Mashing Up the Marketing Mix:
Introducing the 6th P . . . Play
Michael Graber

Southern Growth Studio | [e-mail]

 

When at Staples.com, I hit the Easy button. My daughter decides which brands can talk to her through Nordstrom’s Fashion Feed. As buyers, we want the power to choose our options and gain a measure of control over the experience. Companies that figure out how to invite us to play invite us to make their offerings our own. When we buy, we tell a friend about it. Perhaps we even syndicate it on Digg or Del.icio.us. As we’ve known for years, peer recommendations drive the choices buyers make.

A driven, busy 50-year-old executive turned me into a werewolf. A renowned product designer poked one of my friends. I lost a movie-trivia quiz to the former CEO of a global marketing holding company. Welcome to the business side of Facebook—where a little play releases stress, where thought leaders plug into industry-wide forums, and where deepening client relationships and attracting talent happen as a byproduct of having fun.

Meanwhile, over on Second Life, leading consumer-focused and business-to-business companies are spending energy and money running virtual organizations. Their new existence is rooted in delight. Notice the verbs in the set up instructions: They create an avatar, explore, and have fun. Serious companies such as IBM, Bain, Coke, and hundreds of others are leading the charge into this digital playground.

Even the austere New Yorker invites readers to play with its venerated one-panel cartoon format by submitting their own punch lines through an online form. Down the street at the Niketown Lab, consumers can design their own shoes, even add their own signature to it. The online feature of this lab alone generates three million unique visitors per month.

Interaction, Not reaction

The once immutable laws of marketing have relaxed. The examples above, and thousands of others, signify that a command-center approach to marketing communications is outmoded. Building a brand with public relations and amassing expert credentials alone will not work. For example, as an avid reader and sometimes writer, I trust the consumer reviews on Amazon.com more than a handful of book-jacket blurbs. In fact, I have never read a bad book-jacket blurb—but online readers let me know when the latest “masterpiece” should be scrupulously avoided.

Today’s consumers don’t trust top-down messaging; they can see the seams—and the holes— too easily. In fact, the word

“consumer” is itself outmoded and unrealistic in an interactive society. Instead, companies must reach out to potential participants and players.

Everywhere companies are encouraging us to become a part of their culture by inviting us to play, to participate, to opine— to interact with their brand, their product, their community. Gone is the communication fire-wall set up by the legal and PR departments.

Everything has changed.

In this era of interaction, the ability to play with a brand, product, or service is a critical factor in winning new sales and retaining existing selling relationships. The above examples are not merely clever promotions. Like the universe, marketing always expands.

The marketing mix—once the four Ps of Product, Place, Price and Promotions, later upgraded to the five Ps with the addition of Positioning—now welcomes the sixth P, Play.

We expect the power to choose our options and to control the experience. We expect to try things out, to squeeze the Try Me button on a SpinBrush toothbrush before throwing it in the cart.

Marketing has merged with

 

 The Subservient Chicken: your wish is his command.