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R E L E A S E
T H E
P O W E R
O F
E N TA N G L E D
MARKETING
Go beyond c u s t o me r e n g a g e me n t t o
a long-last ing e n t a n g l e d re l a t i o n s h i p
By Stan Rapp & Sebastian Jespersen
Chapter 1
MARKETING
TAKES A
QUANTUM LEAP
Our take on the business world of the future began
three years ago when Stan was about to board a flight
from LGA to Atlanta. Looking over the usual array of
magazine titles at the newsstand, Stan’s choice was
Scientific American. Just the thing to
take his mind off business challenges
“The most perplexing phenomenon in the bizarre world of
for a while.
quantum mechanics is the effect called entanglement. Two
Surprise! Reading Scientific American
at 30,000 feet above ground level had
the opposite effect. An article titled
Living in a Quantum World by Professor
Vlatko Vedral at the University of
Oxford was the instigator.
particles that may be very apart, even millions or billions of miles,
are mysteriously linked together. What happens to one of them
immediately causes a change in the other one. Entanglement is a
phenomenon in which two entities are linked forever.”
- From the book ENTANGLEMENT by Amir Aczel.
What got Stan’s mind racing was what the professor
wrote about entanglement, the quintessential quantum
Quantum theory is about the laws of nature that govern
the realm of the very small. In quantum mechanics, as
the quantum theory is called, we deal with the basic
building blocks of matter, the constituent particles
from which everything in the universe is made.
effect. It led to Stan’s realization that closely linked
particles in the subatomic world are a powerful
metaphor for the entangled relationship between
producer and consumer now possible in our postdigital world.
At this subatomic level, suddenly all the rules of
behavior with which we are familiar no longer hold.
Entering this strange new world of the very small
is an experience as baffling and bizarre as Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland.
Marketing is about to take a quantum leap. Entangled
Marketing is the new business model for building an
enduring, mutually rewarding relationship between the
brand and the consumer. Suddenly all the rules are
changed for marketers in the same way everything
familiar was overturned for physicists with the
revelation of quantum entanglement.
The most perplexing phenomenon in the bizarre
world of quantum mechanics is the effect called
entanglement.
Two particles that may be very
far apart, even millions or billions of miles, are
mysteriously linked together. What happens to one of
them immediately causes a change in the other one.
Entanglement is a phenomenon in which two entities
are linked forever.
Metaphors are not meant to be taken literally. Instead,
what they do is open the mind to fresh ways of looking
at a situation. Metaphorical thinking leads to creating
innovative models for dealing with tough challenges.
Using quantum particle entanglement has helped
make sense of Entangled Marketing:
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Over the following months, a back and forth exchange
of ideas between the two of us resulted in the decision
to do this book together. Our purpose is not to compile
another set of “how-to” instructions for dealing with
the vagaries of a screen-obsessed society. You already
know how to get things done across multiple channels
in today’s chaotic world.
What business management needs is a “think book”
that looks at what is shared in common by such
pacesetters as Apple, Amazon, Uber, the Cooper
Mini, Nike and other ground-breaking innovators. The
enduring relationship each has with users of their
products or services now can be achieved by almost
any business of any size, whether long-established or
just starting out.
Stan shared with Sebastian Jespersen, CEO at the
global Vertic digital agency, how technology’s wild
pace of change theoretically can empower marketers
to keep customers alive almost indefinitely. Sebastian
responded that there was nothing theoretical about
the idea. In his view, the move from mere engagement
to creating an entangled relationship with the
consumer already has begun. He described recent
agency campaigns that reinforce the metaphorical
association with quantum mechanics.
To further illustrate how consumer electronics gave
birth to this new business model, Sebastian described
a workshop idea the agency had on the drawing
board. He was planning to entangle participants in
a powerful personal experience. The event would be
held simultaneously at the agency’s New York and
How to make it happen is what you’ll find in the
Copenhagen offices. Attendees would each be handed
their own Oculus head-mounted display.
pages of
Release the Power of Entangled
Marketing.
With the virtual reality headset in place, anyone in New
York could put herself or himself into the picture of
what was happening in Copenhagen and visa versa.
There would also be an opportunity to select an object
seen at the other location in your Oculus and have it
cloned via a 3-D printer at your location on a different
continent.
