The new rules of engagement

Engagement marketing is changing the way brands connect with consumers. Marketers in Asia will increasingly need to provide mechanisms where consumers can interact with their brand. As with communication campaigns, research will also need to move to more authentic interactions, and look to develop more adult-to-adult relationships to co create the emerging brand relationship.

"In the '50s and '60s, copy testing was mainly about recall - and then in the '70s and '80s, they were talking about persuasion, and in the '90s it was about liking - getting the consumer to like the advertisement. Now it's got to be about engagement." Mike Hess, Director of Global Research and Communication Insights, OMD.

Current signs of change include:

China Idol not only allows the audience to vote but the winner is a surprise to the judges

Mixi in Japan (an invitation only social networking site) receives 750 million hits per month from PC users and nearly 2 billion hits from Japanese accessing the service on their mobile phones

The Wii outsells Playstation - not on technological performance but because of its capacity for engagement

Such changes indicate the need for brands to constantly evolve their expression and to connect to the changing wants and needs of consumers, thereby laying the foundations for engagement marketing.

The engagement buzz

Engagement has become a buzzword over the last eighteen months. Google records over 9 million entries for ‘engagement marketing' and the term even has its own entry in Wikipedia. It has appeared in marketing and research conferences, been the focus of advertising industry workgroups, and the topic of discussion of both bloggers and marketing press.

TNS has come to the following definition of engagement:

Engagement is about connecting consumers and brands in a way that allows for a two-way experience. This 'new' model of communications is based upon a simple human truth that consumers' time and attention must be earned and rewarded.

Some brands are learning how create two-way experiences, and how to earn and reward consumers time and involvement. Through our research, we have identified a number of ways in which brands can engage consumers: through experience, through co creation and through content creation with the express purpose of viral usage. Here are just three of them:

Brands as experience: How can consumers participate across varied campaign touch points? A pioneering company in Singapore that develops interactive retail spaces created the ‘VBOX' - a portable store in a shipping container that can be set up temporarily.

Co-creation: Rather than simply define brands marketers need to accept that as consumers seek a greater level of involvement they can no longer dominate the dialogue. Muji (a Japanese brand) launched a successful international design competition on the theme of ‘sumi', which means corner/edge/end. After announcing the results of the competition Ryohin Keikaku, Senior Managing Director commented, "...through this serious selection of winners Muji was able to gain new abilities in product development"

Viral content creation: Engagement involves an element of creating ‘social currency' that the use/presence of technology can spread exponentially as the brand is picked up and spread by consumers.

Changing Marketing

Engagement is changing marketing in three ways: the when and where, the how, and the what.

1. Technology is changing the when and where we can advertise to consumers and it will only continue to change.

2. Companies are changing how they talk to consumers.

3. We now expect a different what from the consumer.

This raises the question ...who do we target?

Future Shapers

Early adopters, a key group for driving change, are very often early abandoners too. Yet whilst early adopters are curious and open minded, people who influence the future also have five other traits:

Value Authenticity and Originality

Well-informed and Involved

Individualistic

Time Poor

Socially Responsible

We call these consumers the ‘Future Shapers'. From research we have done, one Future Shaper is worth four ‘average' consumers - in terms of the percentage of consumers who trial a new brand, retain it in their repertoire and recommend it to others.

Future research: more technology, in situ research and opportunities to interact

Engagement marketing is intensifying a global trend towards increased ‘in-home' research and point of purchase research; using technology to observe consumers in more naturalistic and authentic consumption and decision-making exchanges with the brand experience. Increasingly researchers are interacting with people in the online world e.g. using blogs and chat rooms to conduct research. More technology and in-situ research opportunities are becoming available as people use and interact with these new channels.

As creators of engagement campaigns increasingly ask, "How can I provoke or facilitate conversations? How can I feed communities?" We will continually need to evolve how our brands can interact with consumers in a way that allows for a meaningful two-way experience, and earn and reward consumers' time and attention. Market research 2.0 is going to be exciting for all of us.

A version of this paper first appeared in Research World, published by ESOMAR.

Lee Ryan, Regional Qualitative Director - ALM, TNS, Singapore