The ARF is going to launch a new blog, highlighting thought leaders from research and advertising. Stay tuned. We'll also be bringing you posts by our new ARF CRO, Dr. Todd Powers.
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Technology is changing how we live our lives and the rules for brand-building. Here are eight ideas the agile brand marketer should consider.
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Many use the terms brand equity and brand health interchangeably; they shouldn’t. Brand equity refers to the size of a brand. A brand with high brand equity has lots of customers, big market share, and a presence in the marketplace that leads one to believe that it will stay big. Take two brands—Microsoft and Apple. Both have lots of brand equity and because the corporate name is the brand, we can think of market cap as reflective of brand equity. I am an outsider to both firms but I think the marketplace would believe that the trajectory of the two brands is somewhat different at this point. Their brand health is different..
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Traditional marketing theory tells us that the purchase is the successful outcome of consumer-directed messages that create awareness which begets interest, desire, and action.
What happens when that is wrong? What does marketing do when it STARTS with the purchase?
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Last Friday, Lynne d Johnson (the ARF’s social media expert), Steve Rappaport (director of ARF Knowledge solutions and author of the ARF’s Online Listening Playbook), and I went to lunch to discuss how social media has progressed over the past year from a marketer’s perspective.
While last year the story was about the specific media (Twitter came out of nowhere, Facebook eclipsed My Space), this year, it’s a story about marketers getting real about social media.
Now we have great case histories that demonstrate the power of social media from a marketing, innovation, and insights perspective. We also have a reaffirmed understanding of the power that social media places in the hands of consumers (ask Toyota).
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Read the following quote and ask yourself, “Who was the Kimberly-Clark CMO referring to?”
“Have senior, seasoned impact players on the front line (who are experts doing what the client can’t do vs. what the client doesn’t have time to do) focused on deploying their creativity on ideas that drive client’s business. Be focused on value creation, embrace and use data and analytics to elevate work, and be collaborative.”
–Tony Palmer, chief marketing officer of Kimberly-Clark quoted in Ad Age May, 2010
Actually, Mr. Palmer was referring to K/C’s relationship with its advertising agencies but the statement could easily apply to what a progressive research/insights team wants from its research partners (take a minute and reread it with that in mind).
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At the ARF’s first Research Transformation super-council meeting last Friday, a packed room was energized by the leadership of our profession conveying a new vision that is so much larger than the research function alone:
“Inspiring better business futures, by enabling organizations to bring value to daily lives, through continuous learning, listening and translating people and markets.”
It’s about being an agent of change for the whole organization. Inspiring better business futures is what we do. Research and insights is just our fastball. As Donna Goldfarb from Unilever said when asked what her job is, “I sell soap”.
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As the ARF embarks on its “research transformation” initiative, (official launch of the super-council on May 7th) it is important to understand how a marketing research function provides insights that truly create value for the enterprise. The end of the value chain must be that these insights inspire a better business future for the company; stronger brands with more equity, more durable customer relationships, innovation that is ahead of the next move of the media/marketing environment and consumer response. The key diagram we have created to depict this is what we affectionately call the “wedding cake”.
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The decision before the decision might be the more important one for marketers. Marketers need to learn about the opportunities inherent in influencing what are called second-order decision strategies.
Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge, created this idea which is about deciding how we are going to decide. As an example (mine, not his), let’s say you want to buy a smart phone but know there are an overwhelming number of options. You might manage this by doing a lot of research ahead of time (online, ask friends, observe what others have) to make it easier to decide when you get to the store. That decision STRATEGY is your second order decision and what you actually buy when you get to the store is your first order decision.
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Behavioral Economics is the study of how people make decisions. It turns out we are not the coldly rational Vulcans that economists once thought we were. We think with our emotions. We are subject to giving different answers to the same questions asked or framed a little differently. We are risk-averse leading us to walk away from a better deal, and overly attracted to short-term reward. We use simple heuristics (Herb Simon’s concept of bounded rationality) based on only a few considerations to make decisions that are “good enough” rather than trading off every possible feature (think about that the next time you ask for brand ratings on 30 attributes!) Behavioral economics lives at the crossroads of economics, cognitive psychology and anthropology in order to understand decision-making that is filled with the shortcuts we all use and of which we are only partially self-aware.
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Why did The ARF call this year’s conference succeeding in the new normal? How different is this year’s industry agenda from prior years or are we talking about the same stuff? The ARF annual conference agendas can be thought of as a chronicler of what the pressing issues are to the marketing and media communities. Because we keep all of our old brochures, I was able to look at the 1995 program. Here is a list of fifteen critical topics today that the industry wasn’t talking about at the ARF conference 15 years ago.