In the Internet era, anything imaginable becomes
possible by digitalization sooner or later.
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NEVER LE T GO OF
ONE ANOTHER
The consumer receives an average of 10,000 messages per day. This means the vast majority of what
is communicated becomes irrelevant within seconds.
In order for brands to have relevance the relationship
must go beyond connecting with engaging content.
Snapchat generated 700 million photos and videos a
day less than three years after launch in 2011. One billion viewers watch 300 million hours of YouTube every
day. In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5 billion in ads, up 65
% over 2013.
Clickers disengage as fast as they engage. They grasp
a post on LinkedIn. They watch a video on YouTube.
They “like” a promotion on Facebook. They zip through
a favored blog. All of which means that multiplying the
number of social media touch points is not going to
set a brand apart.
“Thinking Big” has never had it so good.
Where it once took generations for an analog era startup to attract lots of loyal believers, millions now may
become dedicated to a brand in the wink of an eye.
How marketers use the power to keep those customers alive is what’s going to separate the winners from
the losers in our click-based economy.
Engagement in the here and now – the next click, “like,”
retweet or uploaded video – is too easily followed by
moving on to other intriguing content. Something else
is required.
Guess what? You don’t have to wait for the future to
arrive. You can start a firestorm of your own with what
is doable right now. You can build a relationship between your brand and the consumer that never lets go
of each other -- something that 95% of marketers fail
to achieve.
Louisa Guilder, in her fascinating book about quantum
mechanics, The Age of Entanglement, writes about two
entities so deeply linked they share the same existence. Once entangled they remain inextricably connected. They never let go of one another –- no matter
their distance apart.
Our name for this phenomenon is
Entangled
Marketing.
Never letting go of an inextricable link to users is what
helped create the online behemoths of the Internet era.
Billions of people worldwide enjoy a daily entangled
existence with what is found on Facebook, Twitter,
Google, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest and
other online favorites.
The march from mass marketing to one-to-one marketing is moving on to the next big thing. The Entangled
Marketing paradigm is likely to prove as impactful for
business leaders in this decade as quantum entanglement was to physicists in the 20th century.
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Entangled Marketing. Entangled Marketing. Entangled Marketing.
Sounds a bit strange at first. Keep reading. Discover
the payback you can enjoy when your link to customers
has the same degree of “stickiness” as pairs of
subatomic particles exhibit.
Brian Clegg, in Quantum Entanglement –
Science’s Strangest Phenomenon, tells us:
“Once two particles in the quantum space become entangled, they retain
an immediate and powerful connection that can be harnessed to perform
seemingly impossible tasks.”
Adherence has been a problem pharmaceutical
companies seemed unable to do much about solving.
At least that was the situation before LEO Pharma
broke the mold with a new approach.
One of the business categories in need of performing
“seemingly impossible tasks” is the pharmaceutical
sector. Fortunately, there is a company headquartered
in Denmark that has dared to think differently.
Year-in, year-out, as many as 40% of users of
medications fail to adhere to treatment protocol.
Rather than keeping adherence alive, the ties between
the pharmaceutical company and the patient often
fall apart. Taking pills properly and following doctor’s
orders is something folks have trouble doing.
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RELEASING THE POWER OF
RELEASING
WH AT’S NEXT
THE POWER OF
LEO Pharma specializes in dermatology, treating psoriasis and other skin conditions in over a hundred countries. The company has been an industry leader for
more than a century. More than 100 million people
worldwide have psoriasis – but only half receive proper treatment.
QualityCareTM is energized by a behind-the-scenes
Customer Entanglement Platform that underlies the
mechanics of the relationship. Chief concerns are
identified in the enrollment process either online or at
the doctor’s office. Response to each patient’s particular situation is conveyed via his or her personal web
page, email, text messaging or call center interchange.
As more is learned about progress (or lack of it) the
postings and content evolve accordingly.
Recently LEO Pharma adopted an approach that goes
far beyond providing the right medication. Every facet
of LEO Pharma’s global operation was mobilized to execute a focus on the day-to-day real world challenges
faced by the patient.
At any time, the patient’s progress may call for a nurse
placing an outbound phone call. What is heard on the
call triggers the content of the next contact. There is
also a QualityCareTM magazine printed locally and tailored to the specific interests of the patient and the
nature of that person’s illness.
