Audience Engagement

From my own personal experience – engagement starts with an individual experience – I think in order for engagement to formulate in our brains there has to be an intrinsic or altruistic source from which engagement would flow.  Certainly you could say that altruism would support perhaps the idea that engagement can be “infectious,” but even altruism serves the ego.  

As Gambetti alludes to, it is the person’s mental and emotional feelings about the product that illicit an engaging response.  Gambetti also expands on this by saying it is how the individual perceives the personal value of a product that engenders engagement (Gambetti & Graffigna, 2010) – so in a sense it has to have an intrinsic or altruistic value.  Further Gambetti goes on to discuss how it is that through these experiences engagement is promoted by involving the senses (Gambetti & Graffigna, 2010).  

I think the idea that in order for engagement to occur there has to be more to the experience of product that reaches the person.  Nakamura and Cshikszentminalyi (2002) argue that there has to be a connection to the product or idea – one that transcends the products material value and appeals to our inner “self,” or our sense of there being an altruistic value to the products – a value that a person can attach themselves to, thus forming the basis for engagement.  

I do a lot of marketing for issues and causes – where it is all about changing minds.  For example, we rep a coconut water company.  We spend almost no time marketing the value of the product in terms of its nutrition as its 99.9% water – but we market the idea that drinking coconut water makes someone feel closer to nature and perhaps that they are making a difference in the world by buying a product that supports local growers.  If it was not for this type of appeal and engagement we would just be pitching sweet water.  

The trend in engagement these days is how it is measured – Bjimolt et al do a great job at exploring the metrics by which engagement is measured these days.  I use Google Analytics frequently and audience engagement (i.e. what pages are visited in what order, etc.) is becoming a valuable tool for practitioners to measure the appearance of audience engagement.  

By Ari Morguelan

References:

Bijmolt, T. H. A., Leeflang, P. S. H., Block, F., Eisenbeiss, M., Hardie, B. G. S., Lemmens, A. l., et al. (2010). Analytics for Customer Engagement. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 341-356.

Gambetti, R., & Graffigna, G. (2010). The concept of engagement. International Journal of Market Research, 52(6), 801-826. doi: 10.2501/S1470785310201661

Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The Construction of Meaning through Vital Engagement. In C. L. M. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing (pp. 83-104).