Marketing in the Participation Age: A Guide to Motivating People to Join, Share, Take Part, Connect, and Engage

Discover, Empower, Connect!

Turn intrinsic human desires into your most powerful marketing tool. Marketing in the Participation Age shows you how to rethink marketing. Transform consumers into active participants for your brand by capturing their interest, empowering them to contribute, and developing meaningful relationships that keep them involved. Learn how to create a marketing environment that fulfills your customers′ desire to seek challenges and discover new things—and watch their participation yield greater revenues for your business.

"Marketing is constantly evolving. Companies can′t compete by using the same old, tired tools. This book provides fresh inspiration, with a new framework for doing things differently."
—Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate; inductee into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame

"Participant marketing transformed the way we did business in the marketplace as an agency and provided a framework for doing business with clients that added unique value to their marketing efforts."
—Kris Pinto, founder of Moxie Interactive

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The Participation Age xi

1 Marketing in the Age of Participation 1

2 The Catalyst: The Consumer–to–Participant Transformation 11

3 Tools for the Past 60 Years 31

4 Time for a Participation Revolution 57

5 Participation Way for the Participation Age 81

6 D + E + C = P2: Discover 95

7 D + E + C = P2: Empower 105

8 D + E + C = P2: Connect 119

9 D + E + C = P2: Participation 127

10 D + E + C = P2: Performance 137

11 Planning: Bringing the Participation Way to Life 147

12 Measuring Participation Performance 169

13 The Future Marketer: The Nurturist 183

References 195

Index 199

DAINA MIDDLETON is a pioneer in the digital marketing space, a marketing professional with more than twenty years in the industry, working in both the client and agency environments. She is the global CEO of Performics, the performance marketing division of Publicis Groupe and one of the largest and oldest search and performance media agencies. She regularly speaks and appears at industry events, including ad:tech, WOMMA, VideoNuze, and iMedia, to name a few.