2. Women were the decision makers when senior couples traveled. This came from a small study for Best Western using an impressive sounding qualitative methodology: Self-Performed Ethnography. They had 25 senior couples who were taking 3-14 day car trips, and who were familiar with camcorders, video tape their complete trip, particularly their discussions of where to stay each night, where they would eat, how they decided everything, and how they liked everything. Other findings: Traveling seniors don’t consider themselves old. Don’t treat them – or show them the ads – like they are in a rest home. The reason for most trips was to visit relatives. So use family reunion settings in ads as well as vacation settings. The seniors were highly food oriented. The hotel amenity they mentioned most was the last one they received, the continental breakfast that sent them back on the road content.

3. Eye tracking showed AT&T how to improve their Customer Service Site. It showed second by second, where people were looking when they were using the site. When they looked at a lot of things and took more time before they decided what they should click on to perform their next task, it was obvious evidence of confusion. Eye Tracking Inc. of San Diego performed the testing and waited until the respondent was finished with the task before asking what caused the confusion. The process revealed a number of ways the instructions could be clarified.

4. Deep probing interview techniques were recommended by Robert Schnee of Weinman/Schnee. Have respondents talk about the feelings and emotions they had in connection with a product, instead of why they bought it. Then ask about other occasions when they had the same feelings. That can show what a product means to them and how important it is. Draw a picture of the situation where people have blank balloons over their head. Have the respondent make up a story about what they are saying and you are likely to learn how the brand fits into their emotional life. Tell them a person is a user of Product X. Have them tell you everything that comes to mind about that person. Ask them to imagine all Product X suddenly disappeared throughout the world. What would be different about their day? You may find what the product really means to them.

5. Researching an infomercial about Prozak involves a social contract. Doing a professionally responsible job researching a potentially contentious form of advertising among a very sensitive target audience of current and potential depression sufferers, and those who care for them, was described by Karin Wood of Millward Brown. Their first stop was the FDA to assure everyone it would be informative, much more so than a 30 second commercial could ever be, and not manipulative. Two moderators were used and their results were compared. Respondents were recruited by asking about symptoms associated with depression without suggesting the respondent may be depressed. The effort to use best practices throughout culminated with 100 respondents completing a quantitative self-administered questionnaire to provide more robust statistical validity to the results and then having many of the same respondents participate in qualitative mini-groups to probe the subject as deeply as possible.

6. Funny commercials are great, but people can’t always remember who they are for. Alice Sylvester, now at FCB, has just written a book on advertising with Max Sutherland of Austrailia. It contains a chapter on the challenging and tricky subject of humor that she shared with today’s attendees. Some who have pondered the subject of "What’s funny?" feel the full and complete answer is "Whatever makes you laugh." But that didn’t daunt Sylvester who said something can be funny because it is a pun, an understatement, a joke, something ludicrous, satirical, witty or ironic. She feels the key is incongruity, a bizarre combination. Humorous ads tend to work better because they generate less counter-arguing, capture more attention, and they are better liked, something that makes most advertising more effective. But humor can hijack attention and overpower the message and the branding. How often have you heard someone describe a really funny commercial, and then add "…but I can’t remember who it was for!" Much humorous advertising fails because the humor isn’t integrated into the brand message. The frogs that croaked "Bud", "Weis" and "Err" were a great and prominent exception. She closed with the thought that even though we have a lot to learn about using humor effectively in advertising, people are busy and stressed out. They need to laugh. "It’s a little gift we don’t give to consumers nearly often enough." 

9. Heavy internet users in Canada are also likely to be heavy users of radio or TV. Barry Kiefl, Director of Research at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported this from the 1999 results of the Canadian Media Quality Ratings Survey, a single source media survey measuring radio, TV and Internet usage. The study also shows roughly half of the adults now online, but the Internet is not displacing use of the older media. Part of the reason is that while an increasing number of people use the Internet, they spend relatively little time on-line. They are using it for email and browsing, but many of the more sophisticated uses, such as watching video, listening to music, or day trading, are still in their infancy in Canada. Consumers show a reluctance to use the Internet for on line purchasing and are more fearful of credit card security on the net than over the phone. 

10. Bill Harvey’s pioneering effort to measure the value of sponsorships. The popularity of sponsored events, ballparks and web sites is growing. The rising penetration of devices like TiVo are allowing more consumers to avoid normal advertising. This led to Harvey’s Next Century Network being asked to develop a methodology for measuring the effect of Internet sponsorships, one that could also measure the impact of other sponsorships. He reported on one where pop-up screens appear on sponsored sites asking if they will participate in a survey upon leaving the program. Half of those who say yes are sent to a version of the program that makes no mention of being sponsored. The rest go to the regular sponsored site. Upon leaving, both receive a short on-screen questionnaire containing questions to measure effectiveness. Usually these would be measures the sponsor has found most predictive of sales, the same basic measures the sponsor uses to access advertising performance in tracking studies and pretesting. Results from several cases where this has already been tried were described and look quite hopeful. 

10.5 Demographics as a proxy for purchasing are no longer good enough for the web. This was the title of a talk by a group from IRI and Kraft, describing how they have achieved a more effective way of targeting consumers online. It was done by metering the web surfing behavior of a panel of 3000 households. It linked the offline consumer purchasing behavior of specified target groups with the internet consumption pattern of these same groups. The early adopters tended to favor brands featuring convenience/time savings, on the go snacking, child appeal, and premium priced brands. The middle group of lower tech households favored brands with an older demographic appeal, and less convenient, less expensive items like mixes. The final laggard group could only be reached effectively by other media.

Don Bruzzone, October 17, 2000