« What Do You Do Again, Dear? A Cymfony Update | Main | Media Trends »

Brand Engagement as a Metric?

Gary Stein wrote a very timely article for ClickZ yesterday entitled "Consumer Engagement: Breaking the Perfect Measurement Myth".  I say timely because I was recently in a meeting  with a few internal folks and advisers were we were discussing an engagement metric.  Specifically what is the right methodology or best way to measure brand engagement as a metric?  Can it be done correctly?  As Gary points out and we agreed, measuring engagement is difficult but not impossible.  As does the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation who issued this press release not to long ago to encourage industry-wide adoption of "consumer engagement" as a media measurement metric to complement traditional measures of consumer exposure.

"The goal of marketing measurement is to capture what the community does with and thinks about your products, not how well campaign mechanics preform.  Shifting an organization away from this traditional mindset is difficult, partially because individuals want to see their work succeed.  But engagement can become a corporate goal, or at least a marketing department goal: a single point everyone focus on and contributes their work and expertise toward."

In traditional marketing measurement ROI or marketing mix models companies try to answer questions such as, what's the ROI of my Ad?   We all hope and expect ads to drive sales.  But ads can do something else, they can drive emotion to a brand.  Take the Subservient Chicken from Burger King for example (btw, you can buy a halloween mask of the chicken on this site?!?).  It's considered a successful viral ad campaign spread primarily by word of mouth.  Again, the question becomes, can you show analysis based on the promotion of this ad to the growth of the brand?  A critical piece in this case is being able to measure the message that's getting through - and then take a closer look to see if it's driving behavior.  Are people going to Burger King because of the chicken?  Or is Burger King now considered a cool, hip company because of the ad? 

Gary shares a great example in the article:  Data shows that people are still watching a large amount of TV.  But picture a family who has the TV on in the morning when they're getting ready to start the day.  The TV is on for a couple of hours, but is anyone really watching?  The mother might check out an interview with the star of a new movie, the dad a new luxury car ad.  "Imagine, though, the data from that experience. The TV's on for two hours, but there's no objective way to know only 20 minutes of actual consumption occurred, spread across a four-member family."

Later that day, the mother sees an ad for the movie the star is going to be in, a few hours later she reads a blog post that says the movie is way to violent for kids and recommends another movie.  The mother then might do a search on each movie while clicking on reviews and show times.  The consumer moves from awareness to action and several media pieces play key roles.

The point is that integrating multiple data sources and examining how each element generated value in the engagement chain is key.  In the example above, the PR team played a role in getting the star on the show, another team placed the search ad - the search ad may have captured more clicks but the consumer searches having already established awareness.

As you can see measuring engagement is sure to be a complex model with many moving parts but it's quickly becoming a metric that many marketers will need to consider.  Especially as the consumer gains more control.  As a final note and call to action, Gary suggests that "you can being measuring engagement simply by thinking about each individual connection as part of an interlocking chain.  Incremental steps can also be taken, such as correlating SEM data with site performance data. Use blog search engines or buzz services to monitor discussions about your products and its relation to other products."

Posted by Cymfony on October 25, 2005 at 10:24 AM | Email this post Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341cdcdc53ef00d835565d5b69e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Brand Engagement as a Metric?:

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.