It’s the second day of the Luxury Interactive conference here in New York City and our guests are already loaded up with enough content to take back to their offices and improve their marketing ops. One of the biggest buzzwords so far has been “engagement,” perhaps unsurprisingly. But the ways retailers are achieving that is different. 

At the beginning of a panel this morning featuring executives from Mercedes-Benz USA, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Netmining and Janrain, panelists were asked to identify just one word that defines their focus in engagement for their brands. The answers from the four panelists were:

– Identity
– Conversion
– Video
– Conversion

The agreement seemed to be that one of the biggest challenges with engagement is conversion, and the answer to that may be personalization.

“When you have something like 90 options, how many ways can you select 90 things?” asked Chris Cocca, Head of Global eCommerce at Four Seasons. “It’s really all about creating content around those things.”

The panel discussed ways in which they have created content around their products and brand to better engage with their customers.

Eric Jillard, Department Manager, Digital Marketing, at Mercedes-Benz USA, said that personalization isn’t as high in his industry because the consumer is not getting the car from Mercedes, but from a dealer. However, he noted that the customer deserves to have a more seamless experience across channels, and that in an ideal world, there would be better personalization and engagement from the manufacturer to the retailer to the customer.