February 01, 2007
Building Engagement One Block at a Time
 Journal of Advertising Research dedicated their December 06 issue to the topic of “Engagement”. The issue was keenly debated and questions were raised on the traditional measurement of advertising effectiveness viz. Ad. Recall and awareness as a measure of advertising effectiveness. Rex Briggs (Author of What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeed) contends that a lot of Advertising ROI research provides faulty answers as they rely on antiquated research theories and approaches. As per him two common mistakes in measurement based on obsolete theory are:
- a focus on advertising recall, and
- asking consumers to introspect and offer their own opinions on how advertising influenced them.
Researches conducted by various scholars (1983 to 2005) in this domain emphasizes the point that whether consumer remembers an advertisement or not has little relationship to the actual impact that the advertising has, on influencing their attitudes about the brands or sales.
Briggs offers an alternative approach to advertising research. Dr. Krag Ferenz, who earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience and psychology from Dartmouth, supports this idea, as expressed in the following:
“If you really want to get an accurate and powerful read on how consumers are influenced by advertising, you need to adhere to the scientific method. You need to establish exposed and control groups beforehand and carefully measure differences in consumers' attitudes and behaviors between groups, rather than relying on consumer's memories of what they saw and how it made them feel.” (Briggs, 2006) |
 In another article in the issue on “Building Brand Relationships” the authors suggest that the assumption that high attention equating to high recall which equate to high advertising effectiveness might not be entirely true. Especially, in the case where it is desired of advertising to build strong relationships between the consumer and the brand. In such a situation it is well advised to focus more attentions on the emotional metacommunication – the creativity – in their advertisements, than on the rational message.
Experimental results in the study postulated the following:
- That it is the emotional “creative” content in advertising that builds strong brand relationships, not the rational message
- The less aware consumers are of the emotional elements in advertising, the better they are likely to work, because the viewer has less opportunity to rationally evaluate, contradict, and weaken their potency.
- If advertising wishes to build strong brand relationships, it needs to incorporate high levels of emotional content, and this emotional content will be more effective if less attention is paid to it.
Bob Woodart the Co- Editor for the issue opined that the concept of Engagement is where “Brand Equity” was 20 years ago. The term "Brand Equity" started its life as a rather stately phrase that echoed its pedigree in the financial concept of equity. On the other hand the term "Engagement" represents the quintessence of what we ultimately want from advertising metrics, including those used in copy testing, as well as those used in media measurement.
Finally, Alex Wang in his article titled “Advertising Engagement – A Driver of Message Involvement on Message Effects” lists out the official definition of Engagement delivered by Joe Plummer:
"Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."
|
The results of his study suggested that engagement should not be regarded as direct indicator of advertising results. Rather, advertising engagement is the goal. This is to say advertising engagement is explained by the message and surrounding context
Advertising in KBC 3
Keeping with the efforts to make advertising work better by providing a contextual editorial environment, Hyundai and Videocon advertisements in the program, feature Shahrukh Khan. Figure 1 and 2 lists out the deliveries of the 10 key advertisers on KBC 3 and their deliveries across first 6 episodes of the program.
Figure 1: Key advertisers and their spots on KBC 3
Figure 2: Deliveries of key advertisers in Cable Housewives
To provide contextual relevance to the advertising that were carried in the program some of the advertisers ran spots featuring King Khan himself and the reach of these advertisements is evident from figure 2.
Figure 3 & 4; show deliveries of other advertisers in the program.
Write to us
Please feel free to send your comments on feedback@audiencemap.com and we can assure you that we will try and respond to all your information requirements through this periodical.
Periodicity
This periodical is mailed to its subscribers on the first working day of every month. If you have received this as a forward, write to oxygen@audiencemap.com for your own copy.
| 