The first step was getting close enough to acquire a
true sense of what it is like to live with psoriasis. Research undertaken by LEO Pharma set its sights on
the physical and social discomfort caused by the disease. It included living with patients, monitoring social
media, analysis of search key words, running focus
groups and much more.
LEO Pharma’s revamped business model goes beyond
delivering the best available skin condition treatment.
This is a company that cares enough for patients to
know they are not alone. The close, ongoing relationship adds enormous value to LEO Pharma’s traditional
role as a provider of medication.
LEO Pharma found that motivating adherence is not
solely about tracking why medication is not taken as
prescribed. The key issue turned out to be the level
of personal support received by each individual. In response to the findings, LEO Pharma devised an array
of interactions providing the patient with unprecedented control over the illness.
In its first year of operation, QualityCareTM made a difference in the daily existence of thousands of people
in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, UK, Germany and Hungary.
Twenty more countries expect to launch the program
soon.
The drug company and the person with psoriasis became so deeply entangled they seemed to share the
same existence. Individual attention provided by LEO
Pharma is tied to what happens at any given moment
in each person’s life.
What QualityCareTM does effects the day-to-day life of
people living with psoriasis. What patients do effects
the day-to-day actions taken by LEO Pharma. A reciprocal, entangled relatonship with the customer is now
alive and well in the pharmaceutical world.
This ongoing personal involvement is branded QualityCareTM. It is free, confidential and benefits both the
patient with a less stressful psoriasis condition and
the pharmaceutical company gaining a sharp improvement in adherence.
WHAT’S NEXT
6
M ARKE TING
WITH A M AGICAL
QUANTUM MINDSE T
You may be thinking: “Three cheers for LEO Pharma,
but health care is a universe of its own with unique
attributes. What can be done there may not apply to
what a service company, a manufacturer or retailer
might confront in other categories”.
LEGO brings to life whatever online product
proposal gets 10,000 votes from fans who access the Ideas Platform. Michael McNally, the
company’s senior director of brand relations, acted
on Ms. Kooijman’s suggestion as soon as the voters
gave a thumbs up.
Wrong thinking. A business in just about every B-to-C
and B-to-B category can profit from a quantum mindset. We recently saw LEGO, the toyland titan, put one
of the elements of Entangled Marketing to good use.
In a matter of months, Toy Research Institute sets
with three LEGO female scientist figures were in stores
and being sold at its website. Within only a few days
the new figures suggested by Ms. Kooijman sold out
online and at major retailers.
LEGO is an astonishing company that went from being
an analog era favorite to becoming an outstanding innovator of the Internet era. In the following chapters,
we’ll show what can be learned from LEGO’s entanglement with millions of admirers whose commitment to
the brand result in a billion dollar profit annually.
Few companies are as adept as LEGO and LEO Pharma at maintaining an entangled relationship with customers, the most important people in their business
lives. What that ability does to spread the word about
the person’s unique experience is reflected in steady
year on year growth of revenue and profitability.
Recently, the maker of building blocks was faced with
a growing concern. It involved the LEGO product introduced to win over a much larger proportion of female
users. A letter from a little girl asked why the “Friends”
collection didn’t have figures dressed in anything more
inspiring than beach get-ups or baking outfits. The letter quickly went viral.
LEGO management had been aware of the problem,
thanks to the many customers connected to what
happens at its fan-sourced Ideas Platform. An idea
submitted by Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist based in
Sweden, caught the marketer’s attention. Ms. Kooijman had proposed that LEGO create a Toy Research
Institute staffed with female scientists to project a
more positive picture of women in modern-day society.
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PERSONAL + RELEVANT
+ VALUE-ADDED =
ENTANGLED MARKETING
These days you know more about the hour-to-hour life
of people you want to win over than thought possible
a few years back.
Thinking that last year’s wildly acclaimed initiative
gets to keep customers alive forever is the biggest
mistake CMOs make in satisfying self-addicted individuals in the post-digital age.
Massive quantities of internal data and still more massive quantities of cloud data are at your fingertips.
You can be as personal and relevant as you wish in
using what is known about each person on your radar
screen.
