Alistair Beattie: Engagement, Propagation and Participation

There seems to be an arms-race in client ambitions that needs checking, refining and clarifying. Clients ask for engagement but mean participation - and I'm not convinced participation is the holy grail. It is not a given that consumers have to participate to be swayed by marketing communications. It is not a given that marketing communication is improved by consumer participation.

Historically, in advertising circles at least, engagement in the context of non-interactive media has been descriptive of attention. For example, that tv commercial was really engaging vs that tv commercial was not engaging. In other words, did I watch it, think about it, talk about it, do something about it.

In other words, was it any good?

So, imagine a world where the consumer has a choice of whether to listen or not. Does engagement now mean more than paying attention.Attention is the "first base" of joining in. Why do we think that marketing communications in interactive media should involve a great deal more? Are we kidding ourselves? Does elective media demand escalation? I don't think so.

Typically, in digital rhetoric at least, engagement means participation, but why? The old sense holds fast, consumers don't need to be participatory to be fully engaged with an idea. Why does the possibility of a more active sense of joining in need to preclude the old sense of being engaged?

Participation is great, don't get me wrong - but is it better than engagement from a marketers perspective? Typically a marketer needs to achieve large scale effects, but participation remains a minority activity. I see too many "digital" ideas killed because of a perceived lack of mass participation.

Planner and creatives alike seem to be dealing with this by, for example, suggesting that clicking a "like" button is tantamount to participation, but is it? The reality is that the click represents propagation, not particpation. Sharing is important but it is different from really getting involved.

Participation seems to be a Holy Grail, i.e the consumers are making the brand their own. I applaud that, it's really important, and the best campaigns are those that are carried on the shoulders of advocates.

However, a lack of participation should not been seen as lack of ambition, or a reason to nix perfectly good engaging ideas that may well propagate if allowed to run their course.

When clients ask for engaging ideas, we need to be careful about language - engagement, propagation and participation are very different things.