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On Tuesday, March 23rd, Stan Stanunathan, Vice President, Marketing Strategy and Insights for The Coca-Cola Company will deliver the message that “research transformation is not an option” and talk about how Coca-Cola is changing their insights approach globally.
I will then moderate a panel of other leaders, Gayle Fuguitt Vice President, Consumer Insights, General Mills; John Forsyth Principal, McKinsey & Company, Inc.; and Susan Wagner VP, Strategy & Insights, Johnson & Johnson who will demonstrate that Stan is not alone; other leaders also believe the time is now.
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Marketing is so much more than efficiently offering products and services to people that they want. Marketing is a fundamental process to a free society; it is a Right.
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Trends 8–10
As I think about ten “rock my world” changes going on in marketing and media, they fall into three broad themes: changing our approach to media planning; changing our thinking about building brands and understanding the changing consumer and world we live in. This blog is about the second big bucket, changing our approach to brand building. Click here for part one on media planning.
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Trends 4–7
As I think about ten “rock my world” changes going on in marketing and media, they fall into three broad themes: changing our approach to media planning; changing our thinking about building brands and understanding the changing consumer and world we live in. This blog is about the second big bucket, changing our approach to brand building. Click here for part one on media planning.
Here are a number of changes marketers need to get ahead of and what it means for new approaches to brand-building.
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Trends 1–3
As I think about “rock my world” changes going on in marketing and media, they fall into three broad themes: changing our approach to media planning; changing our thinking about building brands and understanding the changing consumer and world we live in. This blog is about the first big bucket, changing our approach to media planning.
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Most marketing people “listen” to organic, naturally occurring online conversation because if they don’t, some boss is likely to criticize them. Or, they are afraid that when they look in the mirror, they see someone that is “out-of-it.” So, what do marketers and agencies do? They put “listening” on their to-do list. And then, they go off and do some listening. Good. It’s a start.
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“Curiosity is an emotion related to natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species.”
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2009 was a year where the marketing research profession got six big wakeup calls. For each challenge, I describe how marketing research must respond to remain relevant.
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I am one of 5 market research bloggers who are writing on a common topic. You’ll also be hearing from Annie Pettit (organizer), Josh Mendelsohn, Bernie Malinoff (Element 54) and Brandon Bertelsen..
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Jeremiah Owyang says it so clearly on his blog: “As Social Customers Become More Empowered, Organizations Must Have a Listening Strategy”
He continues” “As we approach 2010 planning, companies need a strategy around listening. Sadly, most companies, and their agency partners don’t know why to listen or how. He adds that the top stages require evolving the classic market research organization.
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I predict that over the next few years three of the hottest marketing trends, digital marketing, shopper marketing, and mobile life will all converge to put shopper marketing into the hands of the shopper. Literally.
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“If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trade marks, and I would fare better than you.”
— John Stuart, Chairman of Quaker (ca. 1900)
Certainly Mr. Stuart was right, but the irony is that few marketers systematically try to link brand-building efforts to changes in brand value, instead, judging their effectiveness by marketing mix modeling results on short term sales or bumps in intermediate measures such as awareness or purchase intention.
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In a UK McCann-Erickson study, 67% of marketers admitted they don’t know as much about social media as they should. In fact, 14% of marketers don’t even think social media is here to stay. Do you think all of the other 33% “savvy marketers” really do know as much as they should? Are they all on twitter? Probably not—it’s just a theory for many of them.
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It’s baseball’s time, having just finished a great World Series with the biggest ratings jump this year (+40%) in history for the World Series. So let me merge my branding brain and my baseball heart for this blog posting..
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Curiosity is built into us. From Wikipedia: Curiosity is an emotion related to natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species.
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In Chris Brogan’s new book, Trust Agents he talks about how when people first encounter a game they start out as players, then the best players eventually become hackers and even reprogrammers of the game. If you ever really got into a video or computer game, you will remember that you found cheat codes to find hidden doors, get more lives, that kind of thing.
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As agreed to, I have created a DISCUSSION blog so please share your comments; the ARF needs to hear all ideas and reactions regarding online data quality and the Quality Enhancement Process we unveiled yesterday.
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As agreed to, I have created a DISCUSSION blog so please share your comments; the ARF needs to hear all ideas and reactions regarding online data quality and the Quality Enhancement Process we unveiled yesterday.
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The first ARF meeting on social media was held yesterday…and it was a masterclass..
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Larry Light, the former CMO at McDonald’s, said that we should think of brands not as trademarks but as trustmarks. Others agree: the name of the game when it comes to branding is building trust.
