Why Engagement Isn't Only A Media Issue

Brilliant article written today by Cory Treffiletti called Engaging With Engagement. If you haven’t read it yet, do so now.

Cory’s premise is that we need to define engagement. I doubt anyone will argue with that. In Cory’s definition, engagement solely describes the media vehicle, not the advertising itself.

I think Cory’s article is brilliant because what he has done has reinforced the largest problem facing the digital marketplace – that of trying to define engagement as the responsibility of only one party.

While Cory makes a very cogent argument for engagement being something that media delivers, I’m of the belief that engagement doesn’t reside in media at all.

Engagement resides in the user of the media. Not in the media itself.

In fact, engagement is not something that advertising or media can even deliver. Rather, engagement is something that the viewer brings to the advertising. All the players involved—media, platform, and the creative itself—just facilitate the opportunity for engagement to occur.

Or, not to occur.

I was sitting with a friend from P&G last week, talking about this very topic. In the course of the conversation, he came up with a very interesting phrase – Engagement Per Opportunity – or EPO.

As we continued the discussion, we realized that the opportunity in which engagement can occur has three very distinct architects, each architect building in a different element to the engagement opportunity.

The first architect is the program/publisher which delivers the audience that has the chance to engage. Without an audience, engagement cannot occur. After all, the audience is who is actually bringing the engagement. Whether they decide to share it with a commercial message or not, is up to them.

The second architect is the digital platform which gives viewers the control to initiate, or give some of their engagement to a message, if they so desire.

The third architect, the creative itself, determines how long an engagement lasts, once engagement has been given by the viewer to the message.

Three very different activities – exposure to, initiation with, and involvement in.

Each able to be measured separately. Which means each architect can be held accountable for their part in creating the opportunity.

We’re already measuring how well the media did its part through viewership data. We’re already measuring how well the platform did its part through click-through data. And we have just recently started measuring how well the creative did its part through time-spent data.

Breaking engagement down to its component architects simply allows marketers to hold the right party responsible for their part in building the EPO.

In other words, engagement is really nothing more than a metric of accountability.

Times three.

Agency Time Sheets Vs. Viewer Time Sheets

The meeting was starting to get interesting.

The creative agency had just presented to the client what they would charge to come up with a concept for a ninety-second, online video commercial.

The cost-controller on the client side, who had been listening silently, now had center stage. Not surprisingly, he was making the best of it; slicing and dicing like a Benihana chef.

Number of people on the job, hours against, agency time sheets, all being gutted by the cost-controller. The agency was taking a beating, and when the cost-controller finally sat down, the proposed fee lying in tatters, the agency’s Managing Director stood up.

“Agreed,” he said. The cost-controller looked up, perplexed, expecting a defense more spirited.

“Agency time sheets are an analog way to measure our worth,” the Managing Director continued. “Not to mention, our value to you. So, our suggestion is that you start paying part of our fee based on viewer time sheets.”

“Viewer time sheets?” the cost-controller asked. “What’s a viewer time sheet?”

The Managing Director responded with a question of his own. “Because this online commercial is ninety seconds long, those who are interested will opt-in to watch, right?”

“Correct, “ answered someone from the digital division. Ninety-seconds is too long for pre-roll.

“Which means,” said the Managing Director, “that we’ll know when people start viewing. If so, then doesn’t that same digital technology also allow us to know when they stop viewing?”

“Also correct,” said the digital guy. “You’ll know how many of the ninety seconds of the commercial were actually used. I mean, viewed.”

“Well, said the Managing Director, “that’s your viewer time sheet. What we’re proposing is that instead of paying us for how long we worked on the commercial, pay us based on how long people watch the commercial.”

The head of marketing on the client side, who up to now had been listening to this discussion with a bemused indifference, was suddenly anything but indifferent. “Let me get this right,” he said. “What you’re saying is that instead of us paying you for effort, you’d be willing to be paid based on outcome?”

“Exactly,” said the Managing Director.

The cost-controller was looking a bit stunned. I think he could see the writing on the wall. “But, but this means that the viewer will be doing my job,” he stammered.

“I’m afraid so,” replied the Managing Director, as he slid the tattered proposal into the wastebasket. “But we feel that’s better than you trying to do ours.”

