Archive for the ‘Advertising Research’ Category
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
How much of the money spent on advertising is wasted? Although it’s a very difficult question to answer, advertising research goes a very long way towards measuring and tracking over time the effectiveness of any ad campaign.
However, according to a new study by Satmetrix, only 2% of consumers trust advertising the most as a source of information when choosing a product or service. Almost half (49%) of respondents feel personal recommendations from family, friends or colleagues is the most trustworthy source of information. While this statistic is not surprising – word-of-mouth recommendation has always had an extremely positive impact – it is maybe a little surprising that so many more people (15%) find opinions posted online as that much more reliable than the 2% who trust advertising. While online message boards, forums, etc are meant to be an independent source of opinion, many people are skeptical as to how unbiased they often really are.
The study, in fact, claims that some companies are wasting billions on attracting new customers through advertising when their focus should really be on keeping their existing customers happy. According to the study, poor customer experience has forced more than 10 million consumers to switch suppliers in the past six months.
The principal cause of dissatisfaction to the point of switching is unfair fees or charges. A further 22% blame poor product or service quality. 19% move because of rude of disinterested employees. And, 12% leave because they feel they can’t get anyone to deal with their problem.
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Friday, July 16th, 2010
Reflecting on a month of non-stop football coverage, Alex Clements this week mulls over the effectiveness of high profile advertising and sponsorship.
The World Cup is now over and things are, once again, returning to normal. Wives get their husbands back, kids get the right to watch TV back and the men are in recovery for another four years until the next World Cup. I will confess, I’m not a huge fan of grown men kicking a ball around a pitch (I’d rather watch grown men beat the life out of each other in a cage!). I did, however, watch a few games of the World Cup, including the England vs. Germany game, which was an interesting one to watch with Vanessa, my fiancée who, just to make things more interesting, comes from Wuppertal in Germany!
Despite not really caring who won the World Cup, I found myself subconsciously supporting Spain in the final. The only reason I can think of for this is that I quite like visiting Spain on my holidays. The least I can do is support their football team in return for their hospitality.
I’m quite easily distracted at times and my mind can wander to a vast array of weird and wonderful things. The example I’m going to share with you on this occasion came to me during this football (or “soccer” for those of you in the US) match between Spain and the Netherlands. As I watched the ball go back and forth between opposing players – and on occasion directly from one goalie to the other – my mind wandered as I noticed the multitude of banners advertising different companies around the pitch. There were banners for Adidas, Sony, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Budweiser to name a few. I sat there and wondered to myself, “How effective are these adverts?”
I decided that some of these adverts must be more effective than others when using this platform to reach their target market. I praise the strategic placement by Adidas because it is a company that manufactures sports clothing, which is likely to be of interest to a considerable percentage of football fans who will be watching. Similarly, people watching the game on TV at home or in a public bar could see the banners for Budweiser or Coca-Cola and as a result think “I could really do with a Budweiser!” – just as I did! Unfortunately, however, I was sitting at home with no access to any Budweiser… Of course, this is the aim of the banner and I’m sure it works quite effectively.
In my mind, I compared the effectiveness of the ‘drinks’ banners to that of ‘electrical goods’ banners which have used the exact same method to reach their target market. Let’s first think about the platform for advertising here: The World Cup final. A quick search on the internet suggests there were over 18 million viewers in the UK watching the game on British television. Before the game took place, FIFA expected an audience of 700 million worldwide to watch the final. Even if viewers turned out to be significantly fewer than this prediction, it would undoubtedly still reach a considerable number of potential customers. As a means of embedding your brand in the minds of your target market, I say this is a very effective way to reach millions globally.
Maybe the decision to advertise in this way would be more straight-forward for companies such as Coca-Cola as they are presumably targeting anyone who drinks liquid – which I shouldn’t need tell you is a pretty high percentage of the world’s population! However, for companies that specialise in electrical goods – which are not necessities of life (don’t tell my fiancée I said that) – as high value and infrequent purchases, from a consumer point of view there is more at stake and a bigger purchase decision to be made. Such companies must assess who they are targeting and who they would reach by each method of advertising before deciding on a platform.
