Do we manage brands on past performance?

People often question using techniques such as marketing mix analysis to help manage brands. They accuse it of being a blunt backward looking tool which fails to take into account the changing dynamics in a market. This is the "driving using the rear view mirror" critique.

My response is always the same - you need a three point plan in order to mitigate against this potential issue:

1. Acknowledge that analysis is indeed backward looking but it's only one piece of the insight jigsaw and nobody has an Oracle with which to look into the future
2. Ask yourself some tough structured questions about how and why the future might be different from the past. Construct some kind of process around this questioning (Delphi workshops work well here)
3. Invest some effort in activities designed to answer new questions - if you haven't got a clue whether sponsorship and events are a great way to communicate with your core customers, try it on a small scale

Not doing the above and relying blindly on historical analysis will leave you looking a bit like this guy when things to shift.

Who should run marketing analytics

Last week, I attended a conference call / webcast called "Philip Kotler on Turning Marketing Analytics into Strategic Value" during which I asked Prof Kotler "How do you balance internal vs. external analytical providers?”.

The reason that I asked this question was both one of personal interest and professional. My belief is that the importance of strong data analysis skills will increase as data proliferation and skills resident within an organisation increase. Put simply, grad schools and the like are churning out many more grads who get analytics. In the past, consultancies managed to capture the analytical grads because their clients didn't really have a full time requirement for these skill sets. However my reading of the situation is that this is changing as organisations build better analytics into their business model (see Amazon etc).

Kotler appeared to agree with this view which was a relief for me. However as always there's a but and it's this. Whilst a great deal of analytics will move in-house, there will always been the need for think tanks and consultants to invent new and better methodologies.

(p.s. for regular readers, let me apologise for the gap between this post and my last one - the good news is that my wife just had our second child. The bad news is that my time is vanishing!)

10 ways to get more from Marketing Mix Analysis

I'm currently working on a white paper about Marketing Mix Analysis and how the industry needs to adapt to meet new client needs. As part of this paper, I've created some "best practice" advice points that I wanted to share and get some feedback on. Please feed back any comments.

10 Ways to get more from Marketing Mix Analysis:

1. Be realistic about what the analysis can help you achieve – drop words like optimisation and replace with words such as “improvement”. Bravado is a great quality when used correctly but its place in analytics is questionable. Realistically, systematic measurement and improvement programmes in marketing can improve ROI by an average of 10%-15%. However it is not going to happen every time and when it does, it is unlikely to be effort free.


2. Focus on quality not quantity of results– many mix projects suffer from over engineering – both in terms of data used for analysis and detail in results. The old adage of Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) applies as much for mix modelling as it does in any other area. Start with analysing the key metrics that determine business success before moving further down the value chain. Think of “money at risk” – that should clearly determine the key issues to be analysed. Simply adding dimensions of complexity may bring a new depth to the problems that can be solved but is that really where the real value is going to be derived from?


3. Beware of averages – average measures are a big danger in marketing for two reasons. Firstly, given that there is no such thing as an “average” customer, it is going to be very difficult to create a campaign that will satisfy them. Secondly, average performance may be misleading – it is the marginal returns that are meaningful – i.e. the return from the last unit invested. In an industry that rightfully eulogises the term “diminishing returns”, there is a woeful level of understanding about “marginal” performance.


4. Create genuinely meaningful reports – if an organisation is to make changes in marketing strategy then it needs to be clear to all those who are touched by this as to why changes are taking place. Clear and concise reports can help organisations share knowledge efficiently – long winded one hundred page presentations are not the best method to communicate change.


5. Use simple language where possible – enough said. The people who need to respond to marketing analytics tend not to be the most mathematical proportion of the population. Comparing results in statistical terms is easy for analysts but not for laymen. However the wider marketing community have a valuable part to play in the interpretation itself and needs to be included in discussions.


