Engagement for Engagement's Sake

During my sophomore year in college, I recall an epidemic of engagements on campus.  It seemed that at least twice a week, a coed would show up in class flaunting a ring and announcing that her boyfriend of the past several months had proposed marriage.   The odd thing was, I don't recall that many of them were able to answer questions about the date of the marriage.   Most would say "after graduation," but a few would admit that there was no date and that "we're just engaged."

The reason these incidents come to mind is that I sense the same thing going on in online marketing, particularly in the social media.   Brands seem desperate to "engage" with customers, and while they have the vague sense that this will lead to some sort of long-term relationship, they don't seem to have a clue as to when or how that will happen.   This is not unprecedented, but it seems that the lessons of the past are forgotten every time a new channel arises.

Consider the rash of clever commercials from a decade or so ago: Mr. Six of Six Flags, Joe Isuzu, the pets.com sock puppet, MasterCard's "priceless" campaign, the Quiznos commercial with the bizarre Spongemonkeys, the animated California Raisins, and the Taco Bell Chihuahua.   All of these were very clever and memorable advertisements which created a great deal of engagement: people remembered the spots, associated them to the brands, and spoke about them in everyday conversations.

The problem is that, in a commercial sense, all of these campaigns were failures.   From the numbers that I have seen, not one of them preceded a sufficient increase in sales to cover the cost of the advertising (although the California Raisins campaign actually did sell quite a lot of licensed merchandise, but did not cause a significant change in the consumption of actual raisins).   Customers were engaged, in large numbers, but this did not translate into actual sales.

At the heart of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the funnel approach to marketing management, which provides a false sense in the consistency of a series of actions.   It is assumed that if 10% of the prospects who presently enter a showroom convert into customers, then herding 5,000 people into the showroom will reliably result in 500 sales.  This seems entirely rational, until you recognize that it is based on the assumption that the people herded into the showroom are just as interested in purchasing as those who undertook the effort to visit without being begged or tricked into visiting - which is not necessarily true, especially if deceptive means were used to coax them through the doors.

The result of efforts to herd people into a shop, or to make them aware of a brand through clever advertising, is not merely engagement - it is irrelevant engagement.   People who do not need a product are made aware of a brand, and take interest in it for some reason other than the potential value of the product that is relevant to them.   Their non-buying behavior is claimed to be "engagement" but they remain non-buyers.

It's also speculated that when a brand runs a campaign that is "all style and no substance" that it not only draws bad leads, but poisons the perception of potentially good leads.  That is, the ads create a negative impression of the brand such that people who might have been interested in purchasing come to regard the brand as being no good because of the use of sensational or deceptive tactics.   There is little more than anecdotal evidence of this, but it does seem entirely plausible.

As such, the strategies for engagement in the digital and social media should be regarded (and undertaken) with great caution.   They are likely to call a lot of attention to the brand, but not the attention of the right kind of people and something's not even the right kind of attention.   Unless you are specific in whom you're attempting to engage and have a solid strategy in place to escort them through the rest of the funnel, engagement for the sake of being engaged is not enough.

And like the young coeds in the opening example, the best you'll get out of the deal is nothing, though you may in fact be distracted from more promising prospects while you attempt, hopelessly, to close the deal with those who are interested in a superficial and short-term goal and have no intention of a long-term relationship with your brand.