We're all very familiar with the concept of lean-forward and lean-backward.
TV for example, is considered to be a lean-backward medium. Relaxing on the sofa, beer in one hand and chips 'n dip in the other as you slumber slowly into that wonderful passive state of couch potato coma.
The web on the other hand, is a lean-forward medium. Hunching neanderthal-like over the keyboard as you check how many stranger friends you've signed up over the past 24-hours due to your fake porn-star image (real or avatar) you've posted as your own.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
My point for this post however is this: when I give presentations, it's always interesting to me to see how my audience reacts to the various examples I show. Typically when it's a piece of video, they lean back and don't react much except for laughter when it's slapstick funny. On the other hand, when I show various new marketing efforts, they tend to lean forward, engage, smile, chatter and interact - with me and with one another.
I realized that this is a pretty simple litmus test for everything we do and it's completely media-agnostic. Do our efforts result in audience, viewers, visitors, humans etc leaning forward and engaging with our ideas, stories, messages or threads...or more importantly, engaging with one another?
Or is the result a lean-back deafening monosyllabic tone of the flatline.
Think about it the next time and the next "campaign"
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