Campaign Planning

Do Negative Political Attack Ads Work? And If So, Should Brands Use Them?

 

When Mitt Romney won Florida this year in the GOP primary, Kantar Media reported that just 0.1% of his $15 million in ad spending went to pro-Romney ads. Which basically means that voters saw one measly positive ad while all others were negative, pointing out the flaws and irresponsibility of his opponents.

And yet, he won.

Most political marketers concede that negative advertising works. But why? And if it works so well, should marketers use it more for their brands?

 

The Passive Audience

Negative political advertising is largely targeted to the casual observer. A well-crafted visual or soundbite--swift boats or Ronald Reagan's bear--can really stick with people. Such was the case in California's 2010 Gubernatorial race when negative Meg Whitman ads showed a vulture picking at a carcass while a voiceover talked about her support of Goldman Sach's so-called vulture funds. Very visual.

While voters always report to disliking negative ads, sadly, they are the ones that tend to stick in the mind during campaigning, counting on the fact that voters are not paying much attention to the facts and policies of the candidates.

Consumers, like voters, are passive, too. We quickly make our choices at the store and in the mall without a ton of thought. On this level alone, using the political ad model might work.

But for brands it's not that simple.

 

Components of Negative Brand Marketing Campaigns

Chevy struck at Ford on the 2012 Super Bowl. Interestingly, people didn't overly embrace this particular spot. This is largely because if advertising is going to attack a competitor there are two cornerstones of negative advertising that have proved to work in politics that Chevy didn't do.

First, the Chevy ad wasn't based on any factual evidence. For negative ads to work they need to be based on some negative data point, not just opinion.

Secondly, the Chevy ad was polished and well-produced. Negative political ads typically look like they were cobbled together for fifty bucks. This allows them to convey the feeling that the negative information the audience is hearing about has been unearthed quickly and is incriminating. In society it's always the candid photographs and the grainy videos that reveal the sneaky stuff going on.

Those two elements are key for negative advertising and most marketers, thankfully, don't want to produce work like that for their brands. 

Sometimes brands do reach for negative facts and produce less costly work that's negative. The soup category did this in 2009. Campbell's attacked Progresso. Progresso then said Campbell's used MSG and both companies reported sales increases around 5%.

But before people cite this as support for negative brand advertising it's important to remember the year and the category; 2009 was a recession and categories like canned soups, meats, dry grains and pastas were all up between 3% - 7% as consumers cocooned at home and saved money by eliminating other products from their shopping lists. Was it the negative ads or the category growth that was responsible for the +5%?

Then there's the classic 1996 fight between Advil and Tylenol. It got nasty. Advil started the attack about how Tylenol could cause liver damage in heavy drinkers. Tylenol responded and increased their ad spending that year to $212 million. The brands went so hard at each other that people were scared away from the category. Networks refused to air the work. The results? Before Advil proactively attacked their 1995 sales were off 5.6%. After their 1996 attack campaign they were down again 6.8%.

Unlike politics, the evidence supporting brand sales success from negative advertising is thin.

 

Litigation

It's important to note that politicians don't have the litigation that brands do over false claims and misleading information. In politics, a voting record is a voting record. They're also open to the public as public figures. Brands are different. Litigation is a business tactic and an expensive distraction. Does it make sense to spend money on ads and then spend again--oftentimes significant legal fees--in defense of the ad?

Brands are extremely litigious. General Mills, Whirlpool, Cadbury, Pepsi and the like all challenge claims made about them by their competitors.

The likelihood of legal fallout over negative attack ads is strong. So a portion of any increased sales would need to be planned for such defense. The evidence doesn't prove significant sales gains from negative ads themselves but it does prove an increased likelihood of litigation which comes out of the bottom line.

This is why when attacking a competitor it's important to stay positive and keep the facts away from things that could hurt the whole category. Like this.

 

Politicians And Brands Are Asking For Different Behaviors

 

In politics the consumer action is unique; one candidate will end up obliterating the other from contention. The end goal is to make one decision (a vote) where the victor takes all while the loser goes away. And it is in this nuance that political advertising is different from brand marketing... Coke cannot suddenly obliterate Pepsi on November 6th.

That's good. When it comes to products and services consumers actually want multiple products. As Martin has showed us time and time again, consumers are not monogamous; we buy multiple brands within a category. And while we do have a preference for one brand we typically don't "hate" the other. We like choice. And we like to feel good and positive about the things we shell out our cash for.

