Posted by truecreek on April 14, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., research | 
By Erik Sass
A new report from the Cinema Advertising Council and NewMediaMetrics details consumers’ emotional attachment to different media, as well as brands appearing in various media contexts. The findings suggest that cinema advertising can compete effectively with television for video advertising dollars.
Movies fared better than most other media in terms of emotional attachment, reflecting their immersive quality, and the fact that consumers will pay a fair amount for such an experience. CAC found that 44.5% of consumers that buy health and beauty products reported emotional attachment to movies, versus 29.6% for magazines, 21.2% for radio and 20.6% for magazines. Similarly, 43.9% of survey respondents who buy consumer packaged-goods and foods said they were emotionally attached to movies, compared to 28.9% for TV, 20.5% for magazines and 19.2% for magazines.
The data, summarized in CAC and NewMediaMetrics’ “360 Cross Platform Study,” were gathered in a survey of more than 3,000 people ages 13-54, categorized by the type of products they consume. It asked them to rate emotional attachment to media and brands in media on an 11-point scale, with 9-10 considered “emotionally attached.” The survey compared consumer ratings for TV, magazines, newspapers, Internet, cinema and a variety of other out-of-home channels.
Across all consumer categories, the overall attachment rating of 41.5% for movies ranked ahead of televised sports and major entertainment events, such as the Super Bowl (39.7%), Summer Olympics (26.3%), World Series (22.8%) and Oscars (16.1%).
Last year, the CAC released a study from Integrated Media Measurement showing that cinema advertising plus TV more than doubled consumer conversion rates when compared with TV alone.
The digital out-of-home industry in general has been working to bolster its measurement capabilities with new, more precise metrics in the hope of winning spending usually allocated to cable and broadcast.
Posted by truecreek on March 12, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Tongue-in-cheek, but valuable none the less.
By Steve Cuno
We rarely hear about the fourth law of thermodynamics. In brief, it states that whenever a server says, “Careful, this plate is extremely hot,” an invisible force compels the customer to touch the plate. The compulsion grows as the cube of the number of decibels with which the server pronounces the word extremely.
It seems that, given a choice between heeding a voice of experience and sabotaging ourselves, many people do not just opt for, but positively execute, a mad dash for the latter. This can be as true of marketers as it is of other human-like creatures. So, for those who prefer wasting time and money, I offer the following personally witnessed, surefire shortcuts to screwing up your marketing. (I should add that narrowing it down to 12 wasn’t easy.)
Sabotage Tip 1: Don’t set firm objectives. You’re much safer stating that your goal is to “get your name out there” or to advertise because the competition does. That way, even if sales tank, you can sit back and say, “I did my job.”
Sabotage Tip 2: Put the goal where the ball lands. With a little practice, anyone can learn to retrofit objectives to results. Soon after a VP of marketing proudly showed me a new sales video, it became apparent that the video appealed to employees, but offended customers. No problem. The VP promptly claimed that the video was never intended for sales, but for training. George Orwell would have been proud.
Sabotage Tip 3: Write and design for internal approval. Authorize as many people as possible to revise or, better yet, outright veto creative work. This will ensure that creative people avoid trying to connect with the market. Instead, they will focus on creating what is sure to fly internally.
Sabotage Tip 4: It’s all about what YOU want. A major coffeehouse chain lost customers for years by refusing to fill the demand for lattes made with nonfat milk. Why did they resist? Because the CEO liked coffee the way it was made in Italy, and Italian baristas don’t use nonfat milk. Darned customers. What makes them think they should have a say in what they want in their coffee?
Sabotage Tip 5: Misuse research. Herd a bunch of people into a focus group and ask them to evaluate your campaign. Treat their comments, especially the ones you like, as if they’re statistically valid. You can also phone 5,000 people and ask them what they do, don’t, would and wouldn’t buy, and why. Assume they know.
Sabotage Tip 6: Don’t listen to your salespeople. The only thing that salespeople do is interact face-to-face, every day, with real customers who use your products. What would they know about marketing?
Sabotage Tip 7: If it’s wild and creative, go with it. If you have a killer concept that’s destined to take top honors at the next awards show, it would be a sin not to back it with your budget. Who cares whether it’s effective? It deserves to be shared!
