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Archive for the ‘Advertising Research’ Category« Previous Entries Next Entries »Light At The End Of The Tunnel?Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Good news at last! According to a new survey, business confidence is finally on the rise. For the second consecutive month in April, businesses’ optimism about both trading prospects and expectations for the wider economy has risen, with confidence now at its highest level for six months. More than one third (35%) of firms questioned in the Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets Business Barometer are anticipating brighter trading prospects over the coming 12 months, while only a fifth (21%) expect conditions to worsen. In a similar vein, a recent survey hosted by B2B International discovered that around a third (31%) of B2B organisations that have so far been largely or extremely affected by the recession are nevertheless optimistic about their organisation’s economic outlook. More positive signs have come recently with news from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s latest Bellwether survey that the decline in marketing spend slowed in the first quarter of 2009. So, while the recession isn’t over yet by any means, it’s reassuring that we are starting to see and hear signs of optimism. Marketing Budgets Show ResilienceThursday, April 9th, 2009
Despite the belief that marketing budgets are among the first to suffer in a recession, a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council states that almost a third of global marketers are actually planning to increase their budgets this year. According to the Marketing Outlook report, 29% of marketers questioned plan marketing budget increases, 50% will cut budgets and, for 21%, budgets will remain unchanged this year. The survey also found that overall marketers are not planning major restructuring, significant job cuts or large-scale agency terminations. Top priorities this year are growing/retaining market share (48%), lowering costs and improving efficiencies (44%), and improving customer insight and retention (33%). The two main areas for marketing investment in 2009 were found to be e-mail marketing (45%) and online surveys and research (33%). These findings are symptomatic of a clear shift away from traditional media towards digital. 72% of respondents said they were increasing their interactive spending, 62% spending more on search marketing, and the same number increasing their investment in social media. Meanwhile spending on print media is being cut by 37%, with 19% indicating a drop in their TV spend and 18% investing less in radio. Another interesting finding of the study was the discovery that the principal factors driving this year’s marketing budget allocation are customer anxiety and cutbacks (49%), slower selling cycles (38%), and reduced consumer spending (33%). The CMO Council study was based on an online survey of more than 650 global marketing executives, conducted from mid-January through to early March. Never Underestimate Your Brand ColourWednesday, April 8th, 2009
In a blog article last year, The Power Of Colours In Branding, Nick Hague talked about how colour – while not the single defining factor in the success of a brand – does have an important part to play. New research by UK patent and trademark attorneys Withers & Rogers concurs with Nick’s opinion, naming colour as the strongest visual element of a brand. In their survey, 64% of respondents ranked colour as more important than slogan, typeface or logo shape. The AA’s famous yellow and black logo had the highest colour recall of any brand, recognised by almost all respondents (98%). Easy Jet’s orange was recognised by 93%, with Cadbury’s purple and BP’s green each being recognised by 88% of those questioned. Interesting, but perhaps unsurprisingly, companies that have trademarked their distinctive brand colours, such as Easy Jet, Cadbury and BP, tended to score highly in the survey. Branding research can generate a wide range of colours that can be used differently to deliver consistency and powerful positioning in logos, corporate marketing, packaging and other aspects of your brand. If you are interested in finding out more about branding, read our Brand Positioning Case Study or our white paper on Branding in B-to-B Markets. Standing Out From The PackFriday, March 27th, 2009
What do a cassette tape, a boomerang, and a 1980′s electro-pop song have in common? In Matt Powell’s latest Thursday Night Insight entry this week, he looks at the impact of ‘thinking outside the box’ and standing apart from the competition, and the lasting impression that it can make. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve come into contact with a few advertising campaigns that have, in one way or another, caused me to devote at least some part of my day to thinking about them. By that, I mean more time than just taking a glance at a glossy piece of direct mail that goes straight into the recycle bin after couple of seconds. These pieces of marketing have really engaged me – either through getting me to think, causing me a great deal of intrigue, or just appealing to my inner child. The first was a cassette tape that arrived in the post in a brown padded envelope, in a Mission Impossible-esque manner. On the cassette was a label with a personalised web address for me to visit. I was not the only one of my in the office to receive one of these tapes, so there was some discussion as to what they were for. A quick visit to the website, showed that it was a campaign from E-Rewards that centred around constant evolution – the cassette tape being one of the evolutionary step in the personal music player. The campaign certainly stood out from everything else that landed on my desk that day, it created discussion around the office, caused me to visit the website, and now the cassette is adorning my desk-top. Certainly more interaction and longevity than standard direct mail would have been afforded. My second encounter with out-of-the ordinary marketing was on a lunch break whilst in the local supermarket/convenience store. Whilst I was perusing the assortment of soups on offer, I – and my fellow shoppers – were treated to short minute-long blasts of a very familiar 80′s electro pop song. I first dismissed it as the slipping standards of the store, probably allowing staff to play their own music through the store music system. Still, the familiar music was annoying me – I couldn’t remember where I knew it from. After a few more minute-long blasts it dawned on me why the dated music was so familiar – it was the music that