Do You Understand Why We Need Interactive Communication - urgently?

　

Quite simply it is the human desire for interaction.

All advertising is a form of learning whereby the advertiser is asking people to change their

behaviour after learning the benefits of the products or services on offer. However, we all

tend to filter out information that we do not want to hear. This clearly alters the effectiveness

of conventional advertising in quite a dramatic way.

The final purchase decision is invariably a compromise and this leads to a certain amount of

anxiety; the worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one. In order to

minimize this anxiety the purchaser seeks to reinforce their choice and begins to take more

notice of their chosen product's marketing communications. Additionally we have created a

media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole communication process has

been de-humanized and depersonalized.

Together with an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional media together

with advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is

disseminated in a passive form. People have this desire to be taken account of. To affect

change, to learn and personalize their relationship with their environment. There are a

phenomenal number of reasons that cause people to interact, going far beyond just giving

them things.

When people agree to participate in truly interactive marketing programmes they are told that

their efforts and feedback are of positive help to the advertisers. Additionally the attraction of

interactive communication is that it is a return to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!

　

People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care

about. We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be

rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters. We long to be part

of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation

imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate.

Commerce is a natural part of human life but is has become increasingly

unnatural over the intervening centuries, gradually divorcing itself from the

very people on whom it depends, whether workers or customers. The result has

been to create a huge chasm between buyers and sellers.

Advertising's failure! Conventional advertising has failed the natural human need for social

interaction. We have created a media society during the last 30 or 40 years

where there is an extraordinary reduction in interaction because of the one-way

and more passive form of information that exists. People desire to be taken

account of, to affect change, learn and personalize their relationships with

their environment. These psychological and sociological factors are part of the

incentive to interact with advertising.