 

Attack Ads Aren't Necessary For Brands

So let's recap. When it comes to attack ads, in order to be successful a marketer should produce a crappy-looking ad in order to be taken seriously. When they do that they need to painstaking craft facts that somehow hurt the competitor but not the category. Then they have to plan for and fund probable litigation to defend it. And once it's all finished the competitor is still there, which we, as consumers, kind of like. All of this in addition to the fact that negative ads don't rally a company internally around the purpose of the organization, a key element of successful marketing.

Negative brand ads just aren't necessary. Leave it to the politicians who are convinced they need them. The world is chalked full of successful marketing case studies about brands who get close to their customers, put forth innovative products worth talking about, find motivating insights and use positive creativity to build their business.

And by the way, much like the Advil vs. Tylenol case study, one can't help but wonder if all that negativeness is indeed hurting the category: as negative political advertising has continued to rise, voter turnout has continuted to decline.

Good and Effective Advertising

How's your NCAA bracket ending up? Hopefully good, unless you're in one of my ESPN bracket groups in which I hope you had Duke going to the Final Four. But if you created a bracket, or are just a college basketball fan, you've probably been watching a lot of TV. And while you've been watching no doubt you've seen notable amounts of advertising from two categories: fast food and insurance.

What's happened in the insurance advertising category over the last eight years is worth noticing. What started with Geico has really pushed Allstate, Progressive, Farmers and State Farm to all do great advertising. Like a good college athletic conference, each school pushes the others to higher performance.

Geico in 2006...

On the contrary, what's happened in the fast food category during this same period is also worth noticing.

There was a time when some of the best advertising was found in fast food. But it's been different recently, hasn't it? Either largley one-dimensional about the food or just not being highly relatable...

We have reached a strange time when insurance advertising is more interesting than fast food advertising.

This is largely because the insurance category is doing three things at a stronger level: using emotive power to change behavior, producing creativity that uniquely links, and tapping into pop culture.

1. Using Emotive Power to Change Behavior.

At a presentation last week, Ipsos ASI showed a chart of the Super Bowl ads that were most re-transmitted online after the game. The takeaway: The higher the emotive power of the ad--Chrysler and VW--the more it was shared and liked. This is important because consumer attention on YouTube is 1.5x higher than on TV.

(Important: Emotion is that which is stirred within and relatable to consumers. Not the emotion of brands themselves.)

Emotion is one of the strongest ways to affect behavior change. And that's what advertising is largely trying to do. Where advertisers get stuck sometimes is that we think we're trying to change attitudes, which is very hard to do. The Ad Contrarian discusses this in the most concise way I've seen. (He wrote a great book... It's free and downloadable.) Some examples he cites:

It's easier to convince you to eat a Big Mac than to convince you that eating a Big Mac is a good thing to do.

It's easier to convince you to go to Las Vegas than to convince you that going to Las Vegas is a wise thing to do.

I think about milk marketing that way: it's easier to convince you that you should always have milk in the house than it is to convince you that good health requires three servings a day. 

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith said it well: Faced with the choice of changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

Allstate really gets this. They put forth great emotion to connect and relate to people's worldviews to affect behavior...

 

2. Producing Creativity That Uniquely Links 

According to Ipsos, fifty percent of the time an ad proves ineffective it's because the audience fails to link the advertiser to the advertising. What produces this? The first answer is lousy advertising. If it's not interesting, relevant or intriguing, why should someone pay attention?

But the second reason this happens can be seen in those unfortunate cases when great work is produced but it's not uniquely tied to the brand; people can recall the ad with precision except for who's responsible for it.

Both of these challenges are overcome by good creativity.

Millward Brown, the prominent research firm famous for creating the Awareness Index to measure advertising efficiency, just evaluated a collection of award winning campaigns from the Effies and IPA awards (awarded for sales effectiveness) and Cannes Lions (awarded for creativity) and had this to say at the end of their data analysis of all three award shows:

It has long been known that advertising needs to be underpinned by an appropriate strategy. This analysis adds another factor: branding. It is all very well for an ad to leave vibrant memories, but do these memories link to your brand uniquely?

Branding has nothing to do with repeating the brand name and showing packs; it has everything to do with making the brand the centre of, and the reason for, the creative idea. The Marlboro Cowboy, the Andrex Puppy are excellent examples of well-branded advertising.

Which brings up Progressive and Geico who do a nice job linking the work to the brand in ways that create brand salience in the mind.

A great definition of salience was just explored by Martin on Canalside View which broke it down into five categories of definition:

Prominence - the prominence of the brand in memory relative to its competitors.

Accessibility - the accessibility of memory content relating to the brand.

