There's a supposedly secret driving track in the Southeastern United States where BMW tests new concept cars. It's a pretty nondescript place, but the earth is raised around the edges, and bushes and trees have been planted along the hills to obscure the track. And then, of course, there's the 12-foot chain-link fence topped with spiraled razor-sharp barbed wire. Seeing the Keep Out signs posted up and down the fence, anyone who drives by begins to wonder what's in there. What are they trying to keep you from seeing? What's the big secret?
Those of us who are naturally curious immediately want to know. We'll drive around the entire perimeter and strain our necks to see if we can get a glimpse. It's exclusive. It's top secret. And if only we could see something, then, boy, would we have a story to tell. The barrier of entry is calling us to want to know what we don't know.
One of the secret sauces we've discovered in igniting movements is that a barrier of entry is vital. Yes, we want to keep people out of the movement; in fact, it's a key to success, growth, and sustainability.
How many social networking sites do you belong to on the Internet? You know: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, message boards, blogs, brand communities, and the like. Now, how many do you visit on a regular basis? Better yet, how many have to you gone to, signed up (as in gone to the "create account" page where you create a user name and password), looked around for a few clicks, and then never gone back? If you're anything like the rest of the world, we're guessing the answer is a lot. Dozens even. There is no barrier of entry there, so it's easy to sign up, look around, leave, and never think about it again. There's no wall, no gatekeeper, and no reason we should really be all that curious about these sites and whatever they're trying to get us to sign up for. The Internet is littered with dead communities whose sign-up portion we guarantee someone worked long and hard to make as quick and painless as possible. We're not saying that's the only thing that killed them, but it didn't help any, that's for sure.
How many newsletters and e-mail blasts do you get in your in-box on a daily basis that you signed up for once upon a time, but now drag and drop into your junk folder or just plain delete? Why would you want to sign up for junk?
So how did we figure out the importance of barriers to entry? By chance. The client for Rage against the Haze—the South Carolina Department of Environmental Health and Control (DHEC)—made us build a barrier of entry as part of their program because of the legal complications of getting information from minors. The fact that the DHEC wouldn't let us allow kids to just go sign up forced us to think differently.
Because of the nature of what they do—and what they need to control—the DHEC was very concerned about kids attacking the tobacco industry on their own. South Carolina is a tobacco-producing state, after all, so not just anybody can go out there and shout for Rage. It would have been devastating to our client, because they ultimately report to the state legislature, and the state legislature needs to look out for the tobacco farmers. So, like it or not (and we didn't), we had to put a barrier of entry in place. And although we were against it, we didn't realize that this meant that we trusted our fans to do the right thing early on. We could educate and empower them, but in the end, it was on them to use that knowledge in the way they saw fit.
One guaranteed method of figuring out an alternate means to accomplishing your goals is to have an obstacle placed in your path. Rage was allowed to have members, but prospective members had to go through a process. They weren't permitted to simply register; we built the program that way because we had no choice. It worked as a two-way street, though; they were checking us out to see if they wanted to be a part of this movement, and we were checking them out as well.
When we were recruiting leaders for the Park Angels of Charleston movement, we directed interested people to a web site where they could fill out an application. A long application. It had dozens of pieces of information to fill in, as well as deep, open-ended questions about applicants' beliefs and how they would handle certain situations. It probably took a solid couple of hours to complete. About a week into the process, we noticed that many people were abandoning the application at about the halfway mark. Someone who was new in the office blurted out the question, "What's happening? The application is too long! Nobody's finishing!" But being a leader of the Park Angels was a volunteer position. If someone wasn't going to dedicate two hours to fill out the application, what would make us think that they were going to stick with the entire program? We wanted dedication, commitment, and perseverance, and this was a great way to determine if an individual possessed those qualities.
