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From the 51st Annual Advertising Research Foundation Convention, April 17-19 2005, NY
Emotion Is receiving lots of attention. The continuing ARF project to explore the role and power of emotion in advertising led to a number of reports on the subject. One thing both AcuPOLL and Ipsos-ASI agreed on was that people had great difficulty describing their emotions. Focus groups and openended approaches failed to reveal them. In the end, both found checklist approaches worked best in helping respondents identify their own emotions. NOP organized it all into four consumer value quadrants: fun, power, tradition and people. On the project itself there didn’t appear to be much current progress. They showed results from a variety of research on the same four beer commercials shown at the ARF last October. Alice Sylvester (FCB) re-emphasized all the original promise of the project, described plans to include 35 more commercials this year, and get into the effect of emotion on long-term brand loyalty next year.
Harvard Professor says Harvard is wrong. Clayton Christensen says it is wrong to teach that the firm should concentrate on the needs of its best customers and invest in efforts that yield the greatest returns. His new book (The Innovator’s Solution) says sustainable growth is best achieved by introductions at the low cost / low profit end of the market. There, entry costs are less and there is little retaliation from the leaders in the market. Among the examples he offered were mini mills in the steel industry, Wal-Mart in retailing, and airlines with short haul experience like SouthWest and JetBlue.
Marketing Research is causing Marketing’s decline. At least Don Schultz, NW professor emeritus and confirmed curmudgeon, said it is. He agreed with critiques during 2004 from P&G, Booz Allen, and the Harvard Business Review that marketing isn’t working. But Schultz blames MR. He said Market Research has ignored change. If Zaltman is right, most MR is wrong. (See our 4/04 Top 10 when Zaltman said advertising depends on instantaneous “cocreation” - what each individual brings to it - not the hierarchy of effects so much MR is designed to measure.) Sampling was one of a number of other reasons he cited. We are still using samples based on low 20% response rates and then assuming the results are normally distributed, when there is little evidence that either is valid. His idea of the world’s best researched organization is TESCO, the giant UK retailer/insurance co./etc. who studies what it’s database of 10 million UK citizens do, and generates some controversy by using what it knows about them to increase their loyalty to TESCO - but it is not relying on samples.
A panel of researchers was a little less pessimistic. The past head of ESOMAR, Fredric Nauckhoff, characterized his reaction as “only some of the sky is falling some of the time”. J&J’s David Adelman said we could use less research, but on bigger problems. Rex Briggs felt the problem was too many executives who don’t want to undertake research until they know what it will show. Robert Duboff agreed, asking if we are serving the right masters within the firm. He challenged all to consider the question “Are you an artist or a scientist.” P&G’s Don Gloeckler encouraged researchers to push back; think holistically and take a leadership role.
You should sell with ALL the senses. Author Martin Lindstrom showed how Disney Theme Parks could be identified by just playing Disney songs. Ford was the first to recognize the importance of making sure the sound of the door closing made it sound like a quality car and not a tin lizzy. Lindstrom demonstrated the unique sound of closing a Tupperware container. Singapore Airlines has patented their “warm towel” smell. He told how Chinese counterfeit Crayolas were discovered because they didn‘t have the real Crayola smell. He pointed out if you were blindfolded you could still identify that old glass Coke bottle that is still in use in some parts of the world. He developed scales for showing how well a brand “owned” a unique position in each of the five senses. He showed charts with five sided figures showing how well a brand performed in each of the five senses.
The value of Marketing Models is being questioned. Seeing such questions finally built into a conference program intrigued those of us who have had our own questions in the past. (At several modeling conferences I talked about the futility of marketing mix models that only used dollars or GRPs to describe the advertising during the period. Don Schultz derided them as “Tonnage Models”. When the quality of the advertising measured by tracking studies was included, models could reproduce historic results much more closely.) Some were disappointed to see this was not the type of issue raised at the ARF. The main concern was from those who felt TV was being factored in in a way that understated its true importance. We still feel the great strength of modeling is that it can objectively resolve such differences of opinion by showing which approach can best explain the actual differences in past results.
Measuring the right ROI can be tricky. USC’s David Stewart talked about three approaches: 1) Short term ROI measured in terms of sales increases, 2) Long term ROI measured in terms of brand equity and 3) an approach not usually recognized, but a real option - future opportunities. Starting a new brand gives the option to extend that brand sometime in the future. He said half of the value of a firm is the options it has for the future. 1) and 2) are subject to standards, but not 3). He didn’t say if he felt #3 could be influenced by advertising. He did get into managing a portfolio of executions to optimize persuasion vs. wear out. That was a subject Robert Judson of Communicus also got into. He was describing a case where more media “pressure” did the trick for IBM. He said pressure worked when you did it by adding media, or by running additional messages in the same media. But it doesn’t work when you just keep running the same message in the same media. Carla Sarett, reporting on a survey of media buyers for Court TV, cited some discouraging results. Only 61% say they see more emphasis on ROI. Even fewer, 49%, said ROI has changed media plans. 2/3rds don’t use the same metric for different media. Impact on sales was one of the top reasons, measures of the number of people exposed was at the bottom.
Sessions on Audience Measurement Accountability got heated. This continuing effort of the ARF to find some consensus on changes that might be needed in this era when media audiences are changing rapidly, boiled down to one simple issue for NBC’s Allan Wurtzel. He said breaking Nielsen’s monopoly on TV ratings would solve every issue being discussed. They all stemmed from Nielsen being the one who decides if present procedures are good enough. In Nielsen’s sessions they emphasized the meetings they have with users before finalizing on changes like the 800 markets they now have covered electronically with people meters.
Project APOLLO is being cut back. It is six months since this major attempt to find a new way to obtain single source data was introduced. Members of Nielsen’s panel who scan all their purchases carry around a new meter from Arbitron that at present records all their exposure to Radio and TV. (Later it is expected to record exposure to more media.) They have completed a preliminary test in Boston and were planning to launch a larger test among 30,000 households nationwide in the first quarter of 2006. But P&G, who has been backing the project from the start, was the only one who bought in to this larger test. Now they are talking about a sample of only 5,000 with the same timing and a price point they hope advertisers will find more digestible.
Bob Garfield’s performance would have rated more stars, if he only practiced what he preached. He handed down his 10 Commandments for Advertising and they included less emphasis on sex, and not loosing your soul in the pursuit of success. Yet he described behavior at Cannes in terms that would raise eyebrows in most locker rooms and played a “commercial” that was the raunchiest thing I have ever seen displayed in mixed company. If he wants to be the Howard Stern of the lecture circuit he should at least warn his audiences in advance. Don Bruzzone, April 2005
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