Love the One You’re With

The constant quest for new customers is a false holy grail.

Look at your partner.  Ask yourself, what would happen to your assumed wonderful relationship if instead of caring and loving them, you spent all your time looking at other new people as potential partners?  The answer is obvious; you would lose your partner.

Entertainment marketers need to understand the value of their most loyal partners/consumers and focus at least part of their efforts on rewarding them.  And reward them appropriately – with caring thoughtful connections.

 A recent WARC story about Vail ski resort’s EpicMix web and smart phone app underscored the opportunities created by tapping into a current user’s passion with experiential interactivity.  Vail offers EpicMix, an interactive tool that allows skiers to connect their experience with friends via Facebook, create and share their own photos and accomplishments.  EpicMix also offers pin recognition (akin to foursquare check-ins) to log use of the various slopes, time on the mountain and so forth.  All designed to support and reinforce the Vail experience.

“In all, 100,000 people have utilised this app, and 45% made their data visible on Facebook, yielding 35m impressions. “It turns these 100,000 people into brand activists,” Robert Urwiler, Vail’s CIO, said. “You have to earn brand activists.”

Brand activists, evangelists, influencers and heavy users.  All the same behaviorally – all extremely important as they often are the largest segment that profoundly impacts profit.  They are easily reached and will come back time and time again if you show them the love.   Show them you care and bask in the rewards of a strong relationship, a two-way commitment.