Just like the sen­ti­ment behind astro­naut Neil Armstrong’s infa­mous “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” line on the moon, the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try is itself in an era of pro­found change, which, in turn, demands an entire­ly new way of con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing the brand-con­sumer rela­tion­ship. That’s accord­ing to Mark Bonchek, chief cat­a­lyst at ThinkO­r­bit, a firm that helps brands cre­ate social busi­ness strate­gies.

Cit­ing Boston’s Big Dig pub­lic works project, which changed the face of down­town Boston and the sub­se­quent adap­ta­tion GPS sys­tems had to make for new roads, Bonchek said the mar­ket­ing land­scape has under­gone sim­i­lar changes, “but we’re still walk­ing around with old men­tal maps of how we do mar­ket­ing.”

Like a GPS sys­tem, these “new men­tal maps” will require upgrad­ing the “old soft­ware in our brains.”

What’s more, the pace of change in the mar­ket­ing indus­try is accel­er­at­ing with short­er com­pa­ny lifes­pans and quick­er tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment.

“This isn’t repaving the road,” Bonchek said at Adobe’s recent Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Sym­po­sium in New York. “This is tak­ing what’s above ground and putting it below.”

The Evolution of Communication

Until the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion was one-way. But then the audi­ence start­ed talk­ing back.

“We went from Gut­ten­berg to Zucker­berg,” Bonchek said.

What’s more, the con­sumer audi­ence has become a com­mu­ni­ty, he said, liken­ing the phe­nom­e­non to an Amish barn-rais­ing in which indi­vid­u­als band togeth­er with a com­mon pur­pose, which is seen on sites like Tri­pAd­vi­sor, Yelp, Net­flix, Spo­ti­fy, and Ama­zon Reviews, where con­sumers come togeth­er to solve prob­lems.

The result is “fun­da­men­tal­ly a new mod­el of val­ue cre­ation” in which brands are “get­ting bet­ter at per­son­al­iz­ing the connection…as well as lis­ten­ing and learn­ing,” he said.

The chal­lenge for brands and mar­keters, there­fore, is how they can enable and empow­er that peer-to-peer con­nec­tion in a way in which the brand/marketer gets to play a role as well.

“Con­tent mar­ket­ing is only the begin­ning,” Bonchek said. “What’s the con­text for your con­tent?”

That means there are mul­ti­ple mar­ket­ing mod­els to unlearn, he said.

“We still ride hors­es, but there’s a bet­ter form of trans­porta­tion today,” Bonchek added.

Brand Orbits: The New Social Solar System

Instead of tra­di­tion­al mod­els, Bonchek advo­cates for a mod­el he calls Brand Orbits, or: Ongo­ing Rela­tion­ship Beyond Indi­vid­ual Trans­ac­tion.

In these so-called Brand Orbits, Bonchek said, “The brand is at the cen­ter of the solar sys­tem and all of your con­stituen­cies are in orbit around you – includ­ing employ­ees, cus­tomers and influencers…and your job is to build grav­i­ty to pull them in.”

When pulled into orbit, the cus­tomer becomes more like a user or mem­ber, he said. These orbits sur­round­ing the brand have all kinds of dif­fer­ent touch­points, most of which are inter­ac­tions, but which are inter­spersed every now and again with trans­ac­tions.

Brands can also build grav­i­ty by tap­ping into a giv­en customer’s friends, fam­i­ly and fol­low­ers, so “then their orbits become your orbits,” Bonchek said.

Instead of mea­sur­ing loy­al­ty in terms of how often con­sumers repeat­ed­ly pur­chase a prod­uct, it becomes, “What’s the fre­quen­cy of that orbit and what’s the strength of the affin­i­ty?” Bonchek said.

In oth­er words, brands need to shift from push­ing con­sumers through the fun­nel to pulling them in to their orbits by “engag­ing com­mu­ni­ties with social expe­ri­ences that sus­tain rela­tion­ships and ful­fill a shared pur­pose,” Bonchek said.

8 Brands Creating Ongoing Consumer Relationships

Here are eight brands doing just that to gen­er­ate grav­i­ty today, accord­ing to Bonchek.

1. Coca-Cola

The brand’s Freestyle Machines, which allow con­sumers to cus­tomize their drink choic­es, also have QR codes and/or chips so that con­sumers can cre­ate rec­og­niz­able pro­files and essen­tial­ly tell the machine, “I’ll have my usu­al,” Bonchek said.

