So this was making the rounds this afternoon. Looks to have originally popped up on The Sell! Sell! Blog. It’s a must read. I’ll catch up with you when you’re done.

With all the social media, engagement, crowdsourcing, transmedia, and UGC sentiment flying around lately, sometimes we forget that people don’t want to have to do anything with our brands or ads. It reminds me of Your Brand Is Not My Friend but to a higher degree. Sometimes a good value prop is all we really need.

This (fictional?) situation, along with a lot of what is being pushed lately, strikes me as one of those “if you have to ask, you’ll never know” scenarios, in that if you’re trying to manufacture brand interaction, you’ll never get it. It shouldn’t be our job to beg, borrow, and steal people’s attention and time. Instead we should focus on creating an environment that encourages, facilitates, and highlights that kind of engagement.

Kid build a room full of furniture out of your FedEx boxes? Send him more and see what he can do. Start a contest and buy actual furniture for whoever builds the best FedEx box furniture.

Bros Icing Bros? Let them run with it but start a campaign encouraging people to be Brosponsible ™.

You get the idea. Now leave me alone…for some reason, all I can think about it sausages…