User:JoeyCalzo/Brand Engagement

Brand engagement between a brand and its consumers/potential consumers is a key objective of a brand marketing effort.

In general, the ways a brand connects to its consumer is via a range of "touchpoints"—that is, a sequence or list of potential ways the brand makes contact with the individual. Examples include retail environments, advertising, word of mouth, online, and the product itself. Brands do this to help influence consumers perceptions of their brand and to increase knowledge of the brand to consumers.

Probably the most compelling example of this is the service-profit chain. The first real case study of this appeared in "The Service Profit Chain" (the so-called Sears Model, Harvard Business Review, 1997). This statistical model tracks increases in employee “engagement drivers” to correlated increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty, and then correlates this to increases in total shareholder return (TSR), revenue and other financial performance measures.

Since the service-profit chain emerged, it’s been developed, and criticized, but the general consensus is that employee engagement can contribute roughly 20% to an organization’s TSR (various Vivaldi, Watson Wyatt, Towers Perrin studies 2004, 2005, 2006).

Another example of brand engagement is the Harley-Davidson Owners Group. Harley-Davidson directly engages their brand with their consumers by offering them the opportunity to join this group and be involved in different events and meetings for other Harley-Davidson owners. There are several different HOG chapters and each of their own hold these different events that has increased customer satisfaction among owners.

The social media phenomenon presents emerging evidence that this quest for connectivity is rapidly becoming a core focus of communication technology within organizations. This potentially creates a disconnect with more traditional content-driven models of internal communication—delivering (or making easily available) the right content at the right time to the right people using the right media.

Therefore, there could be a great deal of potential within organisations, using their existing technologies, to derive cultural and performance benefits from re-thinking how they communicate, make decisions and work virtually.

Social Media has played a major part in how people communicate and consume content across the world. Brands can use these social media platforms as ways to directly engage with their consumers. These platforms allow for these brands to be innovative and creative in the promotion of their brand by using the many different creative functions that social media has.