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"The engagement myth is built on an insatiable desire to get consumers obsessed with our brands... Often 'engagement' is achieved through digital technology. Problem is, consumers don't want to be 'digitally engaged' with us. They're only into each other... As marketers, we shouldn't care about brand engagement. Instead we should focus on how we get people connected with each other and measure the number of times we helped them do so."

I totally agree with Mr. Rubel on this point. Social media "channels" like MySpace are merely a means to an end. I have watched my 14-year-old practically abandon MySpace for Facebook, without a second thought about how he might be abandoning his heretofore favored brand. He went to where his friends were hangin'. There was no rallying cry for MySpace among that juvenile crowd. If his friends had decided that Wal-Mart's ill-starred social media experiment was cool, he'd have gone there in a flash, regardless of Wal-Mart's reputation.

I think about "Engagement" in terms of simple analogies. My favorite is the idea from fishing, "Catch & Release." It is up to a brand to "catch" the attention of prospective users, with whatever lures they can dream up. For example, Disney Channel does a good job of keeping my 11-year-old engaged by publishing her IMs on TV; by creating lame video-games populated by her favorite Disney characters, etc. She compares her scores to her friends' scores. She emails her online Disney-inspired creations to friends. She's "caught." Just as my son is "caught" by Facebook today.

The brand managers at these sites ought to be thinking about how-to measure and maximize that short-term loyalty, perhaps moreso than focusing on the fruitless quest to keep it going forever.

Both of my kids will move on. It is inevitable. They will "release" themselves from these brand hooks when their school of friends move on to new online waters. Brand managers need to get comfortable with that concept. Some questions they might ponder...

• "Can we catch users? Can we catch their friends?"
• "And while they are loyal (which will not last forever), how can we maximize that loyalty?"
• "How can we make it easy for friends and like-minded consumers to connect and interact with varying degrees of meaning and immediacy?"
• "How can we monetize a short-term infatuation? What would it take to turn a 'young love' into a long-running affair?"
• "How can we empower our consumers with tools that they can use to 're-mix' our brand? If they can 'customize' our brand, make it their own creation, how much longer will they stay with us?"
• "If we don't like how our consumers 're-mix' our brand, can we swallow hard and just let it happen? (Remember the Chevy Tahoe consumer-generated ads?!)"

That last "question" points to the ultimate "catch and release" --- catch the consumer, empower them with multimedia toolsets and ideas, and then release them to re-architect your brand in their own image. What a wild fishing expedition.

Tags: micropersuasion, steve+rubel, marketing, public+relations, social+media, engagement, pr+2.0