Engagement happens in seven levels; you cannot skip them.Slavin's framework, developed in her education master's thesis and adapted to business, treats engagement as a seven-step progression. Disengagement, unsystematic engagement, frustrated engagement, structure-dependent engagement, self-regulated interest, critical engagement, and literate thinking. Most brands try to skip from level one to level six and lose people in the middle. The framework's discipline is to identify where your audience actually is and to design the experience that moves them up one level. You would not ask someone to marry you on the first date. The progression is just common sense applied to engagement.For marketers, brand strategists, and community builders thinking about how audiences move toward deeper engagement. The framework is most useful as a diagnostic when engagement metrics have plateaued at a specific level.
Disengagement is the first level of engagement, not its opposite.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.
Identify the action that fits each level.Slavin's framework prescribes specific actions at each level. Level four, structure-dependent engagement, runs on instruction-based behaviors: comment below, like this post, email back, respond. Level five, self-regulated interest, runs on influencer marketing and partnership marketing. Each level has a format that fits. The team's job is to ask what percentage of the audience is at each level and how the next move up should be designed. The diagnostic surfaces misallocated budget. Most teams default to one or two formats across the whole audience. Slavin's framework surfaces that the audience is distributed across levels and each level needs its own tool.For marketers and engagement strategists setting program budgets across audience segments. The technique is most useful as an allocation diagnostic for organizations whose engagement work has felt one-size-fits-all.
Millennials need a way to share; treat the phone as part of the event.Slavin's observation about millennial engagement is structural. Older designers experience an event by putting the phone away. Millennials experience the event by using the phone, sharing on the phone, creating content on the phone. The phone is part of the experience, not a distraction from it. Designers who do not build for creators (with photo moments, shareable formats, accessible content) are missing a generation's engagement mode. The reframe is hard for older designers who treat the phone as something to be discouraged. The discipline is to accept that the phone is part of the participant, and to design for the participant as they actually are.For event designers and marketers building experiences for millennial audiences. The observation is most useful when the design team's default discourages phone use rather than designing for it.
Generation Z wants to create movements, not just consume them.Slavin's note on Generation Z is that they engage when whatever they are doing is of value and can make significant change. They want to create movements. They want to create their own reality. The implication for brands and event designers is to give them opportunities to develop content, share their voice, see themselves heard and valued. The asymmetric risk is on the brand side. If a Gen Z audience does not believe a company is authentic, they will go on social media and try to take that company out of business. The discipline is to ask them what they want to see and to actually deliver it, because not delivering carries higher cost with this audience than with any previous one.For brand strategists, marketers, and community builders working with Gen Z audiences. The observation is most useful as a frame against the temptation to treat Gen Z as a target rather than as collaborators.
Authenticity is consistency throughout, not consistency in messaging.Slavin's read on what authenticity actually means is structural. A brand needs to stand for something, and it should make sense throughout. Not just in the messaging the marketing team produces, but in the supply chain, the HR practices, the customer service script, the executive pay structure. Audiences (especially Gen Z) can spot the gap between what a brand says and what it does, and the gap is what produces the cancel-the-brand reaction. The discipline is operational rather than rhetorical. Authenticity is not a tone of voice. It is consistency across every place the brand touches the world. The brands that win the next decade will be the ones that close the gap.For brand leaders, communications executives, and marketing strategists thinking about how authenticity actually shows up. The principle is most useful as a corrective to authenticity-as-messaging frameworks.
Banish the jargon that does not survive an outsider's ear.Slavin's discipline for her agency is to make a list of words, abbreviations, acronyms, and phrases that make sense within their professional vernacular but not to anyone else, and to banish them. The replacement is to define what is actually meant in plain language inside every scope of work. The technique surfaces how much specialty language is doing work the team did not realize. Once banished, the team writes more clearly and the client understands what they are buying. The discipline is portable. Any organization with a specialty vocabulary can run the same audit and gain the same clarity.For agency leaders, internal communications teams, and any organization whose work is being misunderstood by clients. The technique is most useful as a one-time audit followed by a maintained banned-words list.