6. Standardise results– Not all models are built equal. Ask whether you can compare the range of potential models being presented to you on the same basis. If you can’t, how can you benchmark and improve performance. Standardised reporting may be inflexible but it is repeatable and enables quick comparisons between results. Standardised reporting enables one of the favourite techniques of modern managers - benchmarking. Marketing teams often hate it but it is valuable.


7. Focus on the actionable areas of the business – Report writers love to provide elaborate explanations for esoteric findings from their models but often they end up reporting on non marketing issues to marketing teams. Whilst some if this information may be useful, teams are often time pressed and it is marketing issues they need to focus on.


8. Systemise the analysis process– one-off reports may be useful to organisations seeking an occasional review of their activities but only continuous monitoring will lead to real improvements in performance. By systemising the reporting of marketing analytics, real processes can be adopted for test and learn marketing. The CMO council have shown that organisations that have managed to adopt these processes perform better and it can be no coincidence.


9. Develop test & learn processes – many successful marketing organisations have figured out ways to experiment with marketing in order to prove to themselves what is working. In almost all these cases, the organisations in question are able to action findings quickly once they have been identified. If your marketing organisation makes changes to their plans once a year as part of an annual planning cycle then you are missing an enormous opportunity to improve marketing performance.


10. Combine it with other analysis - Marketing Mix Analysis can be a blunt tool - it tends to give high level results. It addresses some important business questions but isn't a panacea. Never overlook other research techniques.

Any other thoughts or comments?

Harry Potter - has retail marketing gone mad?

As almost all those of us on planet earth are probably aware, the last Harry Potter book was just released at midnight on the 20^th of July. In the week leading up to the books release, there has been lots of media chatter about this book launch – more than I can remember for some time. I’ve not read the books so I can’t vouch for their brilliance but one thing that is obvious is that the publisher Bloomsbury has lost control of the marketing associated with this launch.

Up until the final day, Bloomsbury have been keen to keep the final chapter of this saga under wraps. Embargos and security were used as methods for preventing publication and spoilers have been showing up online for weeks. In other words this is certainly a hot property that everyone was after.

Given this, how much discounting do you think would go on during DAY 1 of publication? 10%? 20%?

Even before publication, ASDA Walmart were talking up a massive 51% discount in the media that had led to a clash with publisher Bloomsbury (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6902031.stm) . Small bookshops were complaining that at such a discount, it was cheaper for them to go to the supermarket to purchase stock than it was to go to the publisher direct. That puts the “cost” of each book at something approaching £9 here in the UK.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the shops today and saw even greater discounts on day 1. At WH Smiths they were offering a conditional discount of 61% off the cover price taking the price down to £6.99 – in other words they were almost certainly making a loss (something WH Smiths has specialised in during recent years). Further along in the shopping centre, the department store John Lewis was selling the book for £5 with no conditions. In other words, they were subsidising customers purchases to the tune of almost £4 per book. Given the threat that there was no coverage of this pricing to be seen at the front of the store and that John Lewis doesn’t usually stock books, I really wonder what kind of marketing tactic they thought they were employing?

So – Day 1 of a long awaited book release and the discounts are reaching epic proportions of 72% from list price. It’s not great news for Bloomsbury – I saw people purchasing multiple copies of the book and they are already showing up on ebay at inflated prices. Is it any good for the retailers? Well unless they are bringing in substantial new customers to their shops, one would assume it is not. Whilst Asda may have benefited from some early publicity, I doubt that the other retailers actually got the message out to consumers to tell them that they were going to offer even more generous subsidies discounts.

My take – the “me too” retailers were daft. In terms of marks out of 10, Asda get 7/10 because they let people know they were going to sell at cost, WH Smiths get 5/10 because at least their offer probably ensured a profitable transaction because of their use of link savings. John Lewis get 1/10 – a real stinker. Offer a book that you wouldn’t normally sell WAY below cost and then forget to tell people that you are doing this “one off” special. In other words – if you were going to buy this book elsewhere, why not get it from us and have some free money. It’s not going to build any loyalty and almost certain to lose them money. Poor.

