• by Graeme Hutton , Op-Ed Contributor, July 14, 2009

John Billett, transatlantic media consultant, once quipped to me a telling observation that is probably the root of all the over-extended discussion that has dogged that much-abused word, engagement. Essentially, he posited that any reasonably intelligent intern could join a media agency and hopefully, after a couple months, he or she would fully appreciate basic media planning concepts such as reach and frequency.

But as he followed through to his punchline, he doubted that, even if the intern stayed at the agency a couple of years, he or she would not be able to nail a crisp definition of engagement because it is so multifaceted and indistinct a concept. It was then I realized the enigma of engagement: Every media person knows what engagement is, but nobody can put it in terms that everyone else can agree on.

A French colleague even stingingly noted that engagement was a peculiarly u.s. fascination that mirrored the excessive ad clutter our u.s. media are awash with.

Then I came across a succinct definition of biological engagement by Dr. Carl Marci of Innerscope: attention + emotion = engagement. For me, the strength of this definition is in its simplicity and its potentially universal application across media.

Dr. Marci revealed that, in a lab setting, he could measure engagement by a combination of biometric proxies such as eye gaze, heartbeat and galvanic skin response. For example, someone can watch the same TV ad in different program environments and, as a consequence, be responsive at varying levels of intensity to the ad depending on the type of program being watched.

We can also pinpoint evidence of consumer engagement in the real world via a panoply of robust surrogates. One of the more palpable is the increased level of active consumer interest when using multiple types of screens: for example, TVs, computers and smartphones.

This spring, UM and AOL completed an exclusive joint venture research endeavor exploring one of the most inspiring areas of the digital media revolution: smartphones. Titled "Smartphone, Smart Marketing," this extensive study harnessed qualitative diary panels, ethnographic study and quantitative research to explore the opportunities in this area.

A key area was media meshing. Media meshing extends beyond concurrent media exposure. The consumer is viewing more than one media channel to look at particular content, so that one can be fully immersed in the topic. Thanks to its capacity for instant information gratification, a smartphone is today's ultimate media-meshing tool.

According to the study, 67 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds were more apt to look at similar content on their smartphone while viewing another medium. One of the reasons receptivity is amplified when smartphones are in the communications mix is that only 13 percent of consumers said they were "completely focused" when watching TV, but this doubled to 27 percent when viewing their smartphone. 

MTV has also illustrated this with its research-driven, multiscreen engagement model, which indicated that when viewers accessed more than one type of screen to watch similar or related show content, this behavior is a powerful gauge of increased consumer connection and involvement. The degree of consumer interest and receptiveness climbed as the number of screens, such as TV, online, etc., increased. Communications measures such as ad recognition and purchase consideration could also be seen to rise.

Keller Fay Group, the word-of-mouth tracking organization, has established heightened levels of viewer
activation across various media screens. In partnership with ESPN, they presented a paper at this year's Advertising Research Foundation convention. Across 25 advertisers in NFL or college football programming, they witnessed that more than 20 had demonstrably higher levels of word-of-mouth activity when the respondents had been watching ESPN on two or more types of screen.

The industry has taken a long time to come to terms with engagement. In our industry's characteristically faddish manner, the concept has probably lost many of those who might have been originally enticed by its promise of more effective communications. But now we can understand and measure it both in the biometrics lab and the real world. It's time to re-engage with engagement.