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Boil any social, content, marketing, CRM or PR programme down to its bare bones and it has all the hallmarks of cultism, as all efforts point towards a desire to convince others that the message is one worth following.

Human beings are naturally inquisitive and mentally programmed to want to join groups due to the companionship and affiliation needs they fulfil.

With this in mind, getting an individual to join you should be a relatively simple thing to do. They want to be a part of what you’re putting together, they just need a little coaxing.

Danny Wallace encapsulated this brilliantly in the book Join Me, the true story of a man who started a cult by accident.

Before you set out on your quest to grow your fanbase, there are four stages of cultism that you should factor into your plans:

1. Proclaim your vision

Nobody’s going to follow you unless they know what you’re all about. Being personal and enigmatic is essential here. Jim Jones, Jesus and José Mourinho (is there something about the letter ‘J’?) are individuals who gained an utter devotion in their audience.

They spoke from the heart, promised a utopia, and people resonated with what was being communicated. Ask yourself, exactly why would someone want to become an active advocate of your company?

2. Define behaviour rules

So you want to be part of that vision? Here’s what we’re going to do.

You’ll join our Facebook group, you’ll want to contribute to discussions on the topics we put out there, and you’ll enter our competitions and spread our message to all your friends and family. That’s generally what brand social channels are asking people to do, but they often skirt around the subject.

Be honest with your followers, but also respect and react to their input, and they’ll be far more receptive to your demands – those who don’t want to join in can pop off elsewhere…you don’t need them anyway.

3. Ensure your followers want to stay around

It’s obviously not just a one-way deal. The act of your followers’ meeting these demands is worthy of some kind of reward.

Let your group know that you value them, you love them, and that their continued attention is going to bring them recognition. The occasional voucher or discount code is a nice virtual hug; a way of saying “thanks for being there”.

This in turn will give your greater sway and influence over their actions. Many cults are built on fear and intimidation, but that’s unlikely to transfer to the digital realm where anyone can unlike or unsubscribe at the click of a button.

4. Make the group rely on you

This is where your power as a content producer gives you an unrivalled advantage – bring people in by offering them an exclusive view on the thing they’ve shown interest in, then fuel that desire with an ever-evolving narrative that brings them in deeper to your brand bosom.

If you get the balance and the approach right, you’ll get people beating down your virtual door, clamouring for their next content fix.

Where anyone outside the company would need to jump through hoops to get hold of the people and places associated with your business, you can instantly call people for comment, arrange behind the scenes access and dip into your archives, all with the intent of offering a view that only your followers will get to see.

Turning the camera around the other way is a sure-fire way of attracting eyeballs. This Is It was probably more interesting than the reality of a Michael Jackson tour ever would have been.

One of the things that marks out a cult, and often one of the things that makes followers want to be a part, is its detachment from the mainstream.

Undoubtedly the quickest way for a parent to steer their child away from a band or artist is to start bopping along with them when they come onto the stereo.

Some businesses tip over into full-blown religion. Customers of One Direction, Grand Theft Auto and Manchester United show avidity and devotion (not to mention a willingness to spend) that many companies, and probably many churches, are envious of.

But they could be classed as victims of their own success. Don’t forget those who have been there with you from the beginning. Those who helped you when social follower numbers were in the double digits.

Your core cult following needs to be understood and nurtured, so involve them and respect them, and they will start to hold you in high esteem as their unrivalled patriarch…then you can make them drink the Kool-Aid.

T-shirt image credit: Threadless

Releasing the value of programmatic media

Attribution will provide programmatic media with a new ally in establishing its impact on other channels.

For example, we have a number of clients using our own proprietary attribution technology for all their media planning. Within their Business Intelligence dashboard we have two perspectives of the channel activity, one as last click data and the other as attributes data.

The last click will typically boost the role of SEO and PPC to indicate that more people selected a last click from these channels before converting on a sale or other conversion page.

The attributed data, on the other hand, will typically increase the role of display by looking at the converting and non-converting paths of users who have been exposed to multiple channels.

Display, in a number of cases, will have a direct role in influencing search later down the funnel which will be indicated by ’re apportioned’ clicks from last click to attributed clicks in the client reports.

We can then use this insight to re-weight the channel mix and further optimise performance. 

From pull to push marketing

This attribution technology has been widely used in direct performance channels but will be even more prevalent as VOD, brand display and content move into the sphere of programmatic media.

It is always difficult to understand the role of content within earned or non paid channels alongside the more established paid channels. Many paid channels are now effectively acquisition channels and I suspect content and more push based content channels will become the new frontier of digital marketing.

Attribution will also provide a huge value for measuring cross device influence and help define the role of social and CRM data within programmatic planning. 

Working closer with data partners

Given Facebook’s announcement of a number of offline data initiatives, looping in loyalty card data to substantiate their effect on high street purchases and even testing offline creatives within their digital platform to create more compelling traditional advertising, I suspect attribution will become a key part of their offering.

Nielsen and tech vendors are also tackling this area which will culminate in a true cost per view, engagement or sale by specific audience type.

Consumers will always win

I suspect the end result will be that creative, content, social endorsement, personalised content and device agnostic delivery will dominate the market.

Users will increasingly pull content, which will re-orientate programmatic technology away from consolidating paid channels to un-converting the effect of the ‘other half’ of media spend. 

Client based trading desks

Nowhere will this be more clearly demonstrated than within the client based trading desks that are starting to appear. This phenomenon has been spearheaded by the large FMCG and high reach advertisers that feel there is more value to managing the agency trading desk facilities within their own marketing team.

Effectively this relationship is a quasi partnership where agency and/or a tech provider support the platform and data consolidation that sits behind the programmatic desks.

The value of this approach is clear where high reach metrics are easy to achieve without constant redesigning by the agency.

However, as content and unpaid channels start to move within programmatic, agencies and their creative teams will be required and the model will flip flop back and forth. 

In summary

I hope this series has been useful. I appreciate all the comments and emails. Programmatic media is still in its infancy in terms of real application across all paid, owned and earned media channels.

It is a very effective way of valuing inventory against campaign objectives rather than publisher rate cards. As publishers mobilise consumer data into inventory management solutions and clients integrate CRM into marketing channels, there will be increasing parity in the pricing of paid programmatic media.

The real value of programmatic will be when it is underpinned by attribution technology and can deliver across richer and more interactive media formats.

Once this has been reached the industry will effectively have a new marketing platform that integrates both push and pull channels alongside an algorithmic attribution technology that will optimise against the new audience interaction KPIs that are being established; I suspect these will be dominated by the consumer centric measures championed by our friends in the econometric department. 

Other posts in this series: 

• Four years on: the growing pains of programmatic media
• Programmatic media unpacked (part two)
• The nuts and bolts of programmatic marketing (part three)