• by Christopher M. Schroeder , February 22, 2008

No, this will not be a column on military dynamics. Or Julia Roberts. Not exactly, anyway. The option to engage or not engage with audiences is a decision buyers and planners make every day. On one level, I understand all the brouhaha among marketers trying to figure out how to engage in user-generated content.

We were just starting to get our minds around the massive diaspora of audiences to seemingly infinite sites — disaggregating network TV, newspapers, magazines, even portals. Now, and forever, there are far-flung conversations talking about, seeking advice and comparing notes on our products and brands.

We all want at least a modicum of control in our lives, and it takes an awfully thick skin to cede it, especially to uncertain quarters. We’ve all seen horrible user-generated experiences, and have some story of some unwashed mass manhandling our brands. The risk to engaging in all this — to have folks (gasp) critique us — can irreparably harm our brands, befoul the air we breathe and cost us our jobs.

Okay, okay, again on one level I get all this. But nothing is that new under the sun. I come from a news background and knew more than one journalist who chortled with glee at some damnation of an advertiser in their articles, proving to the world that they were journalistically pure. Our brands appear around less-than-glowing stories quite regularly, come to think of it.

And I can tell you that online, a thick skin can have great benefit when you are in the fray with folks who are passionate about you and your product. We had a journalist at my news organization who every year — you could almost set your watch to it — wrote a scathing article about the Baltimore Orioles. The year we implemented improved ad targeting, this particularly hostile piece was surrounded by ads for Orioles ticket sales. I expected, as happened on occasion, for the CMO there to call me up and chew me out. And he did call me up — laughing out loud, he told me it was the single best online ticket sales day in Oriole history. 

So we are actually more accustomed to getting into the fray than we sometimes think — and can reap rewards by doing so — but what does that have to do with user-generated content?

Note some insights that my friend Brad Aronson of Avenue A (and co-founder of iFrontier), and probably the most thoughtful person I know on where advertising is going, shared with me about the online health sphere, where my company, healthcentral.com, competes.

>> There are more than 7,000 MySpace members active in MySpace bipolar groups

>> There are more than 4,000 Yahoo groups having a discussion about depression

>> There are nearly 45,000 Facebook members in the Take a Step Against Cervical Cancer group

>> There were more than 200,000 posts in seven months about the flu

Think about these numbers, and think about not only their size, but how each example represents a highly targeted conversation completely relevant to health marketers. As Brad told me, “How can we not listen to what these folks say about our brands? These conversations provide great insights into our customers’ concerns, needs and perceptions of us. For one thing, they’ve allowed our clients to address customer concerns — many of which the clients weren’t even aware of before listening to the online conversations.”

We know that we can be rewarded for thick-skinnedness — it is already happening. So why would we stand down from conversations that are happening anyhow. To not engage is a decision — a decision that allows others to talk about, and define, you.

I cut my teeth in politics, and I learned very early on that a candidate could literally win or lose by allowing an opponent to define the debate. 

We are in a world of great transparency, where folks who are willing to openly engage are rewarded. A decision to sit out will be a decision to leave the game.

Chris Schroeder is CEO of The HealthCentral Network. (schroeder@thcn.com)