Sabotage Tip 8: Avoid valid evidence. Proper testing and analysis let you reliably predict a direct mail strategy’s outcome before risking big bucks. But if nature had intended for us to conduct valid, predictive tests, we wouldn’t have hips to shoot from. Showing the concept to coworkers, friends, family and people in a mall, though not predictive, is faster and easier. And, only in the short run, cheaper.
Sabotage Tip 9: Don’t trust your agency. Your agency may have experts on staff, but you can still hobble them by overruling their expertise with your intuition. You can also focus on minutiae. For instance, make the art director change a border on that mail piece from black to dark blue.
Sabotage Tip 10: Trust your agency. Not trusting experts is self-sabotage, but so is trusting non-experts. Many agencies, figuring they can affix stamps as well as anyone, list “direct response marketing” as a core capability. If you are firmly committed to failure, this is no time for due diligence. Just hand them the checkbook.
Sabotage Tip 11: Mistake a slogan for a brand. Imagine a person who is fast losing friends. This person might do well to take an honest look, figure out what alienates people and make changes. But substance is such a bother. Surely this person could more easily regain friends by learning to say something like, “Hi, I’m Alex—where coolness is Number One.”
Sabotage Tip 12: Disdain proven techniques. For nearly two centuries, direct response marketers have amassed information on what works in the marketplace. Moreover, experience shows that what worked yesterday works today. But learning all that stuff is tedious, and using it might hamper your creativity. Mustn’t let that happen.
There are many ways to sabotage marketing, but this should give you a good start. If you fail to implement these recommendations, don’t come whining to me if your marketing succeeds.
Posted by truecreek on January 13, 2010 under More Dam News |
Aiming to please too many different types of customers can be a fatal flaw. Focus on your core audience and don’t waste money on the rest.
By Steve McKee
Do a quick exercise: Take a minute and jot down three types of customers your company doesn’t want. Oh, and this is important: You can’t choose people like shoplifters or “sale-hoppers”—the kind of customers that no business wants.
If you’re like most business leaders, identifying customers you don’t want isn’t easy, especially in times like these. But it can be helpful to consider which of your customers are least important, if for no other reason than to help you focus on the most important ones.
We’re all familiar with the old saying, “you can’t be all things to all people.” Yet in business, too often that’s what we end up trying to be. General Motors is a prime example (and look where it got them). There was a time when each GM nameplate was narrowly targeted toward a certain demographic, leaving other company brands to serve their own slice of customers. But over the past several decades, as each GM brand expanded its lineup to serve as many different customers as possible—sports cars for the sporty, minivans for young families, trucks for working people—they ended up stepping on each other’s toes.
Consider one of those famous brands now slated for the scrap heap: Pontiac. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, Pontiac was defined by drool-inducing muscle cars such as the GTO, Firebird, and TransAm. The Pontiac brand meant power, styling and cool. Its appeal wasn’t for everyone, but it was powerful for some. Since that time, however, Pontiac has introduced a host of new models like the Trans Sport (a minivan), Sunfire (a compact car), Aztek (an SUV crossover), and Vibe (a hatchback). It’s unclear who, exactly, Pontiac has not been trying to serve, which is another way of saying it’s been aiming to please too many masters. And soon Pontiac will be gone, as will several other once-proud brands in the GM stable.
It could be that Wal-Mart (WMT) will learn from the GM example. The company has been attracting a lot more upscale customers of late, for obvious reasons. In the first quarter of 2009, 17% of Wal-Mart’s retail visits were from new customers, and they spent 40% more in the store than the average shopper. Will the company accept their business? You bet—branding is about whose business you’ll seek, not whose you’ll take. But if Wal-Mart begins catering more to those customers’ needs at the expense of its core target of “people who live paycheck to paycheck,” it will be making a mistake.
More about Customers Your Company Doesn’t Want here.
Posted by truecreek on December 7, 2009 under More Dam News |
Real moms still have unmet needs—as women and mothers. Boston Consulting Group estimates that women control $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion in U.S. consumer spending, or 73% of household spending.
To reach this demographic, marketers need not just to communicate that the goods and services they offer are practical and convenient; they also need to make real moms feel confident and in charge.
Marketers should empower these female consumers to delegate to others (spouses, children,brands) so they can have more time to be who they want to be—at home, at work and on their own.
And marketers have to use new ways to reach a population that rarely has time to sit down to read or watch or enjoy something without simultaneously doing something else.
Read the entire report about marketing to moms here.