More discussion followed. Pros and cons were weighed, but the audacity of the idea had the room buzzing.

Imagine being paid based on how good you are versus how large. Obviously, not every agency would be willing to work under these criteria. After all, under the current system, agencies get paid whether viewers watch the work or not. There’s safety in that.

It takes an agency with a supreme amount of confidence in their ability to be paid based on their ability. This agency seemed fearless.

I don’t imagine that many marketers can say the same about theirs.

Advertising's Purpose Is No Longer To Sell

When I first uttered this phrase a year ago in a marketing meeting with one of the big car companies in Detroit, I was thanked for coming and politely showed the door.

They weren’t quite ready to hear what, to me, had become obvious. Can’t really blame them, actually, as it is a fairly frightening thought. After all, if the purpose of advertising is not to sell something, then what the hell is its purpose?

And, even more importantly, why is so much money being spent on it?

Not the type of questions people really want to attempt to answer if they don’t need to. Simpler, really, just to ignore the concept all together. Which is why I got “Thank you for coming. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

But the fact is, as digital technology shifts control to the viewer, it also shifts the purpose of advertising. Which is why the role of advertising is no longer to sell.

Is to help people buy.

“Oh, I see, semantics,” some of you will argue. Buying and selling after all, are the same thing.

Are they?

I don’t know how many of you saw the brilliant article that ran in Ad Age last month? In the article, Jakob Nielsen, an ex-Sun Microsystems guy, and now a consultant for Fortune 500 Companies for all matters digital, said the following. “The basic point about the web is that it is not an advertising medium. The web is not a selling medium; it is a buying medium. It is user-controlled, so the user controls, the user experiences.”

That he said this over a decade ago only makes it more extraordinary. Which means for more than ten years, we’ve been looking at reality for what we want it to be, rather than for what it actually is.

“The web is not a selling medium; it is a buying medium.” Why? The user is in control.

If Jakob is right, then advertising’s job, when the user is in control, is not to sell. It is to help people buy.

Now, name a digital medium that ten years from now, the user will not be in control of.

You see the problem.

And when you don’t immediately dismiss it as semantics, it starts to sink in how deep the problem really goes. If sales aren’t going to be the yardstick by which we measure the effectiveness of all advertising dollars spent, then what will be?

Do reach and frequency measure how we have helped people buy? Hardly. Reach and frequency measure what advertisers bought. Not how the advertising has helped people buy.

ROI measures how much was sold versus how much it cost to sell what was sold.

How do we create an ROI for buying rather than selling?

This week, at the International Advertising Association’s World Congress, heads of agencies were saying that the traditional model by which ad agencies made money was no longer valid, no longer relevant.

No, none of the agency heads went so far as to say that the job of advertising was no longer to sell. That would be consider blasphemous to all that they hold dear. And, no doubt, they would have been shown the proverbial door.

Which, in retrospect, wouldn’t be all together bad. After all, as my experience has proven, you have to go through one door before you can open another.

Servant-Leader Marketing

“So, the fact is, I’m curious as to what you think of the idea of Servant-Leader Marketing?” asked the Chief Marketing Officer as the meeting was finishing up.

“You’ve of course heard of Servant-Leadership?” he said. No doubt noticing my dumbfounded look, he continued. “It’s about leading by serving the needs of those
you lead.”

Not wanting to appear as if I had forgotten to read the latest Harvard Business Review, I responded, “Yes, yes, of course.”

“I find it sometimes helps to change the language before trying to convince people to change their actions,” he said.

Back at the office, I immediately went online to check out the definition of Servant-Leadership. Reading what it said, I saw how the CMO could be on to something.

Wikipedia defines it this way: Servant leadership is an approach to leadership development, coined and defined by Robert Greenleaf and advanced by several authors such as Stephen Covey, Peter Block, Peter Senge, Max De Pree, Margaret Wheatley, Ken Blanchard, and others. Servant-leadership emphasizes the leader's role as steward of the resources (human, financial and otherwise) provided by the organization. It encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization's values and integrity.

Now if you just take that last sentence and substitute the word “brands” where it says “leaders,” it would read like this. It encourages brands to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization’s values and integrity.

In other words, what the CMO is proposing through Servant-Leader Marketing is for brands to start serving consumers, rather than continuing to demand that consumers march to the beat of the brand’s drum.

