Where in the world is customer engagement?

Thirty three years ago the home VCR was invented. This fall, Nielsen finally provided broadcast advertisers measurement on delayed viewing. Well.... duh. Media and technology providers traditionally tend to undervalue the power of consumer preferences in how, when and where they like to be engaged. Likewise, most online advertising overlooks the critical component of whether the viewer of the ad is someone with whom the advertiser already has a relationship. Could it be that in the quest for the illusive Holy Grail of advertising, the writing's been on the wall all along – "It's the user"?

It's no surprise this year's favorite buzzword is "engagement." While we owe the latest incarnation of the term to Atlas for its "Engagement Mapping" product, the term is not new. In 2006, some of the best marketing minds around put their collective gray matter to the grindstone to ferret out the truth. Mollie Spilman, then CMO at Advertising.com, defined engagement as "turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context." Jim Nail, CMO of Cymfony, said, "Consumer engagement may be to the marketing mix what gravity is to the physical world: the unseen force that keeps it all together!" Now, two years later, there's still little consensus on definition, let alone how it can be measured.

What we do know for sure is that broadcast models fail at personal engagement. And direct marketing techniques haven't worked well in the context of new media which has, with the exception of email, been a broadcast model until now. To truly engage with a customer online requires some knowledge about that consumer, and then the ability to utilize that knowledge across your buys. Who is she? What's she interested in? Is she a prospect or a loyal customer? And, more importantly, how do you provide a truly personalized and relevant experience and still be sensitive to her privacy?

Whether you're an advertiser, a media buyer, a data analyst, or a marketing director, the fact remains that in today's complex media world, simply being "where" your customers are is not enough to create meaningful engagement. You must meet him on his terms, understand his needs, and be ready to personalize your message. There's still a substantial gap to be filled by online and multi-channel technologies to provide what advertisers need to turn "engagement" into more than just a nifty buzzword.

– Layne Salter

Comments

[Layne]

Thanks Jim, I agree. It's just a word until we come up with a way to define/measure it. There are currently so many ways for advertisers to engage in and try to measure online advertising - targeting media, search, analytics, technology companies, etc. - and all going about it in different ways. It's not surprising with such a confusing landscape, that it's difficult to land on viable engagement metrics.

[Jim Nail]

Thanks for the shout out! Engagement seems to have gone underground, since no one can really figure out how to measure what we really want to know: the emotional connections between an ad and the viewer. The minute you put a survey in front of someone, you lose the emotional aspect since the respondent must engage his/her rational mind to answer the questions.

But I think this is what is driving the dramatic increase in interest in social media that I am seeing. Someone who is writing about a brand is unquestionably engaged -- for good or ill!