More Potter Marketing and Economics Posts:
Drew McLellan - What is the cost of being right? http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/2007/07/what-is-the-cos.html

Seth Godin – Keeping a secret - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/07/keeping-a-secre.html#trackback

Megan McArdle - Harry Potter: the economics - http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/megan_mcardle/2007/07/harry_potter_the_economics.html

Greg Mankiw’s Confession - http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-confess-i-am-potter-head.html

Top economist signs for Google

The economics grads amongst us will be familiar with Hal Varian. He wrote one of the standard textbooks on microeconomics if memory serves me right. Anyway he’s now joined Google as their Chief Economist (see http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/07/19/economics-according-to-google/ ). In the article Hal argues that the marketing world is about to see a load more economists joining ready to do battle with our mountains of data and bring better forecasting and measurement to marketing. Whilst such a trend would be welcomed by many, there is a depressing set of people in the industry who will be uninterested in what these economists might have to say for themselves.

In the past few years, I’ve seen a number of economists move from marketing into corporate finance (I’m talking about at the coalface level here) – I’ve never seen the reverse happen. We can only hope...

Will the new Vodafone campaign ad do more than win awards?

Sometimes you see a commercial which makes you stop what you are doing, watch the TV (or online video for the 2.0 community out there) and literally stare at the TV to work our what's going on. I had this experience the other day when i saw the first airing of the new Vodafone commercial which I believe is called Mobile Internet (time rain):

I think that this is a beautiful commercial - it's well shot, interesting and it's going to get noticed. However I wonder what the ROI is going to look like on this? Whenever i see this ad, I wonder whether it wasn't a case of a great creative idea waiting for a client to buy into it rather than the other way around. Will this advert really sell incremental internet usage across the Vodafone network? I'm struggling to understand how.

There is no call to action in this advert - you don't get an offer to trial or any way in which users can sign up for services. What is commercial appears designed to do is raise awareness about online services. That bothers me because although I'm sure there was some kind of ROI framework put in place before the campaign aired, I'm amazed nobody made sure people knew how to get online or even view what content was already out there. Voda are spending a lot of money telling consumers across all networks that mobile internet services will give them back time. Nowhere does this specify that Voda is better; nowhere does it imply that customers on Voda get better services.

Payback on this campaign is going to be tough but if they can persuade millions to try a few online services, maybe those 3G network licences will look a better investment than they do at present. Before that though, they have to make this commercial pay off and we all know that 90 second ads are expensive. By my rough calculations, Voda are going to have to get each customer to increase their ARPU by more than £1 over the year to make this pay off and that's a tough ask as most people in telcos will attain to. At least the execs can look forward to a trip to Cannes next year!

modelQED Launched - finally!

Today we finally launched modelQED™, a marketing mix analysis tool (econometrics if you prefer) which will hopefully help to democrotise the usage of this powerful analytical technique.

For many years, i've figured that marketing mix analysis was actually a fairly well understood tool by many advertisers. There are many articles saying that it needs to be performed by professionals with years of experience. However my personal experience was that for 90% of the models i've ever created, the simple straightforward model was often the best. My econometrics knowledge was only used on the most specialist assignments. For the rest of the time, i was following a well defined process which in most cases gave the correct answers. modelQED™ is designed to deal with these challenges in record quick time and leave the hard core analysts to tackle the remaining challenges.

As with all things marketingQED are trying to do, we've focused our efforts on making modelQED™ both simple to use but also powerful in context. By this I mean that the users interaction with the package is made as easy as possible whilst the analysis delivered is exactly what would be required for the majority of mix modelling. The feedback to date is that we've largely achieved this. I think we will continue to develop the product focusing on even more simplification and user friendliness.

modelQED™ solves lots of issues for modellers but this is only the beginning. Give me a call or drop me an e-mail if you want a demo of this truly unique tool.

We have many other products in the pipeline. Hopefully the market will find these tools useful.

Any comments on the screenshots etc - please post or e-mail. Feedback always appreciated.