Yes, it’s about giving up control. But what I find interesting about Servant-Leader Marketing, is that even though the brand has given up control, it’s still leading the process.

In other words, it’s a way for brands to regain control by relinquishing it.

Kind of interesting when you consider how control has already shifted over to the consumer in regards to the way they receive a brand’s messaging. Fruitless as it may be, the majority of marketers are still trying to prevent this shift from happening.

Lookng backwards instead of forwards.

A Servant-Leader Marketer, on the other hand, would understand that they are regaining control by allowing consumers to have control over when, and if, they watch the brand’s advertising.

It’s interesting to imagine how the digital platform would change if brands started to think that their role was to lead by serving the needs of viewers.

Is forcing viewers to watch by disabling fast-forward capabilities serving the needs of viewers?

Is intruding on a viewer’s program, not once, but repeatedly, in the course of thirty minutes, serving the needs of viewers?

You know the answer.

The fact is, everyone knows the answer.

But still, little is done to affect change.

So maybe this CMO is onto something by suggesting that if we change the language first, a change in our actions will follow. After all, by giving this new way of marketing a name, it starts to legitimize it.

Which, in turn, makes it easier for others to adopt.

If nothing else, it would at least allow every CMO to ask themselves the same question. Are we practicing Servant-Leader Marketing?

And, if not, then what is it exactly that we are doing?

And, even more importantly, why?

Does Share Of Time = Share Of Mind?

I found this to be a rather refreshing question when a large marketer asked it over lunch the other day. To be quite honest, I was quite surprised that he was even thinking along these lines. After all, it meant he was in a digital mind space rather than an analog mind space.

As the conversation continued, I asked him how he would define share of mind. He answered, “Share of mind is a measure of the breadth of a company’s market position, measured by media weight. The more you spend, the larger your share of mind.”

And then he added, “At least, in theory. ”

I thought this last line—at least, in theory—was quite revealing. Because up to now, share of mind was really more or less a hope based on a theory. The theory being that people actually watched and paid attention to the advertising that ran.

Or, in other words, that an exposure was synonymous with engagement. A theory that has been proven to be blatantly false through second-by-second, or time-spent digital data.

“Why aren’t more people measuring share of time?” my luncheon companion inquired.

It was a good question. And the most honest answer is because most in the business don’t really want to know. Not that they really have a choice, mind you. Second-by-second data is now being measured by Google, TNS, TiVo, ad neworks, online publishers and MSO’s.

The data is available.

And, for the most part, fear-invoking.

Because what the data reveals is that, when given the option, viewers skip over advertising that intrudes. The current advertising infrastructure has been built on an intrusive format. Up to now, while many have had their doubts as to advertising’s effectiveness, they have had little proof as to just how ineffective it actually is.

Digital data changes that.

If share of mind measures the breadth of a company’s market position, then share of time measures its depth. In other words, it tends to measure the true value of a commercial. If you take a look at the data, it’s not encouraging.

Oh, exposures are easy to come by. But, engagement? Hardly.

My marketing companion continued, “The way I see it, time-spent data is inevitable. And my personal secret to success is to try and make the inevitable, invaluable.”

I was liking this guy more and more. Maybe because he was offering me hope, albeit based on a theory.

The theory being that there are a few guiding lights who are starting to realize that it’s not advertising that people dislike, but rather, the way that advertising is currently marketed to them.

That, in fact, viewers are not skipping commercials as much as they are skipping interruptions.

And, if the industry found a way to allow viewers to come to advertising that interested them, on their own terms, that, they in fact, would.

Of course, in much smaller numbers. Which means that reach, or share of mind, would no longer be the only measurement of success. How many see the advertising would become less of a priority than how much time people spend with the advertising.

Is this a mindchange that many are hesitant to embrace? You bet.

Yet, what’s interesting is that by aggregating time-spent within messages, rather than exposures to messages, advertisers will soon discover that time-spent can also scale.

Which remains a pretty important word in anyone’s new media vocabulary.

Including the marketer I was having lunch with. Although he was looking at scale from an entirely different perspective.

You see, he was already drawing correlations between share of time and share of market. Wondering just how he can go about proving that the more time-spent an advertiser achieves, the more the scale tips to a sale.