In an age when new and emerging media options have changed the entire paradigm of how consumers interact with media, old forms of interruptive marketing — like a 30-second TV spot or a double-page print ad — have become less effective at connecting to a target audience in a meaningful way. The belief now is that an integrated marketing communications strategy incorporating an array of media platforms must be employed. And as marketers seek to capitalize on the latest technological advancements to deliver their messages, they must also develop a strategic communications strategy that not only grabs consumers’ attention but also actively engages their interest in a significant fashion.

“We’ve gone from a time when a marketer could talk to a consumer to an environment where consumers pick and choose what messages they will allow in,” says Bob DeSena, managing partner and director of active engagement for Mediaedge:cia, a New York–based media services agency owned by WPP Group. “That has led to a major rethinking of our methods.”

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And it has opened the door to engagement marketing, one of the hottest consumer marketing trends. Based on the principles of involvement, experience, relationship building and stickiness, engagement marketing goes well beyond permission-based ideals. It’s designed to help a company’s commercial messages cut through the enormous clutter of other ads — many of which are being ignored or skipped over with devices like digital video recorders — to create a two-way, ongoing dialogue with customers and best prospects.

There’s such a buzz about the brave new world of engagement marketing that two leading trade organizations — the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) — cosponsored a national conference dedicated to exploring the concept’s possibilities and ramifications.

“What engagement requires is a lot of deep digging on the part of advertisers and agencies to understand what is relevant to a user or prospect, how to craft a message that truly involves and engages them and then to find the right place to put it,” says Michael Donahue, executive vice president of the AAAA. “It’s about precisely the right message in the right medium at the right time.”

Content Is King
According to Malcolm Russell, communications strategy director for New York–based media agency MindShare, the new emphasis on engagement has made creative ideas and content more important than ever. “The concept of engagement is not new,” he points out. “Even during the birth of television there were some ads that captured people’s attention more than others. But today the type of engagement we’re trying to achieve is different. Because consumers control the media, you have to create ideas that people actually want to see and will seek out on their own.”

To that end, an increasing number of marketers are beginning to produce their own programming. Beer giant Anheuser-Busch created an in-house film and TV production unit to create comedy programs to be broadcast over the Internet and on cell phones. A handful of other top marketers, including PepsiCo, Starbucks, General Motors, and Procter & Gamble, are all getting into other forms of content production that fall under the umbrella of “branded entertainment.”

“The wrapping you put around your message is just as important as the message itself,” Russell points out. “That’s far different from advertising that relies on interruption to succeed.”

Measuring Engagement
As with any integrated marketing communications plan, measurement and ROI are of chief concern to marketers. So far, there are no credible or reliable methods for effectively measuring what constitutes successful engagement marketing, but efforts are under way to create them. “There’s an industry-wide effort to define metrics for engagement, but it will take time,” says DeSena. “Right now the ARF is engaged in a major validation study to create hypotheses and to try to validate engagement metrics as an indicator of future sales.”

Experts like the AAAA’s Donahue contend that the key is to develop metrics for engagement that go far beyond current measurement systems, which are limited to counting how many people see a message, not how they react to it. “The problem that exists today is that measurements are only about exposure,” Donahue says. “But true engagement measurement gives you the opportunity to sell. In that context, engagement is the most important new research initiative in quite some time. There are misperceptions that this is a replacement for exposure metrics, but it’s not. It’s complementary. You have to understand how the message engages and give it the opportunity to be exposed.”

No matter the metrics developed, MindShare’s Russell says successful engagement marketing is about creating strategic communications that people actually want to be exposed to, perhaps even repeatedly. And while opinions may vary on how to implement such a marketing program, most marketers and their agencies agree on its ultimate goal: “It’s all about generating positive equity for the brand and promoting increased sales,” Russell says. “That will never change.”

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