I’ve been talking recently about the Advertising Research Foundation’s Engagement initiative, which is to develop a new framework and metrics to complement traditional media and marketing metrics of exposure, reach and frequency. Says Dr. Joseph Plummer, chief research officer for the ARF.
“It is important that we think hard about engagement to develop a robust measurement of when consumers are strongly engaged in brands, brand ideas and their surrounding environments.”
To some degree, the Engagement discussion is eerily similar – in ambition, theme and, to some extent, ambiguity – as the AttentionTrust initiative, whose mission is to “Empower people to exert greater control over their ‘attention data,’ i.e. any records reflecting what they have paid attention to and what they have ignored…” It seems one is characteristic of the East Coast Advertising slobs, the other the Silicon Valley snobs. (I’ll admit my roots are in the former, and I need to learn more about the latter.)
I think it would make sense for the Barron’s of Madison Avenue to meet up with the Web 2.0 digerati, to discuss the similarities and connection (if any) between Engagement and Attention. Perhaps ARF CEO Bob Barocci and Dr. Joe Plummer can come together with the likes of AttentionTrust thinkers Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein, all very smart guys, to see if there’s some common thinking to push either initiative forward. (When I worked at comScore, I was impressed by Seth’s use of our data with his company, Majestic Research. I don’t know Steve Gillmor personally, but I enjoy his podcasts, even though he often refers to them as “crap”…I think they’re very good.)
By the way, there is no connection between AttentionTrust and AttentionMax (my personal blog), except they have similarly cool names.