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c h a p t e r10: SOCIAL OBJECTS■interactions that could have been presented for any brand wrapped around it. If you
are marketing packaged goods, and your “consumer” gut is telling you that “people
are only going to talk about (this) product so much,” then take stock and consider
doing something else. By all means, build a casual game—people like them. Just don’t
confuse it with a “social presence.” It’s not.
To check your own ideas (or the pitches of others), here are three questions
worth asking when designing a social experience:
• Why would consumers gather around this?
• What’s in it for them if they do?
• Could you swap in some other product and not cause a change in the answers to
the two questions above?
In both “The Art of the Cookie” and “The Hub,” the failing wasn’t the busi-
ness objectives or the lack of a social object. There are plenty of social aspects to
sharing cookies and the conversations that form around them—over tea, for example.
Walmart’s younger customers have plenty to talk about in regard to music, clothes, and
school—all of which are directly related to what Walmart sells. These were not bad
ideas—in fact, they were really good ideas that were executed poorly: The failing was
that the participant experience was thin or contrived, and the conversation was con-
trolled and oriented toward the brand or the products being sold. There is a big differ-
ence between participating in a branded, directed effort versus the more natural, casual
conversation about topics that may well be present around a brand. It’s a difference
worth noting when building a product-based community.
Big note here: This is not a knock on Pepperidge Farm, which happens to be a
brand that I love, nor is it a critique of Walmart. It’s always good fun to poke fun at
people for the way they look while dancing: It’s another matter entirely to get out there
and dance. Both firms deserve credit for trying. What is noteworthy about both exam-
ples is the importance—especially when working with a traditional agency—of not
only getting the social object right (again, a Pepperidge Farm cookie is a social object)
but also of ensuring that the opportunity for meaningful, participant (customer) driven
social interaction exists. The really tough part of building a strong social site is ensur-
ing that the participant—and not the brand or product—is at the center of the social
interaction.
Compare “The Art of the Cookie” or “The Hub” with Pampers Village, or
Pepsi’s “The Juice”, both built around the interests of participants. Themes like parent-
ing, personal health, and well being act as the anchors for these programs, and it’s the
parents, the women, and their conversations that sit at the center of the action. Both
afford plenty of opportunity for social interaction between participants, and plenty of
relevant exposure and connection for the brands and products in the process.