What went wrong in the 2012 research

...yet another blog post on the 2012 logo then?

Well yes - what I want to focus on is not necessarily the validity of the logo (which I think is actually quite cool in it's multimedia incarnation) but what lessons there are for researchers.

It's clear that public opinion in the UK and elsewhere isn't 100% behind the logo. Any well conducted research would have shown that this logo would divide opinion. That in itself is no big deal. However there is another theory and it's this. Although a great deal of research would have been done to justify the logo (£400k goes a fair way), it may not have actually been done properly - it's possible that they asked the wrong questions and in this may have included the use of leading questions - these are a real problem in this type of research.

In this case, a leading question would have been "do you think that this logo expresses dynamism and energy?" - clearly the question itself leads the respondent to assess the logo on the emotive terms dynamism and energy. If the selection criteria for the logo are these characteristics then - hey presto - we have a winner. A better question would have been "what emotions does this logo convey" - at least this wouldn't have led respondents to certain answers.

Let's turn to that great TV series "Yes, Prime Minister" for the definitive explanation:

Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."

As I said at the start, I like the logo. However many people don't and such an adverse reaction to a picture has to be unique in the history of logo design.

So that's my theory - it researched well for one of two reasons - either they asked leading questions because they wanted a certain answer or the questions were formed in such a way that one logo one over the others. Either way, I'd love to see the research which gave us this new logo.

Don't just analyse the sign-ups! The case of the missing Channel lipstick.

Here's a little story about why it's never the best idea to analyse the success of a campaign by the number of "clicks", visitors or sign-ups.

My wife was browsing the Internet about 6 weeks ago and was presented with an online advert (or somehow found a link) for Chanel makeup - since you ask it was for Le Rouge lipstick. The premise was a typical one - watch the online advert or in this case film, learn about the product and we'll send you a free sample.

At this point, I'm assuming that their analytics team are quite happy with the data they collected and the value the campaign generated. I'm also assuming that their brand manager is feeling quite good about this campaign:

1. got the viewer (in the right target market)
2. got the details
3. they've signed up to our database (and are likely to have selected to receive more info)

Now so far, there's no real ROI - but they have now got a person to go and sell to. The next part of the implicit deal that they have made is to send out a free sample but this is where the "deal" falters. Instead what actually happened was that my wife received an e-mail yesterday telling her that she can't have a free sample - "sorry but it's all gone" was the message. Those with a keen memory will recall that this is a 6 week process between sign-up and being told that stock has run out of the freebie. So the question for Chanel is this. Was this a successful campaign?

From a marketing measurement point-of-view, i suspect that internally it's being regarded as a promotion that worked "too" well - certainly a success! Too many people said that they wanted to trial the product and we got too many interested customers. Oh how tough can this marketing game be?

In practice, what Chanel did was raise then lower peoples expectations about the brand and it was all unnecessary for the following reasons:

1. It's easy to work out how much stock you have then close the offer when it's run out - Chanel didn't do this (and by implication can't). That's dumb. In fact it took 6 weeks for Chanel to spot this.
2. The marginal cost of a few extra lipsticks must run to literally a few thousand pounds which is a tiny amount in comparison to any potential damage from not fulfilling the brand promise - again dumb.
3. Chanel could have offered something else in return if there was a shortage of product. Maybe an alternative free sample, consultation or even a voucher

You may of course question why a premium brand like Chanel is offering a free trial or even vouchers. Neither are very "premium brand" but clearly Chanel's team felt that it was a risk worth taking to bulk up their database of prospects. In practice, I'd guess that they've added a whole list of names to a database with little value and potentially negative ROI given that they left so many people disappointed. My guess is that there is a whole range of people out there who are now less inclined towards this prestigious brand than there were previously which can't be a good thing.

Overall:

• On a "sign-ups" basis - a success
• On a "visitors" basis - a success
• On a "brand equity" basis - fail
• On an ROI basis - really?

