In the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” an Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner), began hearing voices famously telling him “if you build it, he will come.” As the story goes, Ray eventually gives into the voices, ignoring the possibility of losing his farm, and begins plowing his fields and building a baseball diamond. Sure enough, once built, ghosts from baseball’s past began pouring out of the cornfield to play on the freshly built diamond.
Unfortunately, this is exactly how it doesn’t work when it comes to launching a platform or application. In fact, the “if you build it, they will come” mentality is a sure fire way to achieving underwhelming results — leaving both client and agency frustrated with the lack of impact created after a substantial financial investment and months of work.
The evolution of digital has provided a way for brands to interact with consumers like never before. When used correctly, a platform or application can provide consumers with everyday services, utilities, motivation, and social interactions that will enrich their lives. A branded application experience can turn consumers into active participants, facilitating their lifestyles, and enabling them to actually live the brand. Finally, once built, platforms and applications have the capacity to live on forever. Truly, a brand can offer no higher level of engagement than through platforms and applications.
But an application, no matter how brilliant, will almost certainly end up in a digital wasteland with the carcasses of similarly brilliant ideas of old if it’s not coupled with a good ol’ fashioned campaign. A story, adding emotion, and a media spend, adding eye balls. People have been running campaigns, promoting products, from what seems like the beginning of time. But, for some reason, when it comes to platform and application development we suddenly forget all about what might be the most important part, the campaign. We see it everyday. A brand throws a big budget at an application but inexplicably takes no thought of how they’re going to create demand when it’s time for launch, assuming that “if you build it, they will come.” While an application may have the potential to provide the highest level of consumer engagement, without a story behind it the functionality can become hollow and unfulfilling. And without a media spend, that story doesn’t have a fighting chance of reaching consumers, driving adoption, and being shared with others at a successful rate. I thought this tweet by R/GA’s Kyle Bunch summed it up perfectly, “@BUNCH: If you build it (and don’t fuel it with paid media), they won’t come.”
Listen closely to the voice of digital media saying “if you build it, and fuel it with campaigns, they will come.”