Engagement & CGM Top 2007 Marketing Trends, Says Brand Keys

Rob Passikoff offers seven marketing predictions for 2007, and the first two caught my eye:

1) An ongoing emphasis on “engagement.”

Continuing to insert itself between traditional marketing activities and an increasing demand for return-on-investment assessments, engagement will occupy a good deal of marketers’ and advertisers’ attentions. As we predicted last year, a joint task force from the Association of National Advertisers, the Advertising Research Foundation, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies offered up the following definition this year: “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.” While that’s a passable (and all-inclusive) first-step definition, watch closely for more-precise, category- and brand-based definitions and metrics.

2) More reliance on consumer-generated content.

Accompanying the search for real consumer engagement will be increased reliance by marketers such as Nissan, JetBlue, Chevrolet, and MasterCard on consumer-generated content. Consumer-generated content will awaken marketers to certain values or trends--but it will carry its share of drawbacks as well. The first will be a sudden and disturbing recognition that there is no standard between paid and nonpaid consumption, and that there are no norms when it comes to the extent to which the content is wholly created by consumers or assisted by marketers. This will have repercussions in regard to agency-marketer relationships. The second will be a tacit acknowledgement that just because content is “consumer generated” doesn’t mean that strategy, creativity, or engagement will be represented, let alone attained, which will add further import in creating authentic (and predictive) engagement metrics.

I’ve long argued that consumer-generated media is a huge deal, and that it should play a massive role in our understanding and modeling of engagement. While Rob didn’t overtly declare that in his two predictions above, he at least juxtaposed the two concepts as the number one and two trends. That priority speaks for itself.

What are Rob’s five remaining trends? You can read them right here.