Want a pair of personal made-to-order shoes? Go to
Nike ID where customization was a Nike first. Want to
be at your best in running your next race? Go to Nike+
where you’ll find coaching to do your best at a
local fund-raiser or running in the London
marathon.
So far so good. But engaging in personal and relevant conversation only goes
part way in setting yourself apart from
the competition. What is missing far
too often is an experience that adds
value to something your customer truly
values. Personal + relevant + value-added is the winning ticket. When fully applied it’s an intertwined existence that
can resist anything your competitors may
do to shake it.
Over the past decade, if you wanted to measure progress toward
fitness goals, you could put the
Nike FuelBand on your wrist.
The FuelBand and the concept of having movements
measured as Nike fuel
was one of the earliest,
self-help wearable devices. You can’t stay
any closer to a customer than encircling
her or his wrist with
your brand’s monitoring message.
An excellent example of how to make such
an entangled relationship happen is what Nike
continually does to impact the daily lives of loyal
followers. The most important word there is “continuing.” An occasional mind-blowing experience
won’t do it.
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Nike is with you every moment of the day. It’s as if the
consumer and the FuelBand were a pair of quantum
particles in an entangled relationship where what one
does immediately effects the other.
Before long an “Outdo You in 2015” online campaign
was launched to encourage appreciation by Nike+
members of what was accomplished in 2014. A video
on the Nike website proclaimed: “We earned 228 billion
units of Nike Fuel. We ran 215 million miles -- like running to the moon and back 450 times.”
When first introduced for pre-order, the FuelBand sold
out in minutes at $149 a pop. At Niketown, customers
lined up around the block before doors opened. Demand moved around the world with tens of thousands
registering to be notified when it came to their country.
Use of the word “we” for the 2014 accomplishments
conveys just how tightly Nike is entangled in adding
value to shared interests. The degree of separation
between the brand and its most committed believers
is down to to zero. How the goal of closeness moved
from arm’s length to zero is a subject you’ll learn about
in the next chapter.
Long before wearables became a fad, Nike made a
profit selling fitness hardware to grateful runners.
With release of the Apple Watch, the Internet of Things
ushered in its own revolutionary force for change. Nike
announced it was discontinuing making FuelBand
hardware and would concentrate on fitness software
The “Outdo You” experience turns the location, weather
and movement data of active Nike+ users into 100,000
going forward. There was no point in competing with
Apple’s product and all those other fitness-tracking
smartwatches.
unique films. If you make the cut, you can watch your
personal 2014 film and you are urged to “outdo you” in
your 2015 activity with Nike+.
The naysayers were quick to pounce on the Nike announcement. Irate tweeters ranted: “How dare they
abandon all those proud people burning Nike fuel.” Of
course, as happens so often, it was a case of overreacting before getting all the facts.
Whether checking how much Nike fuel you burned
today or monitoring your morning run or sharing your
moves on the basketball court with a smartphone video, your actual or potential connection to Nike goes
far deeper than buying another pair of athletic shoes.
Mutually beneficial experiences between brand and
customer outpace what 99% of businesses do to keep
customers alive and checking in by phone, laptop or
desktop computer.
As reported on the Re/code blog, here’s what Nike
Chief Executive Mark Parker had to say about restructuring the fitness enthusiast’s connection to Nike fuel:
“Digital sport as we call it at Nike is incredibly important to us. We think it’s going to be a bigger and bigger factor in the experience consumers have with the
products we create. Our goal is to actually increase
the number of users. Today we have about 30 million
FuelBand users. We’re hoping to push that over 100
million.”
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A critical element in getting the result you want is how
you integrate real-time behavioral data with the input
you’ve been using for years (segmentation, targeting,
collaborative filtering, etc.). What’s exciting for smaller
companies is that the playing field has been leveled in
recent years when it comes to analyzing the staggering amount of “hot” knowledge out there.
Check Nike’s latest quarterly profit report if you need
further justification for asking: “In what way can my
company adapt the strategic entanglement Nike maintains with its customers?”
Other marketers love to talk about providing personalized engagement to their customers. We’ve been hearing about it for generations – Burger King has been
pushing their “Have it your way” slogan since the 70s.
So why do so many CMOs fall short in creating a bond
that goes beyond what the product or service alone
provides?
