I've worked in marketing all of my life. And every so often, I come across a word which is over used by practitioners to the point of it's meaning being lost or confused. In the 1990s one such word was 'integration', as applied to either your agency services or more often the campaigns you produced. For some, an integrated campaign was one in which the literal assets of one media (e.g. the TV ad imagery or copy) were zealously duplicated in any other media (e.g. direct mail, email, website, on-pack, etc.). For others, an integrated campaign was one in which the tone was consistent - each channel could look different, but they had to 'sing off the same hymn sheet'. Still other pundits took the stance that an integrated campaign was one where everything linked to everything else, even if the tone or imagery differed. So, for example, as long as you put the website address on the TV spot, or had a click through on your website to the video of the same TV spot, you were integrated.
But that was the 1990's, when Clinton was President, grunge and Britpop played in clubs, MP3 players weren't selling much until that Jobs fella changed it, and direct marketing/CRM was seen as the savior of most companies. Surely, in the twenty-teens we're about to enter we'll have outgrown such confusion over a word.
Nope. It's now in our social world all about 'engagement'. You know: 10 steps to engagement; how to engage with prospects; how engaging is your brand; are your employees engaged with your brand; etc. How many emails or postings of content do you receive daily with the word 'engagement' somewhere in the title or description.
Diving a little deeper, we find engagement has multiple meanings and raises multiple questions and opportunities for befuddlement and confusion. If someone 'likes' your brand, are they engaged? Well, maybe - they were engaged at the time they clicked 'like', so for a nanosecond or two. Or maybe they were engaged by the offer or funny video you did, but couldn't give a hoot about (or even remember) who they 'liked' to get it.
Does engagement mean they regularly chat about your brand to all their friends? Sure, that's engaged, although if your brand was Clorox wouldn't you be concerned about the type of people who pontificate about your brand excessively as having a strange personality disorder? Not sure I want as my brand advocate someone with potentially a screw loose. I can be loyal to a brand, use a brand, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I want to be engaged by a brand. Hell, Clorox, I buy it ... isn't that enough?
But the bottom line is at the moment, engagement is so overused that I think some of the meaning is going out of the term. People aren't really sure what it means anymore, but like 'integration' in the 1990's it must be a good thing to have or why else would everyone be talking about it.
In seeking resolution to this challenge, I took a step back and thought about what most Average Joe and Josephine thinks about the word 'engagement'. My limited scale research (I talked to the neighbors, Joe and Josephine ... they're thinking of changing their last name, as it hinders job applications for Joe) and found that they don't think they're 'engaged' with a brand, only that they like it, hate it, can't be fussed with it, don't know it, or think it's someone else's. Some brands they'd like to be engaged with - Porsche, for example. Problem is Porsche doesn't want to engage with them, at least not where new cars are concerned. Mr and Mrs Average do not drive a Porsche.
So maybe the trick is to think less about 'engaging' customers, and more about what the original form of engagement stands for. Tell someone "I'm engaged" and it's a clear signal that marriage is impending. It's a promise, nothing more. Doesn't carry much legal weight, it can be short or long or failed or called off. But it's a promise. So the question is does your brand elicit a promise with your customers? Are you breaking your promises (through customer service or through crappy performance) such that the engagement breaks off? And are you measuring engagement by the metrics of what someone says (ie telling everyone 'we're engaged') or what someone does (ie here's the ring and the wedding is booked)? In other words, is your engagement meaningful enough to drive actions and get you the ring ... in particular, the ring of the cash register.
Wait a minute - that's another 90's reference - cash registers don't really ring anymore, do they? That's what I call progress!
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