I have a different point of view; I consider trust to be the easy part of the branding equation. Brands are about expectations…the intersection of the brand promise, the consumer (needs, desires, preferences, sense of self), and trust which is the belief that the brand will deliver on its promise. Desire doesn’t come from trust, it comes from the promise. Trust is the permission to act on the promise…but it’s the promise that attracts you.
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This interview with Debbie Pruent, President of GfK Custom Research North America an auto industry expert is the second of a two-part series that began in Fast Company.
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Line extensions (e.g. a new flavor of Crest toothpaste) and franchise extensions (e.g. Crest Whitestrips®) are thought to be more affordable ways to introduce new products and have a higher success rate vs. creating completely new brand names. In this recessionary “do more with less” marketing era, brand extension strategies for new products become increasingly alluring.
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Understanding “Path to Purchase” will change marketing and media priorities. In most cases, it is likely to increase the budget for search, comparison shopping, and particularly in-store shopper marketing vs. using a media habits approach because those places don’t have a big share of media time but they are where the “lean-forward” action is. Shopper insights research shows that, for many products, 50% or more of purchases and brand choices are decided on right in the store. For such products, to put it in terms that media planners can relate to, shopper marketing is like recency on steroids.
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I applaud GM's move to start selling cars on eBay, but it doesn't go far enough; let's reinvent new car dealerships from scratch, turning them into experience and servicing centers. Move ALL new car transactions to the Web (potentially in a kiosk area at the experience center), and take the high-pressure "salesman" out of the negotiating loop.
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As the ORQC continues its journey towards a version 1.0 solution by September, I must reiterate that the number one issue we face in marketing research projects is data consistency.
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Marketing research’s impact is blunted because it often gets brought into the process too late. Research must become viewed as “strong”; as embracing action and feeling accountable for business results, being future focused, a thought leader while staying true to the rigor of proven research processes.
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For consumer insights teams, shopper insights research feels foreign; it requires a different set of approaches and a totally different mindset. Shopping is about action more than preferences. It’s about the shopping trip rather than a single product category. Yet, shopper insights are critical for making shopper marketing work for your brand, enhancing your relationships with retail customers, and if you’re an agency, having a complete offer.
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Marketers focus on their brands and customers as the family jewels--and they are. But there is another kind of marketing asset that I call "runways" and if you don't have them, you will miss huge opportunities. In this ADD world of rapid-fire Twitter streams, long-tail options, and media multi-tasking, you must be in the right place at the right time or the moment is lost. Runways are relationships your company can create with trading partners and consumers that make your brands accessible, and give YOU access to markets and marketing options you otherwise would not have. Let me illustrate.
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We’re starting to see the light at the end of the online data quality tunnel.
On June 9th , the ARF Online Research Quality Council (ORQC) presented detailed findings from an unprecedented US R&D project regarding online data quality, called “Foundations of Quality” (FoQ). Now that we’re into the 90 day action plan stage, I wanted to provide an update via my blog.
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There’s a rule in creative problem solving, “never accept the first right answer”.
The second right answer is hard to come by. It requires a good BS detector, perseverance at amassing facts, ferreting out case histories and then distilling all that into synthesized learning. It must be compelling because you are challenging the incumbent; the first right answer. The second right answer must come from knowledge.
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In March, the ARF completed executive interviews among 19 research leaders representing large marketers and media companies. Overall, Research got a passing grade, but certainly didn’t make honor roll.
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On Tuesday, the ARF Online Research Quality Council presented detailed findings from an unprecedented US R&D project regarding online data quality, called “Foundations of Quality” (FoQ). Beyond the fact that it was about $1MM in research, it was unprecedented and quite remarkable as 17 leading online panel companies cooperated with each other and with large [...].
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The Research profession has perennially sought a “seat at the table”. Last Tuesday, I had a seat at a (different kind of) table. I was part of a keynote morning panel on innovation at Ad:Tech in San Francisco.
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Markets seem to evolve in one of two ways that imply very different strategies for launching new offerings: market entrenchment, market reinvention.
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We at the ARF want to thank the thousands who were part of the ARF Re:Think2009 annual conference.
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All of a sudden it hit me. The 80/20 rule flipped on its ear! What I’m referring to is that something like 80% of resources in the market research function goes towards “quantifying the expected”.
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Monday at the ARF, a rather remarkable grouping of industry leaders brainstormed about a new set of principles for how to innovate.
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If you’re struggling with a social media strategy, you’re not alone! There are a number of reasons why social media is so hard to master.
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