Following the release earlier this month of a new Forrester report  looking at how social media is impacting the buying process, there's been some discussion between top marketers bloggers about the death of the traditional marketing funnel as we knew it.  In his specific ripple-way-of-mind, David Armano suggested to replace the marketing funnel by a spiral to symbolise the multiple brands' touchpoints centered around and emanated from the customer. I like this very much.

In a 2006 white paper Seth Godin already initiated the symbol evolution to demonstrate the communication power shift between brands and customers. He suggested to flip the funnel to symbolise the turning of customers into advocates spreading the word about brands' products.

In a world of advocates, engagement is the new key metric to take into account. In the mentionned report, Forrester sliced it up in four components being involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence. Metrics indicators to try and measure engagement for each component are proposed.   The bottom line for a brand to get people engaged is to share their ideal. If customers can get how the brand is making their world a better place, they will immediately embrace the brand's ideal. Sure, they might not be the best buyers, but they'll soon be their best friends.  And friendly brands will be the most successfull brands in the new marketing game. Just have a look at Starbucks on Facebook:  the 'Addicted to Starbucks' group has just welcomed its 54,000th member. In the world of mouth communication playground social media is creating, the Pachinko game is not trendy anymore. In this year syllabus, subtraction won't be a lesson. A much more ambitious program has been planned.  Exponential rules are at stake. Summer break is over. We're back to school.