Whatever the size of your company, you can turn to
vendors adept at combining data streams from the
web, sensors, smartphone clicks, shopping online and
at brick and mortar retailers – almost any public or private source -- and deliver fruitful insights to you.
One reason is the failure to recognize the difference
between “personal” and “personalized.” Serving up
relevant content, no matter how well it is personal-
You may want to check out what Clearstory Data and
Paxata offer. These recent California start-ups have
what it takes to make you a data marketing whiz no
ized, often falls short of what can be achieved in the
post-digital world with an experience a person really
values personally.
matter what your previous expertise.
It’s high time for pundits at conference after conference to transform the “engagement” they talk about
so much into the new entanglement business model.
Once in place, how well you execute your Entanglement
Marketing strategy is as important as the strategy itself. Research shows that 40% of customers buy more
from businesses that allow across multiple channels.
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BE ONE OF THE FIRST TO
KN OW WH AT’S NEXT
At the start of the twentieth century, the emergence
of quantum theory led to new thinking beyond only a
narrow circle of physicists.
We invited several hundred top professionals to sign
on as “Friends of the New Marketing.” The “friends”
were asked to review a draft of each chapter before
finalization. Comments received, both pro and con,
along with recommended new content, proved to be
invaluable.
Picasso and other artists with radical ideas were
fascinated by the newly raised challenge to existing
concepts of space and time. Salvador Dali is quoted
in Arthur Miller’s “Colliding Worlds” saying: “It is with
pi-mesons and the most gelatinous and indeterminate
neutrinos that I want to paint the beauty of the angels
and of reality.”
Our wish is to keep the “friends” website alive as an
ongoing resource for business executives. You are
welcome to join our group of professionals focused on
sharing insights about whatever mind-blowing opportunity is coming next. If you like being among the first
to know what’s on the Entangled Marketing horizon, join
our community at www.entangledmarketing.com.
The more we looked at the behavior of neutrinos that
inspired Salvador Dali, the more we saw a likeness
to how digital entanglement is transforming our long
held business beliefs.
Nothing is changing in marketing so much as the
growth in its complexity. Each new advance in getting
closer to customers can ring a start-over bell. What
made sense to us was extending our coverage of the
new marketing landscape beyond the coverage provided by ourselves alone.
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THE QUANTUM
COMPUTING FUTURE
There is no way we could have known years ago what
amazing developments would be here soon. A robot
hitchhiking across Canada from Nova Scotia to the
other side of the continent. Google’s driverless cars
with no brakes or steering wheels taking to the road.
The pioneers on the space station making spare parts
with 3-D printers. The Oculus turning virtual reality into
an everyday reality.
We’ll leave the future of computing to Burton Smith,
the supercomputer designer who leads the Microsoft
quantum group. Our focus is on how all of the facets
of a digitized economy come together in a new business model with entangled marketing at its core and
an enduring, mutually beneficial experience with customers as its goal.
So come along with us to increase the likelihood of
coming out on top in the Internet era. We will have
more to say in the following pages about the parameters of a successful entangled relationship. You will
learn why a brand’s “share of life” now rivals “share of
mind” in marketing importance. You will be introduced
to the 5Ws – a simplified first move in outdistancing
competition. You will be alerted to the menace of “Nonvertising.” You will understand how direct marketing’s
10% of the economy was converted into iDirect Marketing’s 50% share.
Any guess is as good as any other when it comes to
speculation about where we will be by 2020. All we
can do is look at what is in the incubator about to
emerge. Among the possibilities at this moment is research into a great leap forward in computing that will
leave what was predicted by Moore’s Law far behind.
Microsoft and others are devoting sizable resources to
perfect quantum computing.
While you are looking into releasing the power of Entangled Marketing, engineers at Microsoft are looking into
revolutionizing the speed of computing with their own
quantum entanglement mindset.
All of which just scratches the surface of what’s
ahead. Be among the first to put Entangled Marketing
into good use with what you will find on the following
pages.
John Markoff, in a NY Times article, explains how the
future may look: “Quantum computing is based on qubits, which simultaneously represent both zero and one
values. If they are placed in an entangled state -- physically separated but acting as though they are connected with many other qubits -- they would represent a vast
number of values simultaneously. And the existing limits
of computer power are thrown out the window.”
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