At first, I questioned whether electrical goods companies would see as much return on investment as drinks companies would. Will people see these banners and think, “I could really do with a new TV”? My guess would be that the need for a beer would come before the need for a new TV, but then again, I was watching the game in high-definition on a 40-inch screen! Despite this, this approach still does the job of raising awareness and embeds the brand in the minds of millions. Not bad for something as simple as a banner with your logo on, is it? Not that a pitch-side banner at the final of the World Cup will be within every company’s budget, mind!
I’ll leave you now with one final example, which truly shows how effective advertising and sponsorship can be. Domino’s Pizza sponsored television coverage of the World Cup and Britain’s Got Talent, and it has been reported that the company has seen sales rise to 237.1 million – an increase of 21% in the last half year leading up to June 27, making a £17.5m pre-tax profit. Even more impressive, sales were said to have been up 65% on the day of England’s only World Cup win, increasing by a whopping 333% during the hours the match was shown! To find out more about Domino’s recent successes, click here to read Domino’s Pizza Plc Half Yearly Report.
- If you would like to find out more about measuring and monitoring the effectiveness of advertising, please click here.
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Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
For this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Oliver Truman kicks off with B2B’s first World Cup-related blog post of the summer.
Well, it’s almost here. And don’t we know about it.
The 2010 Football World Cup is upon us, and everyone’s got their knickers in a twist. Cue endless speculation about who’ll be in each nation’s team. Cue furious flag waving and shows of unbridled patriotism that would otherwise cause a diplomatic incident. Cue four weeks of shouting at the television. Cue the inevitable Thursday Night Insight analysis of what this all means.
I’m sorry to go all “grumpy old man” on you here, but is it me, or does the run up to the tournament feel like it’s been over-done this time around? Like Christmas, the speculation and hype around the competition (and England’s ritual, quadrennial shaming in a penalty shootout) seems to begin earlier and earlier every time. The adverts get brasher, longer and more stomach-churningly jingoistic, and this year appears to be no exception.
I am perhaps in danger of exaggerating my ennui at the situation, however. From a cultural and marketing point of view, events like the World Cup are fascinating insights into what advertisers try to do to switch us on.
At least from a UK perspective, the theme in this year’s World Cup advertising – like Maradonna in the late 1990s – appears to involve an excess of everything. The recipe for a successful commercial, it would seem, is as follows:
At its heart, all of this jostling for position comes down to achieving awareness and interest in brands during a key time in the calendar for advertising. When all around you are shouting, shouting louder, longer and with bigger laughs is central to securing a share of voice.
Of course, investment of this sort in marketing cannot come without accountability. Marketers must use research to understand the impact that advertising has had – Not just in terms of whether more beer, trainers or televisions have been sold, but also whether people’s longer term disposition to brands have been enhanced or damaged.
Pre and post-campaign studies are one way of tracking brand health, but so too is tapping into what wags in the blogosphere, in forums and on Twitter have to say (not Wives and Girlfriends, by the way – the other meaning). Mining this publicly-available seam of insight is an emerging technique in consumer markets, and the world of business-to-business could well follow.
Like a World Cup advert, I think I’ve gone on long enough, but I’ll leave you with a prediction for the tournament. We can all then come back here in a month’s time and guffaw at how wrong I was. Argentina to win it – not least because they’re my selection in the office sweepstake.
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Thursday, April 15th, 2010
In this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Paul Hague argues vehemently – once again – that advertising can and does work.
What is it about me? My evenings with friends often end up in heated discussion. For some reason, they associate me with all the sins of the marketing world.
- “You people are terrible for persuading us to buy things we don’t want.”
- “You people are responsible for profligate consumption and wasting the world’s resources.”
- “I don’t know who ever buys branded products – I never do on principle – you are just paying for the brand.”
I defend my corner as best I can, explaining that our work is measuring and analysing the effect of marketing while others are responsible for implementation. However, these arguments always leave me feeling defeated as the debates rage endlessly on and, I suspect, with little change of the protagonists’ views. However, I take no offence. Why should I? These are real questions for our profession.
So, it was no surprise the other weekend when we were entertaining some friends and a heated discussion flared about the effect of advertising. The arguments flew back and forth with the speed of a ping pong ball in the hands of the China Olympic team.
