Engagement Making Progress

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

Max, you have broken my heart! That is Max Kalehoff I am talking about, the VP Marketing of Nielsen BuzzMetrics who made me a star (to my family and friends that is) by conducting a video interview with me (and others) about engagement that he ran last September on the video blog, Engagement by Engagement. Recently Max commented about engagement in a MediaPost article in which he questioned if engagement has stuck or if it is a passing fad.

The ANA is an industry partner in an important initiative about engagement metrics, spearheaded by the AAAA and the ARF. I agree with Max there was a lot of initial press hype and lately press about engagement has been "quiet," but the fact remains that advertisers are clamoring for information about what and how to measure in a world of fragmented media options and consumer control and our industry group is making enormous and carefully calibrated, progress.

Recently, an ANA poll of senior marketers found that accountability, usually the top issue on senior marketers’ minds, was now neck and neck with integrated marketing communications, specifically "how to bring together the various marketing channels," as what is keeping them up at night. The old purchase behavior paradigms don’t work anymore, we now live in a "feel, think, do" world which has important implications for marketers. Here is what Joe Plummer of the ARF, for whom I have immense respect, has to say about the work of the industry consortium on engagement and about Max’s post:

...the primary strategy for our combined effort is creating brand demand by "turning on" (or engaging) prospects in the brand idea enhanced by the context, this summary is valuable baseline knowledge. The vast majority of the research supports our research and thinking to date, in that much of what occurs between brands and prospects/customers is emotional and behavioral with minimal amounts of cognitive problem-solving and "rational man" economic-decision making. The research confirms that go-to-market components combine with the brand idea signifiers and meanings in a powerful (and possibly complex) process…the lack of buzz in the press reflects the short attention span of journalism in general and the ad industry in particular. It may also reflect a shift to a more applied phase in the engagement journey.

Stay tuned for a dialogue between Max and Joe in an upcoming Engagement by Engagement blog.

Technorati tags: engagement marketing accountability

Comments

[maxkalehoff]

Hi Barbara,
Well, it seems we're injecting some life into the conversation! Stay tuned for the looming Joe/Max exchange and update.
-Max