The trialogue has arrived

I did not write this but thought you would find it interesting - so for those of you who want to read the original source.

http://www.i-level.com/resource-centre/opinion-pieces/trialogue.php

For lazy people - here is the trialogue

Andrew Walmsley, co-founder of i-level
13 June 2007

When Moses climbed the mountain to collect a set of tablets, he wasn’t expecting a consultation exercise. No focus groups had been conducted, and no quantitative research. The tablets came with commandments on them, and there was a certain amount of implied definitiveness that came with that term.
And media’s been pretty much like that for most of the several thousand years since then. A small number of people told a large number of people what they thought, and there was very little opportunity for the mass to respond – and if they did, it was subject to the editorial control of those in power.
Which is why when the web appeared in 1994, people started getting excited. A new paradigm was emerging, they said. In the future, where there previously had been a monologue, there will be a dialogue. Consumers will be able to respond to communications just as easily as they can receive them, and the implications for brands are enormous.
I went to a conference in 1996 in Edinburgh, where hundreds of marketing and media folk debated hotly the exciting opportunity this new world of dialogue would bring their brands. We spent three days talking about how brands would be able to have a dialogue with consumers, and that this would be a more powerful means of communication because of the level of involvement that consumers would have.
Throughout the debate it was clear what benefits a dialogue with consumers could have for brands. The trouble was, there wasn’t much in it for consumers. Speaking for myself, I don’t really want to have a dialogue with Persil, or Sainsbury’s or Yoplait. I don’t even want to have a dialogue with Audi or Vodafone or Selfridges, in which I would normally be expected to be considerably more interested.
Ultimately I want them to get on with being them. Make my clothes clean, connect my calls – the hygiene factors are important, but the emotional elements are just as much theirs too, and I either buy into them or I don’t.
So the ability to create real, meaningful dialogue often ended up being too costly, too difficult and often simply too much work for the value generated.
But emerging over the last few years has been a new dynamic, infinitely more powerful than the dialogue ever promised to be, more threatening, more revolutionary and more valuable.
When we look back in another ten years, we will see that the true impact of digital media was not to find new ways to connect brands to consumers, but in connecting those consumers (or “people” as they like to refer to themselves) to each other.
This simple fact has created a new ecosystem.
Now, people collaborate together to create software, which they release back onto the web where it outperforms the ‘commercial’ competition. They share information about medical conditions, challenging the authority of the medical establishment. They co-operate to drive down fuel prices, publishing the cheapest price for your postcode. And they join forces to bring down brands who let them down, publishing video of underperforming products.
The age of the Trialogue has arrived.
The challenge this poses for brands is that they’re no longer handing down the tablets. Their consumers have relegated them to the position of supplier, and are talking about them, not to them.
Whilst this is a threat to those who adhere to the status quo, it’s an opportunity to those brands who can reinterpret themselves as facilitators. They recognise that the bulk of the discourse will take place between consumers, and their role in this is to enable, empower, listen and just occasionally, talk.
The trialogue will influence every aspect of marketing, from product design (threadless.com) through to product recommendation (tripadvisor.com), and its potency derives from opportunity brands now have not to talk at people, but to be a small part of billions of their conversations.

Comments

[Peter Gold]

My god John, did you get on a tall soap box for that one?

[John Whitehurst]

it is not mine ... a copy and paste from a very big soap box (check the link)

but i did want to to get a bit of discussion going -but like the brands

people just don't want to talk to me

and

it is probably a wise decision

[Alex]

Agree with all of that, but as long as we all appreciate that finding and choosing the right job / career is (for the vast majority of us) a bigger decision than any consumption focused one. So a dialogue with the employer and one-on-one engagement with the brand is, or rather can be, absolutely critical in that decision process.

We all know Recruitment Consultants to be in the main (am I being too controversial here?) simply salesmen/women by any other name, but if their gain means a bit of communication to make you, the candidate, believe they care about helping you make the right career decision then so be it. But at least they’re communicating with you directly. At least they ‘pretend’ to care. Perhaps that’s a big part of why candidates like to use their services (that and the fact that in a very British way we probably prefer someone else to do our self-promotion and negotiation).

The human state is one where communication is part of the reason that we’ve prospered as much as we have (that and opposable thumbs) – yet recruiting companies, or their pay-rolled recruiters, all too often see it as a “hassle” or “distraction” to likewise engage with candidates.

If the marketing world is starting to understand the trialogue then great – maybe they can add that together with getting an appreciation of the fact that a recruitment experience is as personal a brand engagement as they are likely to get, and then come to realise that if you add this all together then what you get is a flippin compelling reason to get your potential candidate engagement right, both on initial contact and on an ongoing basis.

There is every reason for a candidate to want to engage with you in a dialogue – the question is whether you are wiling and able to allow them to do that as well as listening and learning from what they’re saying? I know first hand some of the most successful companies in the world are treating potential or indeed existing customers of their products and or services in a manner that is little short of contempt when it comes to their recruiting experience – and all because the recruitment team is too under-resourced, over-stretched and / or with little real appreciation of the real marketing value they wield and the brand influence they leverage (for the good or, unfortunately all too often, the bad).

Quit blowing your dosh on trying to give a persil tablet a personality and ensure that if I ever come into contact with Unliver I at the very least stay brand neutral whether you employ me or not, but with a little love and care I might even become a brand champion on your behalf – and that, from any one’s long term consideration, makes me, and therefore your recruitment engagement, a very valuable asset and a very worthwhile, nay critical, investment for you UK plc.

[Matt]

Lets not forget that a true Trialogue also includes candidates / employees / ex employees talking to each other in "public" about their recruitment and working experiences in a company. Just look at the ex employee groups of companies springing up on Facebook and elsewhere....the discussions aren't always very positive! This was also quite interesting http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/06/n118106.xml

I think the last line of it is the most telling "So far all those unmasked are former employees"