Messaging: The Future of Brand Engagement?

By Amy Stapleton on February 11, 2016 • ( 2 )

I recently wrote about a campaign that sought to publicize the weekly “The Muppets” show that airs on ABC. Typically, you’d imagine the show’s advertising agents running TV ads, ramping up promotional posts on their Facebook page, and sending out lots of Tweets. In this case, those responsible for raising awareness about “The Muppets” took it a step further; they created a Miss Piggy chatbot that people could talk to directly on Facebook Messenger.

The messaging campaign was done in partnership with Imperson, a company that enables “bi-directional communication” with fictional characters. Imperson also created a character to promote the Universal Studios movie “Unfriended.” They established a Facebook page for the film’s main character, Laura Barns, and enabled a Laura Barns chatbot that fans could engage with over Facebook Messenger.

According to Imperson’s data, more than half of the page’s fans engaged the Barns character in conversation, 23% of users shared it with their friends, and 61% of chat users described the experience in a positive way.

Is messaging the future of brand engagement? Puneet Mehta, founder and CEO of MSG.ai, seems to believe it is. Like Imperson, MSG.ai is a company that enables brands to have personal, real-time conversations with consumers on messaging platforms. IPG Media Lab recently hosted an event on the topic of Conversational Interfaces. Mehta participated on the panel and offered some insights into why messaging platforms could very well be the best brand interface of the future.

Leverage Existing Consumer Habits
It’s best to meet consumers where they are and where they are most comfortable. The majority of time spent on smartphones is spent texting, either via messaging platforms or SMS. Even with the growing popularity of voice interfaces, texting is still the dominant means of communication on mobile devices.

Acknowledge the Downsides of Apps
Companies scrambled to stand up websites at the advent of the Internet age. Then they built apps to make sure their brand was available on mobile platforms. Now there appears to be a shift towards texting / messaging as the simplest way to communicate and get things done. Mehta emphasizes that consumers aren’t likely to install an app for a brand they interact with infrequently. It’s much easier for them to check in with the brand via the messaging platform they’re using all day anyway when they have a question or issue.

Widen the Funnel
By engaging on the same playground where everyone is already interacting, brands suddenly have the opportunity to reach a much wider audience and initiate one-on-one conversations with a seemingly endless stream of prospects. It’s not difficult to script a chatbot that can interact with consumers to promote an event or product. The work that MSG.ai did in partnership with Sony Pictures to promote their Goosebumps movie is a great example. MSG.ai helped Sony build a chatbot in the form of the character Slappy and the number and quality of conversations exceeded expectations.

Summing It Up
It remains to be seen if the trend towards messaging will represent the same tectonic shift as the move from web to apps. But companies that have already invested in intelligent assistants to power customer self-service can leverage those investments to experiment with consumer interactions over popular messaging platforms.