In Advertising Age’s annual digital issue published last month, Simon Dumenco, media columnist and new-media pundit, talked about “why most consumers will never engage with brands or content, and why it doesn’t matter.” In his article, The brutal truth about social media: It’s OK to be a little antisocial, Simon cites his colleague Matt Creamer’s report that “slightly more than 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging brands.” He goes on to argue that while social media has certainly made it easier to engage a brand, consumers always “had plenty of ways of engaging with brands and content” prior to Twitter and Facebook. These included “toll-free numbers on the back of cake boxes, letters to the editor at print publications, and call-in shows on TV & radio,” but only a minority of consumers embraced such dialogue. We agree with Dumenco that “passively consuming content is just the way that most people choose to engage.” In fact, over the last two months Amie Ley, our Director of Public Relations & Social Media, and I have been using a sports analogy to explain this truth to our clients. We tell them that most of their fans are not Face Painters.