"Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing" (PDF)

Consumers are
encouraged to
consider themselves
the “co-creators” of
the advertising and
marketing.
26
Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing | Setting the Stage
“Engagement”
The concept of “engagement” is at the heart of many digital marketing campaigns
targeted at children and adolescents. One of ARF’s largest-scale research efforts,
which is likely to have a significant impact on the future of marketing, is the “MI4-
Measurement Initiative: Advertisers, Agencies, Media and Researchers.” Sponsored by
some of the most powerful institutions in the advertising industry—ARF, American
Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), and Association of National Advertisers, Inc.
(ANA)—the project is designed to “redefine marketing in the 21 st century.” The broadbased
initiative includes a number of different investigations into new directions for marketing
in the digital era. Working with brain researchers and psychologists, the study is
focused on understanding and measuring how individual consumers “engage” with
brands. 89 The engagement model relies on unconscious, “non-rational” processes. A
recent article in the online digital marketing news site iMedia Connection explained the
new concept, based on a conversation with ARF Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer:
“The heart of engagement is ‘turning on’ a mind…. This is a subtle, subconscious process
in which consumers begin to combine the ad’s messages with their own associations,
symbols and metaphors to make the brand more personally relevant.” 90
Using this model, advertisements are not designed to articulate the compelling,
factual features and benefits of products, but rather to “seduce the consumer into beginning
that subconscious processing of the brand.” As Plummer told a recent industry gathering,
“storytelling is more powerful than argumentation.” 91 Consumers are encouraged
to consider themselves the “co-creators” of the advertising and marketing. They are invited
into creating relationships with brands through the use of celebrities and popular cultural
content. 92 The March 2006 issue of The Journal of Advertising Research was
focused solely on “Emotion in Advertising.” As one of the authors explained,
Brands are emotionally anchored. A brand in the brain is made up of
sets of cells that communicate with each other situated in different
parts of the brain. This is called a brand representation. Brands are
cognitively and emotionally encoded in the brain. It is the emotional
anchoring of the brand that determines how we process information
about it, what we notice about it, and how open we are to its initiatives.
The more positively the brand is anchored, the better its chances
of achieving its ambitions. [italics in the original] 93
ARF is working with experts in the field of psychophysiology and neuroscience,
as part of its “Emotional Response to Advertising” effort, to develop an “engagement
measurement model” for identifying and testing “quantitative measures of behavior and
emotion feelings.” 94