Engagement Panel Du Jour
There was one fundamental flaw about this standing room only session: it was all about engagement.
“Consumer-Genered Media’s Role in the Engagement Equation”
Monday November 6 11:15am
Pete Blackshaw, Chief Marketing and Client Satisfaction Officer, Nielsen BuzzMetrics (Moderator)
Terry Pittman, Executive Director, Consumer Insights and Innovation Frameworks, AOL Digital Services
Jonah Peretti, Founding Partner, Huffington Post
Bob DeSena, Managing Partner, Director, Active Engagement, Mediaedge:cia
Ze Frank, Founder, ZeFrank.com
It was another great session with brilliant people talking about a nebulous term that left me no better versed in engagement, a term that we can stop talking about as of this show. It’s great to talk about engaging consumers (with the verb) or engaging experiences (with the adjective), but we need to kill the noun, engagement. Maybe we can get a petition going for future shows.
I don’t mean to be so negative. The panelists themselves were pretty cynical about it. Some choice soundbites from the session are quoted below. I haven’t included the multiple football analogies (that’s why you need to spring for the ticket to the show).
Bob: “It was never intended to be about engagement as engagement.” It was supposed to lead to something else, something about connecting with consumers.” He later added, “Engagement isn’t about engagement. It’s about accountability.” He said how you first need to know who your audience is before you engage them. Then you can engage them, and work on measuring how you did it. “Now we have to be about effectiveness.”
Terry: “We changed our mission statement. The new mission is to serve the world’s largest engaged online community.” ... “Engagement is more about a symptom than a cause… Engagement is more about people’s experience with great products… Something I still think it’s all about the product, stupid.”
Ze: “When I think about engagement in the context of what I do, I have a lot of people who want to do stuff.” “I would certainly not say this is a well-defined word at all. The second problem is the valuation… The biggest problem that we face right now is trying to figure out some kind of valuation strategy.”