A new term emerges for online analytics

Pete Affeld at Numeric Analytics has coined a new phrase to describe the analysis of online advertising using econometrics - "3rd generation" web analytics (see http://www.numericanalytics.com/pdfs/AdServ.pdf).

What I like about this is that it acknowledges that there is now a realisation that you cannot analyse online advertising in isolation from other actives. I've noticed this trend as i talk to online media companies about their analytical capabilities and it certainly seems to be a good time for these organisations to reassess how they define ROI for their customers. If Pete is right then all those TV and Radio analysts will be moving into online in the near future. However as others have noticed, there is plenty of money in the bigger media channels to justify top researchers fees but less is going to be available - hence the need for better tools, training and processes in marketing research. It's this last reason which gives me faith that our new venture marketingQED will be a success.

New research highlights the presence of Strategic Consumers

A new piece of research from Gérard P. Cachon and Robert Swinney at Warton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1339.pdf) suggests that there may be three types of shoppers which retailers need to consider when setting stock levels and retail strategy. To quote:

“Some shoppers just can't help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters, who only open their wallets for a discount.

“Then there are the strategic consumers, who are willing to buy full-price sometimes, but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new Wharton research, it's these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean retail inventory management and variable pricing”

If this article is correct then the current model of release at top price, take the profits then discount towards the end of a products lifespan is not going to last. The research looks at retailers like Zara and airlines such as Southwest and highlights their policies which commit customers to an early purchase rather than waiting for discounting to take place.

For marketing analysts, there is an interesting suggestion here. Whilst most segmentation is behavioural is terms of how consumers actually use products or interact with them, retailer segmentation is typically behavioural. The question now is can you use store card data to identify the strategic customers and can you bring forward their purchases? Any ideas if this has been done anywhere and what it actually meant in practice?

More great advertising from ...Microsoft?

In recent months, I've noticed that Microsoft have been coming up with some great commercials - Office 2007 was one example.

Now there's a new one aimed at people like me - online advertisers. I thought you'd enjoy this one.

However - one question - does anyone have any ideas how Microsoft is going to solve the gap between consumers and advertisers through technology? My concern is that the commercial highlights the natural gap between any database marketer and real consumers. There's no substiute for actually listening and seeing how consumers actually interact with a product.

"You can't trust early adopters"

So says James McQuivey from Forrester who was commenting on the slow (read no) growth in iTunes video downloads as reported here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/forrester_online_video/.

Early adopters have apparently skewed the forecasts for PAID online video downloads. Many analysts assumed that once the rest of us "got" it, we'd behave in the same manner as the early adopters did. However we didn't and it’s now looking like iTunes isn’t going to be the killer investment Apple and their media owner backers had hoped for.

What does this mean from marketing analysts? How does it make a difference to how we think about marketing? Well it shouldn’t change backward looking analysis too much in practice. However the focus has to shift for many organisations to start answering questions like “how do we shift this in the future?” It really brings home a point which was made to me over and over again by former colleagues – namely you have to add judgement to historical analysis in order to create a more reliable model for forecasting. In the past, I’ve been involved in a number of workshops which seek to qualify historical models with beliefs about how the future may differ from the past – Delphi style has been common. These workshops are a great way to test new hypotheses about the future and one key topic must encompass the question of “how might our consumers differ in the future?”

As many of you will be aware, my company is about to launch modelQED – a backward looking modelling tool which creates marketing mix models in record time. One of the key benefits of this tool is that it will cut down on the amount of time spend on backward looking analysis enabling organisations to spend much more time looking forward and understanding how the future will differ from the past. For me this is a winning combination – reduce historical analysis time (and increase the quality of the analysis) + systematically review how the future will differ from the past.

I hope that this powerful combination will prove irresistible to many organisations!

The psychology of advertising.

The process by which advertising actually "works" on people is certainly open to debate and I'm not at all familiar with the psychology of what actually goes on in the heads of consumers. As a researcher, one of the key characteristics one needs is the ability to put yourself in the mind of the consumer and imagine how they may react to a commercial.

