Amanda Slavin, CatalystCreativ (New York City, NY)

Amanda's company started as a community design firm and morphed over time to what they are today, a combination experiential agency/brand consulting firm. The company activating customers into brand loyalists, into ambassadors, into advocates, so that they can grow their business, helping brands transition passive customers to active participants in shaping their brand's story.

Amanda's Dad, a big sports fan, forced her to watch every sport when she was growing up. Her background is in the sports bar industry, Between the two, she knows the value of sports in community-building.

When the LA Raiders transitioned to Las Vegas, CatalytCreativ designed the opening ceremonies to feature local residents. Las Vegas is unique in that it has only 2 million permanent residents and hosts 40 million visitors a year, and the transition came after the tragic October 1, 2017 concert massacre. The message of the program was that the Raiders were not asking anything from the community, but were there to support it. The Raiders gave LA something to rally around. This experience illustrates what Amanda calls the highest level of audience engagement, "when your personal values and beliefs align with the brand's message."

She believes the Golden Knights hockey team and the raiders have had a unifying effect on Las Vegas, helping "to build internal community, and also external community with the rest of the country," because now Las Vegas is "part of a larger story."

Amanda presented "The Most Important Way to Engage Your Audience and How It Impacts Your Bottom Line: The 7th Level" at HubSpot's 2018Inbound Conference. The 7 levels is a framework for goal-setting, , business, and customer connection.

That strategy was from the foundation of these 7 levels. The highest level is called literate thinking. It's when your personal values and beliefs align with the brand's message

1) Disengagement is when you're avoiding or idle from a task

2) Unsystematic Engagement. It's when you're confused by the messaging

3) Frustrated engagement is when the customer wants to engage, but is distracted by

These first three levels are about finding your customers and building trust. The next three are about amplification, which involves asking things of these people.

4) Structure-Dependent Engagement, such as "comment below," "give me your email," "like my post." And social media marketing campaigns

5) Influencer marketing—piquing someone's interest to get them to engage with your brand.

6) Critical Engagement—transforming someone to set goals and transform their own lives.

7) Literate Thinking—your personal values and beliefs align with a brand's message delight. How do you delight customers?

Details on Seventh Level strategy ( field guide, worksheet, and blog) are available on the-seventhlevel.com.

. CatalystCreativ on LinkedIn. (No "e" at the end; we creatively spell it.) Amanda Slavin on LinkedIn, and then I'm @ajslavin on every other social platform. The company website is catalystcreativ.com.