Editorial: Building ''Engagement/'
One Brick at a Time
BOB WOODARD
Co-Editor
bob_woodard@
campbellsoup.com
IN MANY WAYS it seenis that the concept of "En-
gagement" is where that of "Brand Equity" was
20 or so years ago: lacking in clarity about how it
works, what effect it has, and why we need yet
another marketing construct. But below the sur-
face there is a clear difference. First of all, the term
"Brand Equity" started its life as a rather stately
phrase that echoed its pedigree in the financial
concept of equity. Beyond this, once underway,
the process of conceptualizing and operationaliz-
ing brand equity seemed, in some ways, like a
process of organizing disparate measurements al-
ready in our midst, such as loyalty, price respon-
siveness, and the depth and breadth of benefit
perceptions and attitudes, and then finding the
intellectual glue that made them all cohere. Addi-
tionally, while I am not a psychologist, I'm guess-
ing that, with the advances of neuroscience, the
underlying psychological mechanisms that might
govern such a concept came well within reach
relatively early in Brand Equity's life. Now, while
several different constructs of Brand Equity exist,
my view is that marketing practitioners generally
share at least a conceptually similar and relatively
clear idea of how to measure and report some-
thing akin to it inside their organizations and that
we are more or less content "to agree to disagree"
about our differences. What we really want most
at this point are newer and better analytical tools
for doing Brand Equity research, harvesting deeper
insights from it, and connecting specific equity
measures more concretely to revenue, margins,
profit, and shareholder value.
Engagement, on the other hand, seems a less
stately term—more emotionally evocative and, con-
sequently, more prone to divergent interpreta-
tions. This has led to an especially spirited, ongoing
debate. Fred Mast's. and Jerry Zaltman's white
DOi: 10.2501/S0021849906060442
paper for The ARF on the "Anatomy of Engage-
ment" takes a bold step toward defining the con-
cept holistically by positing and elaborating on
what are most likely to be the key cognitive pro-
cesses involved in such a concept. One realizes
after reading through the document that integrat-
ing and applying the vast wealth and complexity
of relevant new learning from neuroscience and
psychology-^let alone codifying, simplifying, har-
monizing, and popularizing it—will not be a triv-
ial matter. The construct of Engagement that we
end up with will, I am sure, be a worthy and
well-defined one, to which all advertisers will
aspire. But it will also be one that demands sev-
eral sophisticated measures, as well as a sophisti-
cated understanding of how they relate to one
another.
So be it. This one is worth the wait and the effort,
even if it is not resolved completely in the near fu-
ture. "Engagement" represents the quintessence of
what we ultirnately want from advertising metrics,
including those used in copy testing, as well as those
used in media measurement. By considering not only
the delivery and reception of specific media but also
the ability of each medium to activate the key cog-
nitive processes outlined by Mast and Zaltman, it
could ultimately become the "great equalizer"
among media measurements and facilitate the com-
parison of and trade-off's among alternative media
types. But the matter is probably even more com-
plicated than what I have depicted so far, because a
reasonable person would expect there to be a mea-
surable interaction between very engaging creative
and engaging media. We all know the difficulties
of measuring interaction.
Well, as the old saw goes, "Rome wasn't built
in a day," and neither will the fully developed
concept behind nor the metrics for Engagement.
December 2 0 0 6 JOURnilL Of IIDUERTISinG RESEBRCH 3 5 3
EDITORIAL
In the meantime, this issue of the Journal
of Advertising Research [JAR) contains a set
of marvelous articles, each of which does
its part to help concretize this daunting
but still inviting (perhaps, "engaging"?)
ideal. Many of our articles focus on mar-
keting or environmental stimuli them-
selves and how they affect potentially
important aspects of Engagement: the har-
monization of an advertisement with its
surrounding context (Wang); the presence
of engaging context surrounding an
advertisement (Cunningham, Hall, and
Young; Marci); the effect of negative en-
vironmental stimuli on brands (Dahlen
and Lange); the use of sponsorships that
are "gifts of real value to the audience,"
354 IL DF RDUERTISIOG RESERRCR December 2 0 0 6
an idea called "True Sponsorship" (Har-
vey, Gray, and Despain); and the role of
emotional versus rational advertising con-
tent in driving Brand Favorability (Heath,
Brandt, and Nairn). Other articles deal
with either the characteristics of the target
audience or the interaction between these
characteristics and those of the marketing
stimulus (Close, Firmey, Lacey, and Sneath;
Allan; Rejmolds). Our issue concludes with
Rex Briggs's article on the measurement
of advertising effectiveness and Joe Plum-
mer's review of Rex's latest book.
This is our first issue on Engagement,
but, judging from the interest that the
topic has generated and the work that
has yet to be done, I am confidently pre-
dicting that it won't be our last. How-
ever, it will be my final issue as co-editor
of the JAR. It has been both a pleasure
and an honor to work with the JAR team
over the past two years as we strove to
keep our readers on the leading edge of
insight from advertising research and pro-
vide them with eminently practical ways
to get the most out of these insights in
their own enterprises. I am especially
grateful to Bob Barocci and Joe Plummer
for giving me this wonderful opportu-
nity. And I owe a special thanks to our
exceptionally capable and good-humored
managing editor, Courtney Wolf, for her
assistance in making each issue of the
JAR a reality.