Disengagement is the first level of engagement, not its opposite.

distinction — attributed to Amanda Slavin

Slavin's most counter-intuitive claim is that disengagement is not the enemy of engagement. It is the starting level of the progression. Treating disengagement as a problem to be eliminated leads marketers to spend money trying to convert it directly to high engagement, which does not work. Treating it as the floor from which to build upward leads to investments in moving people up one level at a time. The reframe also affects how organizations think about audiences they have failed to reach. Disengaged audiences are not lost; they are at level one and waiting for the level-two move. The framework gives marketers an actionable map.

For marketers and community builders who have written off disengaged audiences as unreachable. The distinction is most useful as a reframe when the team is tempted to give up on audiences they have not yet moved.

disengagement, starting-point, audience-development, reframe