adobe’s recent Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Sym­po­sium in New York. “This is tak­ing what’s above ground and putting it below.”

The Evolution of Communication

Until the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion was one-way. But then the audi­ence start­ed talk­ing back.

We went from Gut­ten­berg to Zucker­berg,” Bonchek said.

What’s more, the con­sumer audi­ence has become a com­mu­ni­ty, he said, liken­ing the phe­nom­e­non to an Amish barn-rais­ing in which indi­vid­u­als band togeth­er with a com­mon pur­pose, which is seen on sites like Tri­pAd­vi­sor, Yelp, Net­flix, Spo­ti­fy, and Ama­zon Reviews, where con­sumers come togeth­er to solve prob­lems.

The result is “fun­da­men­tal­ly a new mod­el of val­ue cre­ation” in which brands are “get­ting bet­ter at per­son­al­iz­ing the connection…as well as lis­ten­ing and learn­ing,” he said.

The chal­lenge for brands and mar­keters, there­fore, is how they can enable and empow­er that peer-to-peer con­nec­tion in a way in which the brand/marketer gets to play a role as well.

Con­tent mar­ket­ing is only the begin­ning,” Bonchek said. “What’s the con­text for your con­tent?”

That means there are mul­ti­ple mar­ket­ing mod­els to unlearn, he said.

We still ride hors­es, but there’s a bet­ter form of trans­porta­tion today,” Bonchek added.

Brand Orbits: The New Social Solar System

Instead of tra­di­tion­al mod­els, Bonchek advo­cates for a mod­el he calls Brand Orbits, or: Ongo­ing Rela­tion­ship Beyond Indi­vid­ual Trans­ac­tion.

In these so-called Brand Orbits, Bonchek said, “The brand is at the cen­ter of the solar sys­tem and all of your con­stituen­cies are in orbit around you – includ­ing employ­ees, cus­tomers and influencers…and your job is to build grav­i­ty to pull them in.”

When pulled into orbit, the cus­tomer becomes more like a user or mem­ber, he said. These orbits sur­round­ing the brand have all kinds of dif­fer­ent touch­points, most of which are inter­ac­tions, but which are inter­spersed every now and again with trans­ac­tions.

Brands can also build grav­i­ty by tap­ping into a giv­en customer’s friends, fam­i­ly and fol­low­ers, so “then their orbits become your orbits,” Bonchek said.

Instead of mea­sur­ing loy­al­ty in terms of how often con­sumers repeat­ed­ly pur­chase a prod­uct, it becomes, “What’s the fre­quen­cy of that orbit and what’s the strength of the affin­i­ty?” Bonchek said.

In oth­er words, brands need to shift from push­ing con­sumers through the fun­nel to pulling them in to their orbits by “engag­ing com­mu­ni­ties with social expe­ri­ences that sus­tain rela­tion­ships and ful­fill a shared pur­pose,” Bonchek said.

8 Brands Creating Ongoing Consumer Relationships

Here are eight brands doing just that to gen­er­ate grav­i­ty today, accord­ing to Bonchek.

1. Coca-Cola

The brand’s Freestyle Machines, which allow con­sumers to cus­tomize their drink choic­es, also have QR codes and/or chips so that con­sumers can cre­ate rec­og­niz­able pro­files and essen­tial­ly tell the machine, “I’ll have my usu­al,” Bonchek said.

2. Starbucks

You may think it’s a cof­fee com­pa­ny, but it’s actu­al­ly a third place busi­ness – the area between home and work where you con­nect with oth­er peo­ple,” Bonchek said.

The brand cre­ates the pull that brings con­sumers in with grav­i­ty gen­er­a­tors like free Wi-Fi and com­fort­able seat­ing, he said.

3. Sephora

The beau­ty retailer’s Col­or IQ ser­vice scans the sur­face of a consumer’s skin with a hand­held device, which then assigns the skin a Col­or IQ num­ber, which is then matched to a “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pre­cise foun­da­tion,” the brand says.

4. GoPro

Per Bonchek, GoPro is “not in cam­era busi­ness, they’re in the media busi­ness. They’re using the cam­era to cre­ate con­tent to share with oth­ers.”

I met the CMO of GoPro and told him about a time-lapse video I shot in Vegas and his first words were, ‘Did you upload it to com­mu­ni­ty?’” Bonchek said. “They’re using con­tent to pull peo­ple in.”

5. Nike

The Nike+ Run­ning App allows users to plot runs, track times and com­pete with oth­ers, but it also allows users to con­nect with friends in their orbits and to hear cheers and applause on runs, Bonchek said.

6. Walgreens

The drug­store chain allows shop­pers to earn points for pur­chas­es, as well as for healthy activ­i­ties tracked by wear­ables like Fit­bit or Nike+ Fuel­Band, which, Bonchek said, is anoth­er great way to engage.

7. McCormick

The spice brand’s Fla­vor­Print effort is a per­son­al­iza­tion ser­vice that allows users to cre­ate a Per­son­al Fla­vor Pro­file based on likes and dis­likes and pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions for prod­ucts, recipes and fla­vors, based on their pref­er­ences.

8. EpicMix

The ski app, which Bonchek describes as  “like Nike+, but on a moun­tain,” allows users track ver­ti­cal feet, con­nect with friends and share pho­tos, which, in turn, helps ski resorts drum up repeat busi­ness, which is not always easy to do in an indus­try pop­u­lat­ed by thrillseek­ers who want new scenery and chal­lenges.

They’ve cre­at­ed an entire social net­work on the moun­tain,” Bonchek said.

How Can Other Brands Follow The Leaders?

Accord­ing to Bonchek, it’s about find­ing a shared pur­pose with con­sumers and a source of intrin­sic val­ue.

Bonchek also rec­om­mends mar­keters seek out what he calls “lit­tle data.”

If big data is what com­pa­nies know about us that we don’t know they know…little data is what we know about our­selves,” Bonchek said, point­ing to infor­ma­tion in apps like the Nike+ Run­ning App and EpicMix, as well as McCormick’s Per­son­al Fla­vor Pro­file.

The eight grav­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing brands also cre­ate social cur­ren­cy, such as sup­port for friends on a run, as well as pho­tos and recipes.

When you have this whole engage­ment and rela­tion­ship, it’s about how to mon­e­tize that with­out a bait and switch,” Bonchek said, return­ing to the cof­fee exam­ple.

Dunkin Donuts’ mis­sion state­ment is, “Make and serve the fresh­est, most deli­cious cof­fee and donuts quick­ly and cour­te­ous­ly in mod­ern, well-mer­chan­dised stores,” which Bonchek said is good, “but very trans­ac­tion­al and com­plete­ly util­i­tar­i­an.”

Star­bucks, on the oth­er hand, says its mis­sion is “to inspire and nur­ture the human spir­it – one per­son, one cup and one neigh­bor­hood at a time.”

Accord­ing to Bonchek, the key test for brands is to ask them­selves if a consumer’s mis­sion is their mis­sion as well. Or, sim­ply put: “Would you put [the brand’s mis­sion] on a T‑shirt?”

The Star­bucks mis­sion is much more T‑shirt friend­ly, which is in part why it is a grav­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing brand.

Focus on the shared pur­pose and then check: Are you build­ing rela­tion­ships to dri­ve trans­ac­tions or are you embed­ding your­self with­in the rela­tion­ships?” Bonchek said.


What’s your take on the solar sys­tem mod­el?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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