- “Advertising is such a waste of resource. No one takes any notice of it.”
- “Oh yes they do. We can measure how many people have seen adverts and track if they have bought the products.”
- “Well that may be so for some people but no one I know takes any notice of adverts and I certainly don’t.”
As usual we got nowhere, which meant that as usual I felt that I had lost. And, all the while, Alfie, my aging boxer dog, was getting agitated and asking for a walk. We packed up the discussion and headed off down the lane.
We live on a lane that drops down for half a mile through woodland until finally it reaches a farm and the River Goyt, at which point it stops and becomes a footpath. In other words, it is a peaceful sort of lane with limited traffic made up of a few cars, bikes and walkers. It is not your average high street. It is definitely not somewhere that an advert would reach thousands of people.
We hadn’t walked for more than five minutes when my friend spotted a small notice, looking very water sodden despite being encapsulated in plastic, and fastened to a tree. It was a pathetic attempt to communicate and my friend was quickly engaged
- “Oh look Paul, someone has lost their kitten. See here, there is a picture. We must do something, they will be heartbroken.”
And on and on she went.
- “Yes, I know. I have seen the poster but the cat isn’t around here, of that I am sure. Also, you will see that they lost it in November and it is now April. I would have noticed the cat and anyway, if I hadn’t, Alfie would have.”
(I didn’t point out that the unfortunate cat would have ticked off another of its nine lives if it had had the misfortune of confronting my canine friend.)
I suppose I was still bruised from our earlier discussion in which I had got nowhere and thought I would try and extract some bonus points.
- “See, I told you that advertising works. You say you never take notice of adverts and here you are looking at an advert, taking notice and getting engaged in action – just like I was explaining.”
- “Nah. That isn’t advertising. That is just someone that has lost their cat and is asking us to help.”
Alfie looked up at me and sighed. His expression echoed my feelings – “Come on Dad, save it for Monday. Let’s get on with our walk and if I see that pesky cat, I will scrag it”.
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
It appears the jury is still out on the usefulness of social media and social networking websites from a business perspective. Two recent studies show mixed feelings from companies, ranging from SMEs through to large multinational corporations.
In the second annual Business Networking Trends Survey, conducted by WeCanDo.biz, 80% of entrepreneurs claimed to have achieved business wins through social networking sites, with 92% of respondents saying they would recommend networking professionally online to their business contacts.
Professional and business-focused networking sites – among them LinkedIn and Xing – unsurprisingly proved the most popular, with just under half of small businesses surveyed saying they utilise them for professional networking. Just under a quarter use sites such as Twitter for business networking. However, more than a third of SMEs are wary of using Facebook for business networking purposes, refusing to add business contacts as ‘friends’.
Interestingly, despite a huge rise in overall users of social networking sites in the past few years, this year’s study found there to be a fall in the number of respondents who feel online networks help them get closer to their customers.
Yet it would seem that more ‘traditional’ face-to-face networking continues to grow, with 36% of respondents questioned regularly attending networking meetings. The amount of money and time spent on networking has also increased over the past year. However, in spite of this, while half of the respondents plan to maintain the same levels of face-to-face networking in 2010, 55% intend to increase the time they spend networking online.
A second survey, this one conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau, hints at a certain amount of skepticism towards social media. This study, which included such household names as Coca-Cola and RBS, showed that only one fifth of marketers view social media as a core element of their company’s marketing strategy – with many more confused about the role it should play in their plans.
Further confusion lies in who should be responsible for any social marketing, with one third of respondents feeling some responsibility lies with the PR department, 12% believing the research department needs to be involved, and 7% adamant that the IT department should be responsible.
Further caution is demonstrated by the three-quarters of brand marketers who feel social media’s biggest challenge is proving it can deliver ROI. 64% see measurement as the most significant hurdle to investment in the channel.
Yet there can be no doubt that many companies, among them Vodafone and O2, are huge fans of the benefits and the potential of social media. I.T. giant Dell reported in June last year that it could attribute more than $3 million in sales directly to Twitter, a figure now believed to have topped $5.5m. Maybe social media shouldn’t be so easily dismissed…
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