No Man’s Blog

A couple of days ago Steve Rubel wrote a rather provocative post about the myth of the  E – word:

Engagement is, quite frankly, hot air. It’s indicative of a systemic
issue in the marketing community. We love to create buzzwords to
describe new marketing methods when the good ol’ outdated ones like
blunt interruption don’t quite work anymore.

The truth about engagement is that no one can define it because it’s a
myth. It’s sort of like a magical marketing unicorn or Bigfoot. Sure,
there are  a few fuzzy pictures of it on the internet, but no one has classified the species.

Well, I beg to differ. While Rubel is right in his observation that the marketing community loves to create buzzwords and engagement might be one, he surprisingly downplays the essence of the change.

Engagement represent a new era of marketing comms. Consumers no longer accept a one-way shouting of marketing message. This is what myself and Faris recently described as zero-sum communications where the consumers gives their time and attention to a marketing message and in return they receive..er..nothing. They came to loathe advertising and they started asking a simple question – whats in it for me? So its not just about a buzzword. Its about a dramatic change from yes, interruption to involvement, entertainment, content, experience, invitation and most of all – permission. And its a huge change from zero-sum communication to a win-win communications where I choose to interact with the brand and receive some form of value for my time and attention (also known as Brand Utility)

I also disagree with Rubel when he associates the E-word with the digital world -this is very narrow interpretation of the philosophy of engagement. Engagement is not restricted to the digital world but rather should apply to every possible touch point and aspect of the marketing mix. In fact, the best engagement projects to date weren’t digital, although had proper digital extension to enhance experience and communications(see examples below).

However, he is generally spot-on when he says that:

"consumers don’t want to be "digitally engaged" with us. They’re only into each other."

This is a very important insight and there are plenty of examples to demonstrate that brands who got both the idea of engagement AND community right, have done some pretty good things and those who simply jumped on the bandwagon and looked for consumers to do the marketing job for them have got it terribly wrong. True, for almost every established brand there are a core of fans/evangelists/devoted consumers, but these are usually a handful of people and mass-market brands shouldn’t build their marketing strategy solely on this segment but aspire to deliver value that is beyond the ‘love for the brand’.

First things that come to mind are Red Bull and Nike. RedBull has got it long time ago and everything they do from the Art of the Can to the Flugtag to RedBull academy, RedBull brings people together to interact with each other and get enrichment and fun.

Another fine example is Nikey’s Run London, again bringing people together and facilitating community building around a shared interests and goals. Last weekend Nikey gathered tens of thousands of people to interact with each other and in the long run, they manage to help people overcome the barrier of jogging in London – this is pure value that is beneficial to all – win-win!

Some nice digital examples are Verizon BeatBox Mixer and P&G Vocalpoint.

So to sum up, engagement, far from being just a myth or a hollow buzzword is representing a real change that doesn’t apply only to the digital world.   Brands should adopt a win-win communication strategy and create enriching and engaging experiences for people to interact with each other and if they get it right they will, as Rubel says, "get a lift purely through association".