Another example is the process of becoming a Fiskateer. The way to join the movement—whether you've stumbled on the site or heard about it via word of mouth—is simply to ask. A visit to the web site (www.fiskateers.com) allows a potential applicant to read about the program, find out what's involved, and learn about the movement's four or five different leaders. Applicants can then choose whichever leader to whom they feel most connected and send the leader an e-mail saying they'd like to become a Fiskateer. They'll usually receive an e-mail back within 24 hours. Some of them are canned responses, and some of them are personal, depending on who the leader is and how much time she has to respond. Basically, that e-mail says, "That's so great that you want to join the Fiskateer movement. Can you tell me why?"
We lose more than 50 percent of the so-called interested people right there. And we think that's fantastic. Again, if that person isn't willing to send an e-mail back with any reason at all—from "My sister told me about it" to "I hear you get sneak peeks" to "I love crafting"—then the odds are that they aren't going to be an active member of the community. Active members are the ones who engage others, create content, answer questions, and put skin in the game. And that's all we're asking from the get-go: to put a little skin in the game. It must be give and take.
We can hear it now: "But a barrier of entry keeps people out. And I want a lot of people to join my movement. Because if I have 500,000 people join my community, then maybe I can get at least 2 percent of those people to be active. That's still 10,000 people. And that's a lot. Right?"
Sure it is. But you're going to have to drop a lot of cash on getting those half-million people to pay attention to you and actually sign up. We're talking a hefty spend. And if you have it and want to spend it, then more power to you.
But what if you had a community of 5,000 people—75 percent of whom were active? What if you knew that every time you asked the community to help you with a survey, you would receive triple the participation rates of your competition? Quality trumps quantity, and as the vice president of brand marketing at Fiskars, Jay Gillespie, told us, "For me, it's not about the numbers. It's about growing even deeper relationships." In other words, he'd rather concentrate on building meaningful connections with the members who are already part of the movement. And as that happens, more people will naturally be attracted to it.
By laying the foundation with those who choose to put some skin in the game, you're building sustainability. These people care about the success of the movement. They are taking personal ownership, and by doing so, they elevate everything—and everyone—else. It's not about the company, brand, or product anymore. It's not about you. It's about "us."
When you throw open your organization's doors and do the cattle call, you devalue everything you worked so hard for. You're absolutely free, and you don't require any effort or time to join—and free will cause people to come out of the woodwork. Free stops people in their tracks and immediately gets their attention. And the thing is, no matter what it is, if it's free, people will take one of those, please. Case in point: After a local 5K run was a tent that provided the usual postrace staples: water, bananas, and sports drinks. Oh, and two huge boxes that everyone was grabbing these plastic pouches from. What was in the pouch? Some sort of tablet that you put in your washing machine to make it smell better. Do you really think your washing machine smells funny? It didn't matter to the people that were there; it was free, so they took one. Some people took three, even.
But when you're creating any kind of program, movement, or gathering of people around your brand, you're setting the stage for disaster if you build it on free. For example, "Sign up for our ambassador program and receive two free coupons for a free meal!" Or "Join our Brand X Club and get a free pair of X!"
We see it over and over again. Why disaster? Because—just like the donkey—if you dangle that free carrot in front of someone, he or she will do the minimal amount of work required to get the prize. And then it's done. At least until you dangle another carrot. There are huge message boards solely dedicated to how to get free stuff. And many of your word-of-mouth companies and programs are in those posts. People are actually sharing with one another what the minimal amount of work they have to do to get something free from you ... and then they're gone. No thank-you, and certainly no loyalty.
Free should be used as a random act of kindness. And if you do try to build something on free, then put up enough barriers to make sure people are joining for the right reasons. Because free can sabotage everything you try to do, right out of the gate.
That goes for giving out swag for free, too. (SWAG stands for "Stuff We All Get," like T-shirts, bags, and stickers.) Back in 2001, The Truth campaign and most state-led teen anti-tobacco campaigns were based on making villains of the tobacco industry and giving away tons of free swag. Who could blame them? The tobacco settlement funds infused state budgets from Minnesota to Florida. Those were heydays for advertising agencies, and teens loaded up on swag from shirts to dashboard fuzzy dice.
