Hope for a new era of engagement with its communities
Faced with audience saturation with impersonal brand statements and growing consumer disengagement, brands need to respond by creating authentic value with their audiences, notably by investing in new spaces like Threads that enable them to better understand needs and animate engaged communities.
“For many consumers, brand discovery begins after the first purchase: 78% of them discover elements that attract them and make them loyal to a brand after the initial sale”. These are the findings of the latest “Trust Barometer – The collapse of the purchase funnel” study by Edelman.
We’re living in anxious times, or at least uncertain times in many respects… and we’re feeling it every day.
According to a study by Selligent in 2021, 28% of us remained indifferent to brand empathy and 25% felt it was a waste of time. The messages, meanwhile, were hardly more successful: “we’re all in this together” was among the most grating phrases for the general public (20%), ahead of “in these uncertain times” (18%) and “we’re here for you” (17%).
This frustration reflects a form of audience saturation in an age of impersonal, unauthenticated speeches. According to a study conducted by Havas Media Network in 2023, 73% of brands could disappear… without anyone being affected.
A reality that illustrates the disengagement of consumers: for brands, it’s urgent to react and enter into a dynamic of value creation with their audiences. For a long time, social networks have been a source of insights and tools capable of determining the engagement reach of a message, notably through the study of content performance. But today, relying solely on the number of interactions, reaches and followers to deduce audience interest is no longer enough.
Faced with ever-changing algorithms that constantly favor platform specificities over brand objectives, creating sincere links with stakeholders on social networks is becoming increasingly difficult.
“Followership” is a passive act, where commitment is not sufficiently convincing. Building a community in new spaces helps to restore meaning to the brand-audience and audience-audience relationship.
Zoom in on Threads, the app with “130 million active users” and, above all, the mother of “trending topics”, a new and fashionable feature. The app seems to be gaining a better understanding of audiences’ needs, interests and behaviors, facilitating the creation of more tailored and specific content. Automatic tracking of favorite accounts and notification of the latest newsallow brands to focus their attention on key conversations and actively participate in them.
Since its launch in France on December 14, 2023, several brands have already taken the plunge by investing in Threads. Another striking fact: according to estimates by analytics company Apptopia in March 2024, the platform now has more daily users in the United States than X.
Brands have seized the opportunity to address their audiences differently.
Despite its corporate image, the Dassault Systèmes brand is a perfect example of community animation and hyper-conversation. On this feed, the culture of the meme is nurtured and the popularization of IT and engineering is cultivated, without forgetting to mention the expertise of “The 3DEXPERIENCE Company”.
Dassault Systèmes responds to its community as much as it participates in threads external to the brand, always with a view to exposing the account to new audiences.
So we can legitimately wonder whether Threads could give a new impetus to communication? Will it enable brands to create stronger links with their audiences, or, on the contrary, remain in the apathetic vertical conversation with which other Meta Group platforms are familiar?
At Dusens, we are firmly committed to engaging all our stakeholders and those of our customers around the issues that concern us. We are convinced that companies that succeed in sustainably engaging their communities are the most likely to change things and create positive, impactful dynamics.
