The risks and rewards of engagement

Tamara Littleton, chief executive of eModeration, argues that it’s increasingly important for brands to embrace an advertising model focused on interaction.

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Online advertising is changing. Brands are switching from paid display advertising to promoting themselves via branded online communities, virtual worlds and social media.

Advertisers will always gravitate to where their audiences can be found, and these days they can be found within online communities and social networks. But it’s not enough to buy ads on Facebook anymore – research shows that display ads garner poor response rates as people go to these networks to interact with friends, not advertisers. Engagement is all about human behaviour: people want to share opinions and experiences – to be seen and heard.

In his blog, Jim McNiven from Kerb describes the old-style online ad formats as interruptions: “A consumer is much more likely to connect with a message that they have chosen to listen to than one forced upon them, especially given that an interruption advert by its very nature stops the user from doing something that they have chosen to do.” Engaging the user is all about asking them to get involved in activity that they can enjoy, and relate to - which also helps to get the word out about the brand. Whilst ‘getting the word out’ is important to the brand, it’s never realistically going to be at the top of a consumer’s to-do list.

Brands that do decide to test the interactive advertising waters need to plan carefully. Forrester’s Josh Bernoff cites the importance of building communities ahead of expecting consumers to jump in and endorse the campaign. He also raises the question of how brands should continue their interaction once the campaign has ended.

There are several ways that brands can engage consumers in ad campaigns, including:

1. Engaging the consumer as an individual rather than a demographic - like the campaign by Vitaminwater, where passersby were addressed from giant screens: “Hey you in the pink top yeah you taking my photo, say cheeese!”

2. Incentivising consumer participation for example, fast food brand Chick Fil-A offered the first 250,000 participants a free chicken sandwich for uploading photos of their faces - which then take part in a grandstand ‘chicken wave’.

3. Involving the consumer in the creative process, allowing them to create an ad or develop a product, as in Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World” campaign or Hyundai’s ‘Edit Your Own’ campaign.

4. Creating a campaign from the community. Pet owners came together to form the Cesar’s ‘I promise’ community, pledging promises to their pets online.

5. Develop a community around an existing campaign. Capitalise on the popularity of existing ads by bringing fans together in online communities, like the much-loved comparethemeerkat.com campaign.

The major stumbling block for many brands is the fear that control over their message is being handed over to users. Statistics from e-Tailing Group reveal that 49 per cent of brands are worried that social media engagement would let ‘people trash my products in front of large audiences’. It’s a risk, and it is quite easy for brands, no matter how large, to make mistakes over how exactly interactive advertising should be done (just ask Skittles) – but it comes with potentially huge rewards – including financial benefits. According to the Engagementdb Report, “the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement.”

In the end, the key to protecting the brand, once you have begun to engage the consumer, lies in moderation of user-generated content and the responsiveness of brand representatives to feedback. Brands must protect both themselves and their audiences from inappropriate content by ensuring that they budget for, and enable, effective moderation. Moderation does not mean censorship of content. Indeed, this would be counter-productive: one of the main selling points of the new interactive advertising is the insight that it gives brands into what the consumer thinks about their product, and the chance to respond to that feedback.

To achieve the best possible results, advertisers have to plan carefully prior to engaging in interactive advertising. What are they trying to achieve? Who are they targeting and where? What’s the incentive to take part? What does success look like? How can they continue the engagement with this new community post-campaign? All-importantly, how are they moderating, how are they listening to feedback and how are they able to respond? All of these issues must be addressed prior to launching an interactive advertising campaign if it is to stand any chance of long-term success.

For more information on interaction in advertising, read Tamara Littleton's white paper, here.

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