Hasta La Creative!

Spike Jones is on the box.

Ninety-two percent of word of mouth happens offline (so says Keller Fay Group). 92%! And that’s not going to change.

Working from that factual place, Spike’s premise is a brand has to have an offline, real world dimension to any community building efforts it undertakes.

Why is it the more I am connected online, the more alone I feel? Because I an missing the one thing that online can help facilitate, but never replace: the magic of a face-to-face encounter. Not webcam to webcam. But looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand and experiencing the presence of other people who share the same interests. And that, my friends, is the difference between yet another online social community and a successful, sustainable movement.

Sing it from the mountaintop, brother!

To me, this fundamental truth is one more reason to shoot interactive out of its silo.

Interactive–where these so-called online communities are curated–needs to be everyone’s job. No, everyone needn’t run out and learn PHP, ASP and Ruby on Rails. But all agency and client personnel need to fully grasp what the web can and can’t do for a brand.