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While the ad world has focused on the reach and frequency of messages, Kvamme believes digital media overload is placing a premium on interactions. In the near future, advertisers will go from valuing whether their messages show up in front of people to enticing some sort of engagement, he said.

When I read that in Adweek, I’m both delighted and amazed.

Delighted because I wholeheartedly believe in moving toward engagement and brand experience and away from pumping unidirectional messages at supposedly passive consumers via traditional channels. I’ve been talking about this for years, and am thrilled that the empowerment of the consumer and the democratization of media via digital technologies is finally forcing the shift.

And forcing is definitely the operative word.

And this is where the amazement part comes in. It seems like such an obvious idea, the fact that it’s still even considered a new concept shows how deeply the traditional marketing habits are embedded.

Reach and frequency: the source of many a dire banner campaign

Reach and frequency are the metrics that traditional agencies relied on for years. And they’ve been at the heart of a lot of bad marketing.

For many media agencies it’s simply a lot easier and a lot less risky to take the commission on a buy of a billion banner placements or than it is to advocate putting that same marketing spend against something bespoke built specifically to engage and provide something of value to the consumer.

And in fairness to media agencies, it’s also a lot easier for a certain type of marketer to hide behind big and impressive sounding numbers about the number of people that a piece of messaging reached. It’s a lot riskier to try something new and genuinely aim for impact. Given how difficult it is to truly connect advertising with sales, who’s to know? By the time someone figures out that of those billion impressions, a witheringly small percentage of people in your target were affected in any positive way by it, everyone’s moved on to the next thing. And that type of marketer is often the source of the mandate to the media agency, who simply plays along.

Reach and frequency unceremoniously chucked to the curb, engagement the new hotness

The first sign of change has been the recent embracing of engagement as the primary metric, with Brian Haven’s Forrester report on the subject of engagement was a strong catalyst. Forrester’s message was clear, and of the moment. The marketing funnel had irreparably changed due to the emergence of social media.

Reach and frequency were legacy metrics associated with this old marketing funnel, and especially with broadcast media buys.

The new type of brand experience and long-term customer engagement programmes that the web made possible simply could not be effectively measured by these new metrics. They had a different objective entirely: reach a smaller group of people with a much deeper engagement with the brand. As Forrester concluded, in this new paradigm “engagement” was what mattered.

Although there is still some agencies and marketers struggling to catch up, it appears that over the last 9 months or so the tide has turned, and engagement is well and truly the hot metric, even if no one agrees on what it actually means.

Although predictably, as a recent AdAge article pointed out many media folk have moved on already to granularity as a key metric, probably because TV and engagement don’t exactly go hand in hand. Convenient, no?

What is engagement?

My own point of view is as follows:

• Brand engagement is about the consumer truly interacting and connecting with the brand, rather than just simply receiving messages.
• The goal of the engagement is a connection between the consumer and the brand that achieves a positive change in attitude and behaviour over time. A successful engagement should shift actual core brand metrics, like consideration and preference, advocacy and loyalty.
• Engagement can come in many forms, and should be seen more as a philosophy rather than a specific set of tactics.

What are some examples?

• Long-term programmes like Red Bull Music Academy
• Crowd-sourcing initiatives like Dell’s Ideastorm and Mountain Dew’s Dewmocracy
• Absolut Lomo
• Intel’s IT Manager Game
• Helio’s magazine

Etc, etc.

Why is there confusion about what engagement means?

I think as engagement as a concept is pretty self-evident. The confusion at the moment seems to be generated from the measurement side.

Media suppliers and buyers alike have a desire to standardize on how a successful engagement is measured. They are trying to do this by factoring in proxy measures such as dwell time, click-throughs, downloads and other instances of interaction.

As Tom Hespos rightly points out, measuring engagement is not something that can or should be standardized. It’s missing the point entirely, and a sign that the industry is still clinging to the days of reach and frequency: ineffective, but easy to measure. Unless of course, what we’re actually doing is saying that for the media vendors only (not including brand-built programmes), this is as best as they can do for the moment, and it’s better than reach and frequency.

Forrester’s own view was that engagement covered four vectors: Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy and Influence, and these could be measured as follows:

Again, I think that’s a decent starting point, but it’s almost too broad-reaching. Every engagement programme will need to have it’s own set of measurements that is specific to whatever that activity is.

Regardless of the current confusion around how to actually quantify something as subjective as a customer’s engagement with a brand experience, the fact that we’re finally talking about it seriously is a huge and reassuring step in the right direction. It’s a sign that the industry gets it. There’s a sea change towards marketing that matters. Do people feel and act differently in regards to your brand as a result of your marketing activity? If not, why are you wasting your money and cluttering the world with noise?

The reality is doing something meaningful and valuable for customers is hard. It requires a lot more thought and a lot more commitment than many of us in the industry are used to. It requires seeking out innovation and true insight, and shying away from the safe and the mediocre. But that’s the new reality, and it should mean that marketing becomes an increasingly exciting and dynamic industry to work in, focused on creating value to the consumer.

And that is a good thing. If you don’t think so, you should be looking for a new career. Insurance sales, perhaps?

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