Do you have dinner plans? It’s Friday, and if you’re like me, from time to time you ask friends for restaurant recommendations, or maybe tap into the community to see who’s excited about the latest greatest place or hidden gem in the city. I’m sure we’ve all been there. A friend tells you “you absolutely _MUST_ eat at such-and-such a place” – an example of pure, unbridled passion about their experience at the restaurant, and one might say, an example of evangelism.
It raises the question: what is it that turns someone from a ho-hum supporter of a given restaurant to a vocal evangelist? Perhaps there’s some insight that could be gleaned from them to help transform our key audiences into evangelists of our clients’ products, services, or brands.
Earlier this week, I checked out Wired Wednesday in Toronto, a regular meet-up put on by Sarah Prevette, Erin Bury and all of the other great folks at RedWire. Web designer Peter Flaschner gave an interesting talk about how evangelism comes down to passion. Referencing some research that’s come out of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Peter explored the idea of autonomous passion vs. controlled passion, positing that autonomous passion is the source of evangelism. Think of it as the kid that’s forced to learn piano growing up vs. the kid that wants to learn piano. Which one is more likely to stick with the piano throughout his or her life?
Generally speaking, I think marketers tend to focus far too often on controlling passion rather than trying to inspire autonomous passion. Burger King’s “de-friend 10 friends for a Whopper” promotion is an attempt to generate passion, but one could question if that passion is sustained after the campaign ends. How many people continued to buy Whoppers based on that campaign after it was over? That’s not to say that those “controlled passion” type of tactics aren’t valuable. They can still serve a purpose, but they won’t necessarily create evangelists.
Perhaps the reason why we don’t focus more on fostering autonomous passion is because it’s much more difficult to do. My own opinion is that there’s no magic recipe – how to regularly inspire autonomous passion for any given product, service or brand is the multi-million dollar question. The consensus at Wired Wednesday at least was that it starts with a compelling offering – something your audience wants. If you have to convince someone to like something, you’re behind the eight ball already.
If examples like Apple are any indication, autonomous passion – the type that creates fanatical, perhaps even obsessive evangelists – requires a company-wide, cross-discipline approach. Public relations may be a part of that, but every touch point with the audience is another opportunity to augment the perception of the brand, and if done correctly, foster autonomous passion that leads to evangelism. Besides creating brand advocates, this type of approach also helps see companies through the odd times when a product or service launches that may not be up to competitive standards. Those evangelists will still cheerlead for you.
Cultivating evangelism is a grey area to be sure, but the ideas that came out of Wired Wednesday serve as great food for thought. At a minimum maybe they will make you raise an eyebrow about what’s gone into a friend’s raving endorsement of the new restaurant around the corner.
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