I’m thankful to Kenneth Weiss for sharing a chapter from his book Slightware - The Next Great Threat to Brands through a brand strategy forum on LinkedIn.  I took a quick read through the chapter and was intrigued enough to do some follow-up reading on Kenneth’s site.  His book serves to not only put a name and face on the challenges (and misuse) brands face in a digital world, but also to remind marketers about fundamentals in customer engagement.  Slightware is best defined in the following excerpt:

Brand building is fundamentally changing from a one-way transmission through media and marketing to a two-way transaction powered by software.  Once again, the initial step of brands into this new era of technology will not go well. Brand and software will not be entwined gracefully. Done poorly, digital experiences will be slightly “off brand.” Done very badly, the brand will be slighted. This is the age of Slightware.

We’ve blogged about and done client work around the area of online brand engagement.  There’s so much to be said about this area and yet there are so many examples of major brands stumbling their way through it.  At its heart, it comes down to whether marketers are thinking of (and executing) their online presence as a campaign or a conversation.  Weiss does a great job summarizing this point in the visualization below:

So, as marketers in a new era of customer engagement (and customer power), we need to at times honestly evaluate our efforts and ask the question of whether we’re talking at, to, or with our customers.  Often, that simple exercise helps assess the need to switch tactics or re-allocate resources.

I encourage you to check out Weiss’s work and examples of Slightware.  Really good food for thought.  Do any of his examples seem familiar to you…either as a marketer or as a customer??

Tags: Brand Threat, campaigns vs conversations, customer engagement, customer experience, Customer Intimacy, Ken Weiss, Kenneth Weiss, Slightware