backs Dairy Milk’s latest advertising campaign (with the boy and girl and the dancing eyebrows). Once I realised that, it evoked the amusing images from the TV advert – by coincidence I was stood at the counter waiting to pay – with an assortment of Dairy Milk products on display in front of me. Very clever. Plus, I was feeling slightly jubilant that I had remembered where I knew the music from – something that would have irritated me throughout the day if I hadn’t have figured it out. Again, slightly different approach to getting the message across, but a memorable impact. The third piece of marketing that I found particularly engaging is in fact B2B’s latest mailer – not that I’m blowing our own trumpet – it could be a mailer from any company and I would still be writing about it. It is, as the first sentence of this article has probably given away, a boomerang. The boomerang is a play on the theme of ‘getting a return on your investment’. The boomerang has instructions of how to use it on its reverse. This piece of marketing is now sat on my desk awaiting the day when I can finally find somewhere large enough, and unpopulated enough to throw it without posing a threat to the public. Indeed, over the past week, whenever I have come off the phone, I usually find that the boomerang has moved from my desk into my hand. Of course, there are many, many more examples that could be added to the three I have outlined above, but the message is the same. In order to stand out from the crowd and make a lasting impression, we need to somehow differentiate our offering. This applies not just to direct mail and advertising, but to business as well – and is even more important in times such as these. There is no harm in sitting with the pack – but thinking outside the box or offering something different to the competition, can really make the difference in setting a product or company aside from the rest, and create lasting success. For more information on how to differentiate your offering, why not cast your eyes over the following white paper: Differentiation: Are Product, Brand and Service Still Enough? Bowled Over by Super Adverts?Friday, February 6th, 2009
As the furore surrounding this week’s Super Bowl commercials begins to subside, Caroline Harrison reflects on the advertising world’s most important annual ‘event’. Where would we be without a blog article on advertising this week? After all, Super Bowl Sunday is, for some people, more about the ads than the game. According to one recent poll, 21 percent of those who expected to tune in last Sunday said they would watch "exclusively or predominantly for the commercials." A further 34 percent said they would be as interested in the commercials as in the game itself. The Super Bowl, the year’s most watched television event with an audience of 90 million viewers, is America’s premier ad showcase. Not surprisingly, advertising spots are highly sought after. A record $206 million of advertising revenue was generated by broadcaster NBC this year for its 69 Super Bowl spots. After a thrilling game in which the Pittsburgh Steelers snatched a late victory over the Arizona Cardinals, I fully expected to be seeing re-run after re-run of the game’s highlights for days afterwards. Yet, to my surprise, breakfast TV on Monday morning seemed oblivious to the previous day’s sporting achievements, and instead had panels of ‘experts’ analyzing the Super Bowl’s commercials. Indeed, in the days leading up to the game, before the much-anticipated commercials were even aired, the viewing public was being treated to sneak previews of the adverts on television shows and news broadcasts, and many of the advertisers were using pre-game website efforts to generate anticipatory interest in their commercials. Advertising Age has very kindly given us a link to all the Super Bowl ads so we can watch and re-watch them at our leisure. I guess the point is that nowadays, if you fork out to be one of the big Super Bowl advertisers, you’re not just paying for the advertising slot alone. For one thing, any commercial usually forms part of a wider integrated campaign, and is not just a one-off. In addition to appearing in other media, you are guaranteed to benefit from all the hype and publicity this high-profile position generates; your advert is seen around the world, discussed on TV shows, dissected in newspapers, posted on blogs and discussed in online forums… All of which must make the outlay – of up to $3 million per 30-second slot – a little easier to swallow. After all, even if your ad isn’t deemed ‘the best’, they do say that no publicity is bad publicity. Of course, you would hope that no commercial is deemed a total disaster, as no advertising campaign should ever be launched without thorough pre-testing to check it’s suitable and hits the mark. Even after launch, post-campaign research should be used to monitor awareness of a campaign and track its effectiveness over time. The other thing to bear in mind is that everyone has their own opinion on which commercials they do or don’t like; which would inspire them to make a purchase or otherwise. I came across this online review of all the adverts, which I read with interest. Personally, Sunday’s most memorable adverts, those which had stood out for making me laugh or smile, were not particularly well received by this blogger. Yet the debates that are raging just serve to highlight that one man’s meat is another man’s poison; what some people will love, others will hate, or at the very least may be indifferent to. To some extent this doesn’t matter. Companies can never satisfy everyone, nor do they try. Through customer profiling and careful segmentation, they try to identify groups of like-minded individuals who have similar characteristics or needs, and who they can satisfy in a profitable way. So, for example, if I don’t like a beer commercial, it’s of no particular consequence to the beer manufacturer. I don’t drink beer, don’t buy beer, and I don’t even influence anyone else’s purchase of beer; I am, therefore, not the brewer’s target market and I was not front of mind when the campaign was conceived. As time goes by, it will probably become clearer which companies are adjudged to have been the biggest winners and biggest losers of this latest bout of advertising. But no amount of debating or criticism will deter companies from snapping up advertising spots at next year’s Super Bowl, nor will it stop the general public’s intense anticipation and subsequent examination all over again. Only 360 more days to go! « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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