Seth Godin used the funnel as a metaphor for the traditional customer journey, described in various terms- as awareness, consideration, trial, purchase, repurchase. His insight was that in the new world of user generated content the funnel could now be flipped and become a megaphone for advocacy.
While Seth tried to breath some life into an insider marketing icon, that linear progression—of broadcasting to a wide audience while hoping that an ever-declining subset of those still standing would end up trying or buying—seemed very familiar. It’s tied to the same, old Madison Avenue intrusion model. You know, the one that says, "A .7% response to a bazillion name list blast should fill the funnel.”
I want to introduce a better metaphor for customer behavior in the post-advertising age. Let's keep it within the kitchen vernacular and flip the colander.
First, let's assume a post-advertising user empowered perspective. (By that I mean the intrusion model is dead—and that the only messages that customers experience are the ones they choose to experience.) From that perspective, which experience seems more appealing? A blast rendering you numb or duped as you fall into a vortex of increasing darkness and reduction of choice? Or a universe of equally luminescent points of interaction upon which you can surf—until you find something that interests YOU?
Here on the outer, convex side of the flipped colander, customers may surf like on a dome. The navigation can be non-linear, touch-points are quick and easy and the proliferation of choice on the horizon makes the whole dome take on a feeling of transparency. You can come and go as you please, and you can see other customers in similar states of interaction. When done well, the whole instrument takes on an energetic user empowered (word of mouth) hum.
The pass through experience may be a click or a check-in or a phone call to anyone at your company, or it might be a referral to another brand’s colander. In any case it's simple, clear, self-directed. Each interaction is an opportunity to increase the energy, the chance of return, and the opportunities to share.
Consider the funnel, with its swirl, vortex (and flush) vs. the colander, offering a proliferation of choice, simple interactions, and lots of opportunities for user determined associations and re-engagement.
In the post-advertising age, marketers will still need to let people know about their product, brand or service. It's how people become engaged with you, and the nature of that engagement (be it a funnel or a colander), that will define business in the post-advertising world.
Next post: The colander, when flipped again, becomes a radar dish.