Best of 2012: How The Higgs Boson Can Help You Build Customer Engagement

In July, during the frenzy over the purported discovery of the Higgs Boson I wrote the following silly piece, among my choices for one of the Best of 2012.


Executive Summary: Start by creating a Boson-link (Blink). Then co-create by sharing Blinks about your brand with a million billion trillion zillion other Blinks and, like, then those Blinks will, like, totally connect and grow exponentially and before you know it you're delivering brand messages and branded content and branded branding to everyone online without having to give a penny to that creepy Zuckerberg kid. 

Yes, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN changes everything for marketers.

First, it poses a huge challenge. How will you use the Higgs Boson to build stronger engagement between your brand and your customers?

Scientists tell us that without the Higgs Boson matter would have no mass. There would be no stars, no galaxies, and no cinnamon raisin bread. Without mass, we would have no mass media and no mass transit. Massachusetts would be called achusetts.

The calcified old-world thinking of Madison Avenue, with its TV commercials and display ads, relied on dreary, clunky electrons to deliver a one-way message to a passive viewer. But now, electrons are dead!  Today's particle-wave-connected consumer or, as we like to call him, the average schmuck, is just another bump in an ever-expanding Higgs Field.

Messages embedded in a Higgs Boson bounce right off the average schmuck and create an immediate channel connecting him to someone else -- in many cases, a below-average schmuck.

Here's an example of how Higgs Boson marketing works in a worldwide, inter-globulated ecosystem of engagement: Let's say a Higgs Boson  passes through my arm. In the next instant it may pass through your foot. Or it might pass through some super-hot nympho's tiny skirt and go bouncing around in her thong. How awesome would that be? (We'd finally get some data-driven insights we could really use, if you get my drift.)

Today, the consumer is dead! I mean, she's in total control (unless she's had wine at lunch, then look out!) Scientists now estimate that somewhere between 14 and 600 million billion trillion zillion Higgs Bosons penetrate a typical consumer's body every moment. Can you imagine how many would penetrate it if she was totally naked?

According to one theory proposed by physicists at the Very, Very Small Teflon Collider in Rhode Island, there are actually more bosons in the universe than social media experts in Brooklyn.

Three Ways To Incorporate The Higgs Boson Into Your Marketing Plan Right Now!

1. Remember, activating Higgs Boson technology is only one part of your 360 degree marketing mix. It's actually about 154 degrees. So you still have 206 degrees to play with. Don't neglect all your other important marketing activities like tweeting, podcasting, crank calling, and going to Cannes to snort coke with Swedish account planners.

2. Collecting "likes" on Facebook is still a great way to stay busy without actually accomplishing anything. But it's not too early to start accumulating "Bosos." A "Boso" is like a "like." It occurs when a Boson interacts with another particle and then something amazing happens and your score goes up and you can win a new dining room set.

3. Three words: Gamify your bosons!

One warning. If you haven't activated your Higgs Boson integrated worldwide artisanal strategy already, it's too late and you and your brand and all your colleagues and friends and their families and pets are dead!