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!

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.

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!

Threshers voucher time again - too much of a good thing?

Many of you will have looked into the effectiveness of discount coupons and vouchers and wondered if they really work. Measuring the effectiveness of these offers is actually fairly simple in terms of short term ROI - however the complications come further down the line when customers become attuned to vouchers and discounts - in theory having damaged the brand. This mistake was made by K-mart in the 1990's and this should serve as a warning to prospective discounters - train customers to expect vouchers and special discounts at your peril - it will make regular products look more expensive.

Anyway - the good people at Threshers had a massive PR coup during Christmas when they released a voucher (by accident they claimed?) which entitled those who received it to a 40% discount on any bottle of wine. This was a great offer from their point-of-view since the offer went viral and thousands of people got hold of the voucher which was only released to a few. the result was a PR coup where people believed they had received a "golden ticket" and ran round to Threshers to clear the shelves. Having allegedly made £15m from this deal they are at it again.

You can find the voucher here -http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003805.html - by the way this site has some fantastic images which you can use on your business cards if you're brave!

From the consumers point-of-view this is great - we can go and get some good wine at a perceived reduction of 40% on list price (although it's often pointed out that the real discount is 7% - if you were already going to get 3 bottles of wine, this retailer already gives you 33% off). From the point of view of Threshers, is this great for their brand or are they relying on very short-term lifts which may train consumers to go there only when vouchers are available - let's see if they do another one at Christmas.