Nigel Hollis over at Milward Brown should know more than most about this and he's written a very interesting post on the subject here (http://www.mb-blog.com/index.php/2007/05/11/rehearsing-reality/) which is well worth a read if you have time. He suggests that "the concept of an ad exposure (serves) as a mental rehearsal of a brand encounter " which i think i get. See what you think.

Being busy

I've been very lazy with the blog recently so apologies. We've been really busy getting ready for the official launch of modelQED - our new marketing mix analysis package. Watch this space for more details next wee!

In the meantime, for those interested in online analytics, can I draw your attention to Ron Shelvin's recent post: http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/a-letter-to-web-analytics-from-the-ceo/

Is media research media neutral?

In this weeks edition of Marketing, Raymond Snoddy draws attention to the latest research from the Newspaper Marketing Agency which reaches following five conclusions:

1. TV plus newspapers drives 5 times the increase in bonding versus TV alone
2. Newspapers create a more powerful emotional response than TV
3. Creative pre-testing of newspaper advertising doubles performance
4. Newspaper advertising drives sales and web traffic
5. Multiple executions are significantly more effective than single ads

See http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/whyNewspapers?whyNewspapersModel=7468

There are two key things that bother me about this research - firstly the agency runs the exercise has a vested interest. Secondly that the methodology employed for much of the research analyses soft metrics rather than more meaningful sales or revenue based metrics.

Whilst some of the research has been conducted by a highly respected scientist called Dr Lawrence Farwell and his company Brainwave Science, i’m sure that even he will agree that the conclusions drawn from the research may be a slight “stretch” based on the research techniques actually employed.

Let’s look at these points one by one:

TV plus newspapers drives 5 times the increase in bonding versus TV alone – I’m not exactly sure what “bonding” is but we’re told that it’s strongly correlated with sales. I’d love to know what this level of correlation was and whether there was still a strong relationship between changes in bonding and changes in sales performance. The report fails to tell us what the impact was on other measures in the Millward Brown’s Brand Dynamics Pyramid.

Newspapers create a more powerful emotional response than TV – for me this is the most interesting finding from the study. I’m unsure of the monetary value to advertisers of an emotional response but there’s hardly any reason for not wanting advertising to generate an emotional response. This plus associated research will certainly help advertisers thing carefully about the type of messages they run in press

Creative pre-testing of newspaper advertising doubles performance – well it was unlikely to reduce performance so the increase isn’t surprising. What the study being referenced appears to have researched is not performance in terms of ROI but rather advertising recognition. These are very different beasts and this needs to be considered when reading the results. Furthermore, the study appears to be anecdotal rather than scientific – by this i mean that in 2005 they measured awareness measures across 13 campaigns with only limited pre-testing then in 2006 all campaigns were fully evaluated before being published – however only 6 campaigns were released. To me this suggests that the poorly performing types of campaigns were dropped and potentially more funding was spent per campaign in 2006. Without knowing the details of the report the conclusion that pre-testing helps make campaigns twice as effective is very difficult to justify.

Newspaper advertising drives sales and web traffic – and if they didn’t there wouldn’t be much of a newspaper industry to speak of would there? If anyone doubted this finding then I’d question their sanity. However this analysis differs from much of the other analysis in that it doesn’t compare results with the other media. Not sure why? As for the web traffic, there’s lots of data to show that consumers of Newspapers are exactly the demographic groups which are hard to reach through other media such as TV. Mixed media wins the day when you want to raise awareness and press hits some demographics exceptionally well.

Multiple executions are significantly more effective than single ads – again this is great advice on how to run a campaign. Newspapers are inherently a medium where coverage is limited but frequency is high. Running the same execution over and over limits the opportunity to continue to inform – it’s a case of being sensible and understanding the medium.

