Creating behaviour change through software.
As a continuation to my post on how valuable software has become as a marketing tool, I was reminded of this snippet from a very expensive Forrester paper on how 35 – 54 year olds will be leading the social computing movement by 2012.
” Two seemingly opposing forces seem to influence Social Computing adoption among European consumers: age and the number of years online. Even today, the longer a consumer is online, the more he or she adopts Social Computing activities. Toward 2012, the group with the longest Net tenure — the 35- to 54-year-olds — will spearhead Social Computing growth, not the youth.”
The fascinating phrase here is: the longer a consumer is online, the more he or she adopts Social Computing activities.
At a very deep level, social computing runs counter to the values of this age group. If, you were to attempt a communications campaign to get them to expose the most intimate details of their private lives online, engage in prodding and poking, talking like Pirates or building up Vampire armies to attack their friends’ Zombies, I think you’d have a tough road ahead of you.
The problem with communications as a tool to change behaviour is that you are asking people to think about what you’re saying, internalize it and then act upon it. As we’re now learning, action actually precedes thought in many cases and I think this is exactly the truth that software is able to capitalize upon.
Without having to confront the idea of the behavior – software like Facebook – gets grown men like my friend Mark Goldstein (who wouldn’t answer my wall post asking if he was looking for porn links) to engage.
Brilliant software design breaks down a big ask into small, discrete steps each of which are easy for the user to execute and which deliver a reward.
Now, apply this framework to your marketing problem de jour. What is the behaviour you’re trying to affect? Can it be broken down into small, discrete steps? Can you create software that walks your customers through it these steps and make it enjoyable?
I find this line of thinking highly rewarding, hope you do too.