2. Starbucks

“You may think it’s a cof­fee com­pa­ny, but it’s actu­al­ly a third place busi­ness – the area between home and work where you con­nect with oth­er peo­ple,” Bonchek said.

The brand cre­ates the pull that brings con­sumers in with grav­i­ty gen­er­a­tors like free Wi-Fi and com­fort­able seat­ing, he said.

3. Sephora

The beau­ty retailer’s Col­or IQ ser­vice scans the sur­face of a consumer’s skin with a hand­held device, which then assigns the skin a Col­or IQ num­ber, which is then matched to a “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pre­cise foun­da­tion,” the brand says.

4. GoPro

Per Bonchek, GoPro is “not in cam­era busi­ness, they’re in the media busi­ness. They’re using the cam­era to cre­ate con­tent to share with oth­ers.”

“I met the CMO of GoPro and told him about a time-lapse video I shot in Vegas and his first words were, ‘Did you upload it to com­mu­ni­ty?’” Bonchek said. “They’re using con­tent to pull peo­ple in.”

5. Nike

The Nike+ Run­ning App allows users to plot runs, track times and com­pete with oth­ers, but it also allows users to con­nect with friends in their orbits and to hear cheers and applause on runs, Bonchek said.

6. Walgreens

The drug­store chain allows shop­pers to earn points for pur­chas­es, as well as for healthy activ­i­ties tracked by wear­ables like Fit­bit or Nike+ Fuel­Band, which, Bonchek said, is anoth­er great way to engage.

7. McCormick

The spice brand’s Fla­vor­Print effort is a per­son­al­iza­tion ser­vice that allows users to cre­ate a Per­son­al Fla­vor Pro­file based on likes and dis­likes and pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions for prod­ucts, recipes and fla­vors, based on their pref­er­ences.

8. EpicMix

The ski app, which Bonchek describes as  “like Nike+, but on a moun­tain,” allows users track ver­ti­cal feet, con­nect with friends and share pho­tos, which, in turn, helps ski resorts drum up repeat busi­ness, which is not always easy to do in an indus­try pop­u­lat­ed by thrillseek­ers who want new scenery and chal­lenges.

“They’ve cre­at­ed an entire social net­work on the moun­tain,” Bonchek said.

How Can Other Brands Follow The Leaders?

Accord­ing to Bonchek, it’s about find­ing a shared pur­pose with con­sumers and a source of intrin­sic val­ue.

Bonchek also rec­om­mends mar­keters seek out what he calls “lit­tle data.”

“If big data is what com­pa­nies know about us that we don’t know they know…little data is what we know about our­selves,” Bonchek said, point­ing to infor­ma­tion in apps like the Nike+ Run­ning App and EpicMix, as well as McCormick’s Per­son­al Fla­vor Pro­file.

The eight grav­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing brands also cre­ate social cur­ren­cy, such as sup­port for friends on a run, as well as pho­tos and recipes.

“When you have this whole engage­ment and rela­tion­ship, it’s about how to mon­e­tize that with­out a bait and switch,” Bonchek said, return­ing to the cof­fee exam­ple.

Dunkin Donuts’ mis­sion state­ment is, “Make and serve the fresh­est, most deli­cious cof­fee and donuts quick­ly and cour­te­ous­ly in mod­ern, well-mer­chan­dised stores,” which Bonchek said is good, “but very trans­ac­tion­al and com­plete­ly util­i­tar­i­an.”

Star­bucks, on the oth­er hand, says its mis­sion is “to inspire and nur­ture the human spir­it – one per­son, one cup and one neigh­bor­hood at a time.”

Accord­ing to Bonchek, the key test for brands is to ask them­selves if a consumer’s mis­sion is their mis­sion as well. Or, sim­ply put: “Would you put [the brand’s mis­sion] on a T‑shirt?”

The Star­bucks mis­sion is much more T‑shirt friend­ly, which is in part why it is a grav­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing brand.

“Focus on the shared pur­pose and then check: Are you build­ing rela­tion­ships to dri­ve trans­ac­tions or are you embed­ding your­self with­in the rela­tion­ships?” Bonchek said.

What’s your take on the solar sys­tem mod­el?