Chapter 11: Engagement Marketing for Brand Affinity
Engagement marketing is about using strategic and resourceful content to engage people and create meaningful interactions over time. It is a new way of thinking of how a brand should communicate with its audience despite all the noise and nuisances in the environment. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of the brand messages, engagement marketing allows them to be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs as well as to develop, through time, a relationship with the brand.
One very successful and surprising example of this is when it was used for digital campaigns of President Rodrigo Duterte all throughout the election period until today. The digital campaign of Duterte were built from various volunteer groups composed of notable bloggers and social media specialists who volunteered and worked side by side with traditional media peers. By building enough amount of volunteer base, they started proliferating Facebook pages and groups that discussed about Duterte. Customers in this case are called supporters, fans, ka-DDS, voters and many others. Duterte’s supporters are the most important pool of people in this campaign. Through constant engagement with them, they were allowed to create compelling stories about Duterte in various forms such as videos, images, and texts. Through Facebook, emails, and even mobile texts, supporters were also constantly engaged to participate in various offline activities such as forums and rallies.
