Amanda Slavin - The Seventh Level: Transform Your Business Through Meaningful Engagement with Your Customers a

The age of passive consumerism is dead. Welcome to the age of active participants, of creators, of people that want to be heard, seen, and rewarded for having a perspective. Over the past twenty years, the culture has shifted to where people no longer passively consume but actively participate in connecting with your brand. Your customers now have tools at their fingertips which allow them to amplify their criticisms, feelings, and thoughts about your company. Customers have always had the chance to give feedback, but now these customers have their own audiences, their own followings, and this directly affects you! Customers are no longer just the purchasers of your product, but people that can serve as an extension of your sales team. They sell for you when they advocate for you, follow you, connect with you, and are interested in what you have to say as a brand. Just think about what is more impactful: When you tell everyone how great you are? Or when your most loyal brand advocates rave about how wonderful you are to their friends, family, and followers? There are countless ways to connect with these customers, and it is no longer as simple and straightforward as being one of the only brands to sell a product. Companies that have been around for hundreds of years can disappear in an instant if an upstart competitor co - opts their market share by earning more brand loyalty through deeper customer connections.

One of the most commonand historically effectiveways to communicate directly with large swaths of a customer base is through marketing. But even that is changing. Today, the average customer sees five thousand ads a day. People are tired of it! Customers attention is spread thinner than ever, and attention is a precious resource. So as companies, it is imperative that we change the way we are thinking about our relationship to both our internal and external customers. Whether its an employeean internal customerleaving a review on Glassdoor, your most devoted fan making their usual purchase and then telling their friends and family about it, or a customer boasting about you on Instagram, as a brand, you have a responsibility to engage with your customers in a way thats respectful of their time and limited attention. How can we engage and meaningfully connect with our customers when there are so many tools at our disposal, and so many definitions of what engagement even means?

We want our employees and customers to be our brand advocates, carrying our flag proudly and waving it in the air; we want them to care because weve inspired them, not because we told them they should.

A lonely teenager feels like an outcast at her high school, but one day hears a Lady Gaga song on the radio that resonates with her. The self - affirming lyrics click with this student and give her hope and confidence. She becomes a Little Monstera Gaga superfanand never misses a concert when her hero comes to her state. She joins a message board for fans and discovers a sense of community. Her identity becomes intertwined with Lady Gagas brand, which helps her through her difficult teenage years.

A recent college graduate leaves a job fair on campus in disappointment. None of the recruiters seem to get itthey only talk about money and company status. This young woman wants to make a living, sure. But she also wants to lead a balanced, purposeful life that features lots of hiking, yoga, and surfing. So she applies for and lands a job at Patagoniaa company whose values align perfectly with her own. As her friends bounce from job to job throughout their early twenties, shes the anomaly. She stays at Patagonia, loves every second of it, and encourages her like - minded friends to apply for any and all openings at her company.

A fifty - two - year - old man who is tired of punching the clock at work every day saves up enough money to buy a used motorcyclea Harley - Davidson . He plans a short road trip, which turns into a cross - country adventure, before having to go back to work. He feels free and liberated and associates that feeling with his Harley. After another decade of hard work and setting aside a portion of his paycheck each week, he buys a brand - new motorcycle: a Harley - Davidson it had to be a Harley.

Think about the experiences in your life that have shaped you, that have made you, you , that have spoken to you, that have connected to you in a way that is beyond visceral. The sum of those feelings is the Seventh Level. We all go through life striving for meaningful connections. But that doesnt always have to mean connection with a person. Sometimes the most meaningful connections in our lives are with a job, or experience, or piece of art, or brand.

Apple has played a huge role in shaping my identity. As an entrepreneur, it helped me launch my career. My old MacBook was the first laptop that I bought for myself, that I wasnt forced to use by an employer. It was beautiful and sleek and special and felt more like a gorgeous piece of jewelry than a computer. It made me feel in charge and creative, and now I refuse to buy anything except Apple.

Maybe it was those old Mac vs PC commercials with Justin Long, or reading Steve Jobss autobiography that contributed to my Apple - only policy. But what ultimately matters most is what I have made Apple mean for me how my personal values and beliefs of inspiring and educating aligned with what I would say is Steve Jobss Seventh Level Statement: to create beautiful things that inspire the way people see themselves and the world.

The Seventh Level of Engagement is pervasive throughout culture, time, and context. Its when your personal values and beliefs align with anothers message, when you derive meaning and even identity from connecting with this brand, person, or concept.

Its when you camp out overnight to be first in line for concert tickets. Its when you forego the conventional career route in favor of one that allows you to sell something youre proud ofand also surf during your lunch break. Its when you ride your motorcycle to the tattoo parlor, then ask the artist to tattoo an image of that same motorcycle onto your arm. And its when I drop my phone for the umpteenth time, it finally breaks, then I drop whatever I was doing to hustle to the Apple store to get a replacement because I dont feel like myself without my iPhone.