Are marketers who fail at engagement marketing doing so because they’re unwilling to look through anything but “old-school” marketing eyes? Is the illusion of control holding back today’s marketer?

That’s the contention of Arthur Ceria in an interesting Chief Marketer piece:

Culture Clash: Building a Bridge Between Brand and Engagement Marketing

Deliver a Compelling Reason
What constitutes a compelling reason to participate in a brand’s marketing efforts? Getting consumers to engage is one of the places where old school marketing collides hard with the new reality. Old school believes marketing is all about the brand, so the brand must always be front and center. But any engagement campaign that’s centered only on discussing the brand will fail.

Likewise, any campaign that offers people a confined and controlled experience will fail. We have to run engagement-marketing ideas through our own BS filters. Is anyone really going to want this information, this offering, this activity? What’s in it for them?

Successful engagement marketing must provide something of real value—entertainment, education or an opportunity to connect with likeminded others. Effective engagement marketing is never myopically brand-centered. The most successful engagement campaigns happen when a company connects the lifestyles and/or values that define a brand with consumers.

My belief — that engagement marketers appeal to consumers via shared passions and values (the spaces around the brand instead of the brand or products themselves) — relies heavily on authenticity, a notion many marketers don’t embrace.

Still, you see it working beautifully in the strategies of a few companies I’ve outlined here (on the high-tech Nike+ running site and Pyramyd Air’s non-threatening content hodge-podge)

Ceria puts it nicely when he says:

Old school adherents want to control the conversation. But you can’t
have a conversation if one person sets the agenda and determines what
everyone else should say. Consumers are no longer willing to listen to
a brand that is talking at them. They want to participate in the
process. If brands don’t open the door to these conversations, people
will take their involvement and interest elsewhere. And there are plenty of other places for them to go.

Marketing has long focused on the little manipulations needed to “break through the clutter” or to trick someone into opening an envelope — often leaning on products and the customer service staff to create brand engagement.

Today, those same marketers are struggling to cede control to consumers — and this long after the consumers have already stormed the battlements and seized that control.

Stay engaging, Tom Chandler.