Considering the power that South Carolina's tobacco industry held, we felt that our strategy for Rage against the Haze had to be quite a bit different. But to be honest, we didn't get it right the first time, either. Our initial effort—a 30-day street marketing tour of the state—was filled with successes and some failures. We learned from both and, as a result, created some important rules:
Go where the party is already happening. Don't create your own party and expect people to show up. Staging your own event in a rural town like Walterboro, South Carolina, sounds like a great idea, but if all the teens in town hang out at Wal-Mart, you're going to be more successful hanging out at Wal-Mart, too. This also is what led us to create Friday Night Rage four years ago. If you want to go to the party on an autumn Friday night in South Carolina, you can just about choose any high school football game in the state—and the whole town will be there.
Include your audience in creating the message. The Rage teens felt it was important for the first Rage swag to have the South Carolina state flag prominent. Why? Because they believed that the state motto, Dum spero spiro (While I Breathe, I Hope) was a contradiction, and it was a story they felt empowered to tell.
Be brave enough to tell some folks that the message is not for them. Our Rage teens considered this to be the most important aspect of Rage swag. No adults would be allowed to get it or wear it—which did make for some awkward moments. Adults seemed to feel more entitled to swag than teens, but the movement wasn't about adults, and our participants wanted people to remember that.
Just because it's free doesn't mean people want it or, for that matter, that they'll wear it. Free baggy T-shirts with a big giant logo across the chest aren't going to get your message seen. The more Rage moved away from pushing logos and moved to messages (like "I Love My Lungs"), the more teens wanted them. We have a tradition of slingshotting T-shirts during halftime at football games. One teen even bought a Rage shirt for $20 off another teen.
Engage in hand-to-hand combat. We hate making a purchase in a store where the person taking our money doesn't even give us the courtesy of a thank-you. So why do people sit behind a table at an event and just point to the free stuff for you to take? Rage teens made every interaction an opportunity, and they called it "hand-to-hand combat." It usually started with a handshake, and slipping a camo rubber band bracelet on the unsuspecting wrist.
The deeper the conversations, the more valuable the swag exchange, because swag created the right way lives on past that initial conversation. That goes for joining a community as well. The deeper the relationships from the very beginning, the more value a person gets from that community. In turn, it makes it a lot more likely that they will add to the community, therefore creating more content and value for others. It's a beautiful circle.
The other great thing about having a barrier of entry is the air of exclusivity it creates. Having a movement that has that barrier as opposed to one that doesn't is the difference between the secret clubhouse and the mall.
When we're invited to become members of the secret club, we of course want to tell others about it. It makes us feel good about ourselves. But we're careful who we tell. We don't want just anyone to come to the secret meetings—only people we deem worthy. So now you're not only feeling ownership, you're feeling empowered. You feel authorized to do the recruiting because, as a member, you feel like you need to pick and choose the other members to maintain the integrity of the club. It's your job. You're the gatekeeper now.
As Alex Wipperfurth and John Grant write in their white paper "How Cults Seduce," the Jehovah's Witness group has a fascinating way of recruiting new members into the church. The first time you are visited by recruiters, two people come to your door. But the next time they come, one is someone who wasn't there for your previous visit. They do this three times. Each time they show up, you know one of them and you don't know the other.
That means that by the time you decide to visit the church, you know at least four people who are members. Putting up a barrier of entry for the Fiskateers achieved the same effect. Since the only way to join the movement is through one of the leaders, there was an automatic relationship established, and you knew at least one person when you entered into the community.
The problem with the vast majority of communities—online and off—is that the bigger they are, the more chance you have of getting lost in the shuffle. Large churches are a great example of this. Yes, they have databases and welcome committees and greeters and are doing just about everything they can to make sure visitors don't slip through the cracks unnoticed, but people still do.
When you already know at least one person there, you have a connection. You have a reason to come back. And most important, you have someone to talk to. It's a cutting technique, and giving a little bit of your effort, time, money, and reputation can be a vital part of that barrier.