I guess these comments appear to suggest that I’ve either a) got something against the Newspaper industry or b) i’m a sceptic about the value of such “groundbreaking” research. Neither are really the case. The problem in this case is the body which is conducting the research lacks the credibility to say “our media channel is better than yours”. When Coke say that independent research shows people prefer Coke over Pepsi (or vice versa from what i hear) then most people roll their eyes and question whether they would have published a conflicting result. In the case of this NPA research, I question whether it’s over promoting a great medium as part of some internal industry politics of Newspapers vs. TV vs. Online vs. ....etc. and really wonder what the overall benefit is to marketers. There is a ton of media research out there which is objective and well researched (IPA touchpoints?) and i’d suggest people with a real interest in understanding the relevant benefits of one channel over another take great care when looking at channel specific reports.

Data visualisation - the next step

My old boss was mad keen on making charts look cool - "tell the story" and "get rid of clutter". My old lecturer was mad keen on the writings of Robert Schiller - the excellent economist.

Put the two together and what do you get?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2757699799528285056

Genius...

Numbers don't make up for the branding

Many analysts like myself get a bit carried away from time to time with the power of the numbers! However we often forget to remind organisations about the benefits of a strong brand proposition. Everyone in marketing knows that to be exceptional, you need a strong brand - that doesn't mean a great logo or fantastic web domain but it means you need a compelling proposition which is well executed. What's amazing is how many poor brands stay above water and even prosper for so long so there's clearly more to it!

There are a thousand presentations out there about "keeping it simple" and "think differently" and almost each presentation uses the same examples - Google, Southwest/Ryanair/Jetblue, Dell, Innocent (next time you see a branding presentation, play brand bingo - the updated version of buzzword bingo). However this one - "The Brand Gap" made an impression on me and i heartily recommend it.

As an aside, i am always impressed when people make strong brands from low interest industries and in recent years, HSBC have taken the lead at doing this in the banking field. They have successfully turned globalisation to their advantage in a manner which Barclay's failed to grasp a few years ago. Their latest "the World's local bank" ad is another good example of this campaign although for me, the cream of the ads are those which appear at every major airport on boarding / departure - genius!

Wannamaker's 50% rule is long gone now

The oldest cliche in advertising is the Wannamaker one about 50% of ad spend being wasted but not knowing which 50%. Indeed this blog is as guilty as any of using this and I'll do something about that this week!

One reason why the 50% rule is no longer appropriate is the variety of measurement tools and techniques which enable marketers to quantify the impact of advertising activities. Qualitative and Quantitative analysis techniques combined with the 1000's of reports available from web2.0 channels means that information which demonstrates advertising effectiveness has never been easier to obtain. If you're organisation doesn't monitor their advertising for ROI purposes then it's probably a good idea to question why not. The only rational reasons for not tracking marketing ROI are the following:

1. We don't need a higher marketing ROI - we're rich
2. We've never thought about it
3. We don't know how to check it
4. We were told it wasn't possible

My guess is that no organisation is going to claim number 1 (maybe Microsoft and Google) and if you're answering 2 or 3 then it's time to check in with your ad agency and ask some questions. Answer number 4 and it's time to get another agency (e-mail me and I'll give you a list of people to call).

Next time someone quotes Wannamaker at you, ask them to name an organisation who still regard a 50% ROI from their advertising being regarded as acceptable. Please let me have the details and I'll go and help them out because it's no longer rocket science!

Simple analysis - but powerful messages

The old adage is that simple ideas are often the best. This is as true for marketing as other functions.

Victor Cook has written an interesting article on Coke vs. Pepsi and using some really basic numbers, he's determined that Pepsi may be a better run organisation than Coke (see http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2288180/17256626).

Whilst this article may ignore overseas earnings and the like, it does go to show that there is a wealth of data out there which can be used to produce a report on every competitor in an industry. You don't just want data from Nielsen, BARB etc - get the financials as well. Here in the UK, you have to pay £1 for a copy of an organisations annual accounts. That's great value and the lessons in the data may be far greater than anything hidden in some randomly administered surveys.