2. All clicks and no bricks. This candidate for the neatest phrase of the week encapsulates the unbridled optimism of the dot coms and venture capitalists. It’s optimism Strategic Surveys International warned against in summing up their research on CyberBranding. All too often dot coms don’t really understand their customers. Like any business, they need to concentrate on building their brand, not just their web site. Finally, they cannot rely on an established offline brand, they have to build their own online usability. 

3. Is this the end of commercial broadcasting as we know it? Replay and TiVo are now making it possible to fast forward through commercials. Leslie Stone from TiVo’s agency, Goodby Silverstein, described research on how it makes TV more enjoyable. Sue Ryan from Replay pointed out the equipment does not automatically zap commercial, but she admitted it does have a button for skipping ahead 30 seconds. She projects Replay will be in a half million homes by the end of the year, but she admits up to now they have only sold to 25,000. TiVo is now in 50,000 households. Yesterday’s session had even more threatening news about radio. Youth are downloading Napster software faster than ever. They are listening to online radio while they are working on their computer. People listening to radio while commuting, switch to the online version of the station when they get to work. The number of these online radio stations is now greater than the number of conventional over-the-air stations. With Monday’s prediction that magazines are history, many of us may be retiring to the farm a little sooner than expected. 

4. WPP’s Brands study shows if you have an elastic brand. Can it stretch enough to successfully cover products in new categories? Millward Brown conducted the study and showed that in the UK, Virgin, Ford, The Body Shop, United Airlines, Budweiser and Nike topped the list of brands that could stretch. Marlboro, Netscape, Dove, CNN and Pepsi were at the bottom. Perceived appropriateness and similarity of categories were the main drivers. Almost all felt it would be appropriate for Microsoft to make PC’s, but hardly any felt it would be appropriate for KFC to make skincare products. Beyond that, a history of diversity and being a brand that stands for more than just delivering a strong product in its category, proved to be the key driving forces. 

5. The effect of brand extensions on corporate image can be measured. That was a concern for Starbucks when they started advertising Starbucks Ice Cream and Starbucks Bottled Frappuccino that are sold through supermarkets. Would it affect their prized image as a company of warm, friendly coffee shops? Ann Breese of Starbucks and I described how we used recognition-based ad tracking to answer the question. With the accurate identification of which respondent noticed what advertising that recognition makes possible, we were able to show those who noticed the brand extension advertising viewed Starbucks every bit as favorably as those who had not seen it. Ann Breese said she started to question the accuracy of recall when she conducted a telephone tracking survey that showed 30% recalled Starbucks TV advertising – and Starbucks had never run a single commercial. I went on to describe cases where those who said yes, they recalled seeing advertising for a brand in the past month, were actually thinking of last year’s advertising. Or even the competitor’s advertising. But when you show it, and ask "Have you seen THIS advertising?" you get a massive increase in accuracy. 

6. A new (old) model for calculating the $ value of brand equity. The Van Westendorp pricing procedure, also referred to as the Belgian Model by others, was presented by Larry Anderson of NPD as an excellent way to answer to a classic question. A client was interested in the amount various European brand names could add to the value of small appliances. It is based entirely on consumer’s answers to four questions: 1) What is the price at which the consumer would start to feel the brand is getting expensive, but would still consider buying? 2.) At what price would it become too expensive to buy? 3.) At what price would the consumer would start to feel the product is a bargain? 4.) At what price would it become so inexpensive one would doubt its quality and not consider buying it. Four curves are drawn to show the percent that named each price, and you get into an analysis of where curves cross that is not unlike marginal cost analysis. Where the bargain and expensive lines cross you have the price indifference point: the number that consider it expensive equals the number that consider it a bargain. It is considered the "normal" price for the product. The "ideal" price is where the too expensive line crosses the too cheap line. That’s the point where the number that would not buy it for either reason is minimized. NPD is the firm that collects unit sales and price data for products like these so they were able to verify the prices are correct when real world conditions are entered. The addition of a question about the probability of buying at various prices gives the second half of the total revenue equation: the number that are likely to buy and the price they are likely to pay. That shows the difference in dollar sales that results from nothing other than changing the name of the brand. It gets my nomination for the most elegant research solution at the conference. 

8. Successful banner ads usually have five characteristics. Dynamic Logic and 24/7 Media worked jointly to get 32 banner ads in an AdIndex study of effectiveness. They found: 1) too many creative elements in a banner hurts, 2) logos should occupy more than 14% of the banner wherever possible, 3) use larger banner ads whenever possible, 4) show a human face, 5) use higher frequency. Available frequency data indicates brand awareness may not peak until you have five exposures. 

9. Target groups defined by age and sex seldom make sense. The question is, how much of the product is sold to people who are not "Women 18-24"or "Men 25-54" or whatever the age/sex target is? A lot, according to Adcom, a qualitative metered ratings company. 33% of buyers were missed in a case history on the Floriida Lottery that targets Adults 25-54. That is from a panel of 600 homes Adcom has in the Jacksonville cable market. When the schedule was optimized based on channels and dayparts that reached more than their share of Lottery buyers, the number of times Lottery players were reached for the same amount of money, increased 30%. 

10. A number of improvements in measuring the TV audience were proposed. To avoid problems like those in Item 9, BBM and CTV reported on Canadian testing of a TV diary that includes product purchases. Those conducting the test felt it worked fine. Others are objecting to the reduction in response rate (19% fewer diaries), the perpetuation of the diary system that is felt to understate the audience of small channels, and the additional analysis that will be required to using the more complex data. Erwin Ephron used cost data from the SMART experiment to show a set meter panel could save enough to provide a 50% larger sample than we are getting with peoplemeters. Individual viewing would be modeled from the set data, an approach he pointed out had been advocated as early as 1966 in a paper by Ehrenberg and Twyman. Even at that time they were arguing it is not cost effective to repeatedly measure behavior that shows little variation, such as viewers-per-set. On a related subject, when Nielsen merges the household data it gets from meters with its diary data to produce data by viewers, it does it demographic cell by demographic cell and station by station. As stations and channels increase Nielsen has been running into cells where there are no diaries with greater frequency – the infamous "zero cell" problem. Nielsen described work it did in 1993 and 1995 to fill in the zero cells with imputation. In our shop the technical phrase for imputation is swamiing up the most likely numbers. They found it helped and said they may start using their system - someday. 

Don Bruzzone, October 2000