Today’s customer is skeptical and wary of advertising and marketing; traditional approaches are no longer enough to build awareness and loyalty, as customers are increasing look to peer-based word of mouth and ‘authentic’ storytelling to make their purchase decisions.

Whether it’s a result of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or individual blogs, brand loyalty rises and falls based on the impact of community-created media – a fact that is increasingly true in both the Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business realms.

Marketers risk losing control of the message in a world where the experience is different for every individual and the story continually changes; one size does not fit all.

Implementing a campaign that crosses traditional and new-media approaches may seem complex, but there are low-cost tools that can help you to simplify the planning and implementation of marketing strategies to provide hooks and encourage user-generated stories.

Specifically, marketers can take advantage of approaches employed by interaction designers, including ‘people-centered’ design techniques; these techniques help to clarify key user interactions through the research, modeling, and prototyping of experiences.

With a focus on creating ‘user stories’ and scenarios, these approaches use inexpensive and iterative approaches to clarify strategic goals, improve communications within teams and with clients, and provide a platform for designing programs.

Through this presentation, participants will learn how to build buzz and customer engagement by integrating community-based ‘anti-marketing’ with traditional marketing and communications programs.