Sharon McCarthy recently conducted an interesting survey of MENG members

Executive Summary –

Here are the top definitions for the word “interactive”, although if you look through the entire list, you could probably group more of the items together….but for our purposes it worked.

Just a couple of observations:

1. It’s amazing how rich this word is – it generated more than 75 different responses…(In her research she only asked for 3 definitions per person, but ended up getting more and having to do more grouping by attributes because is was clear by the “explanation” that some had the same meaning).

2. Just when you think you understand what a person means by a word, they define it for you, and you find out that you really didn’t know what they meant.

3. On the other hand, if you use this word in your written or verbal communication, many people will see or hear this word differently therefore interpret it differently.

4. For the most part, all of the responses were positive.

5. The marketing research people in the MENG group might be saying, “snore, I could have told you so!

Methodology of the research: Sharon used the MENG email response system to ping the membership which is made up of Senior Marketing Executives and received 58 responses within the course of a few hours then she compiled these results. Please feel free to comment and add to the definition as you see fit.

Primary
•         Two Way dialogue, 2 way communication/bi-directional – 27
•         Online/internet/web solution — 16
•         Immediate, Real time, 24×7, Speed, quick paced timing — 9
•         Participative, user involvement - 7
•         Customized to me/flexible/personalized — 7
•         Requires consumer input – 6
•         Easy to Use — 6
•         Engaging/Compelling – something hooks me in — 6
•         Feedback — 5
•         Responsive – take an action, get a reaction — 5
•         Fun/Entertaining — 5
•         Dialogue or conversation, not necessarily by voice – 4
•         Possibly Useful, adds value to my life, something in it for me – 3
•         Involving – 3
•         Multi forms of communication and engagement/Multi-media - 3
•         Involving – leads to a relationship 2
•         Self directed, consumer controls – 3
•         Targeted – 2
•         Collaborative — 2
•         Democratic/Equality – 2
•         Dynamic, constantly changing - 2
•         High tech — 2
•         Non-human — 2
•         Low cpm – 2
•         Time Consuming – 2
•         Kid Oriented - 2

Other
•         A forum where people can express ideas in a mutually respectful way
•         A path to an answer
•         Ability to comment on others words, or pictures
•         Ability to communicate with others in a conversation
•         Access/involvement
•         Action
•         Action/Results – you end up with a different question or issues that may lead to more issues, questions
•         Anonymous
•         App that is smart enough to ask the right questions
•         Both parties care about a relationship
•         Click fraud
•         Complicated
•         Current = tangible information that I will find involving
•         Database – collect data and use in relationship building
•         Digital
•         Digital media
•         Direct Marketing oriented
•         Electronic
•         Electronic games
•         Email generating
•         Engineers
•         Flash Images
•         Flexible – content and design modified in real time
•         Group activity
•         Hands on – simple minded
•         Information growth
•         Instructive – you end up in a surprising place and learn something new
•         Lazy – make the consumer do all the work
•         Maleable – changeable
•         Mobile
•         New
•         Non-linear
•         Non-static
•         Path to an answer
•         Process
•         Relevant – allows me to navigate to what is important to me
•         Requires caller interaction
•         Responsive – there are different choices and each results in a different response
•         Self adjusting, adds to body of knowledge
•         Silo’d
•         Social, as in social network
•         Sponsor company is sophisticated
•         Structured, logically organized
•         Technologically savvy
•         Teleservice
•         Viral
•         Voice, sound dialog
•         Voluntary