Associations - the quantity and quality of associations in the mind.

Order - the degree to which the brand comes to mind in buying or consumption occasions.

Familiarity - the ‘size’ of the brand in one’s mind that allows the brand to come forward in response to recall cues.

Martin summed this up nicely by taking "vivid memories" to the next step: 

All this reminds us that the real communications goal is not so-called ‘engagement’, but the creation of vivid memories - and their activation in moments of purchase or consumption. 

 

3. Tapping Into Pop Culture

Brands have always had the ability to partake in pop culture through sponsorship and association but it's been difficult to measure. Today, we can apply metrics about how engaging with pop culture events creates an advantage.

For example, in February Buddy Media reported that major brands who posted Super Bowl-related messages on their Facebook pages before the game had 60% greater engagement than posts unrelated to the game.

This is supported by what we see at DC. Whenever we work on social campaigns the content that directly ties the product or service to positive events in pop culture performs three times better in engagement metrics than standard posts.

Planning ahead for pop culture moments, and creating specific work around that, is smart. The most famous example is probably Write the Future, created specifically for the World Cup.

During the NCAA Tournament both State Farm and Allstate created good work just for the event...

By contrast, fast food just ran their regular spots...

In thinking about what makes good and effective advertising, a post years ago might have used fast food as examples throughout.

But it just flowed easily to use insurance instead...

The (Forgotten) Power of Mail

 "To think how far those letters traveled to me was amazing, and to have something he had touched so close to me was more than amazing."

-Sasha upon receiving letters from her Marine fiance in Afghanistan

Imagine, if you will, that tomorrow a new service was invented. The plan was to enable the possibility to deliver physical items to every home in America. As a marketer, you could tailor what arrived based on zip code and you could personalize everything so they were addressed to the person living there. You could send packages or letters or post cards.

If this was new I cannot imagine the potential of creativity and PR and innovative customer relationship blog posts that would pop up. But alas, this isn't new and the only thing anyone can seem to write about today is the dismal state of the postal service and how everything digital is killing it.

To paraphrase the always wise Russell Davies: Don't mistake something that's shrinking as something that's small.

But we have largely forgotten about it. The US Postal Service now says almost two months pass before the average household gets a personal letter, compared with two weeks 15 years ago. Also, only 4% of household mail comes from another household.

And yet we still like it. Nearly two-thirds of standard mail is read or looked at. Valpak reports that often 90% of envelopes are opened. By contrast, email marketing typically averages around 11%.

Fifty percent of us actually prefer direct mail to email. This might be hard to believe. And many companies don't believe it until it's too late. Such was the case of Per Annum Inc. who was spending $20k annually sending personally signed letters to their customers. After thinking this was wasteful the company transferred the letters to emails which resulted in a 25% drop in orders.

The mail simply allows us to convey a level of emotion and tangibility that digital can't do.

Imagine you're an emerging illustrator and that your hero is John K, the creator of Ren & Stimpy. You gather up some courage and send him your drawings. Then he sends this back to you which you hold in your hands as your read...

Yes, this could have been an email or a blog post--but not really. It wouldn't have had nearly the impact.

I've flown Southwest most of my life. The other day I received this small box in the mail that opened by pulling it apart..

No sales pitch. Just a thank you: a beautifully produced metal luggage tag with my name and Rapid Rewards number on the back. I attached it to my luggage the next morning.

Here's the good news... The challenges of the postal service actually presents two key opportunities.

#MailDay

The postal service will be reducing their delivery schedule, ending Saturdays with the possibility of other days in the future. One of the things this decrease does is that it makes the arrival of mail more special. And specialness increases our attention. It's highly likely that once the mail delivery is further limited our attention to the mail will increase. We're currently examining two thirds of the pieces mailed to us... could this increase to three quarters? 

#ThePowerofLists

The cost of postage is going up between 3 - 4%. Marketers are considering what to do. But while postage is going up, list prices have fallen a sizable 49% since 2006. This is key. Forty percent of the success of any direct mail effort can be directly tied to the quality of the list. (The remaining parts are 40% offer and 20% creative messaging.) Better list prices help offset some of the costs of rising postage.

Let's not let our mail become only "junk." People shift through it to find the good stuff. Marketers who send more of the good stuff are going to benefit. People who send letters are going to benefit. Let's take a fresh look at the mail system. Let's pretend it was just invented and tear into it with all the vigor and creativity that we do with the latest online social thing that probably isn't nearly as cool, pervasive or as personally welcomed as the US mail system.

Choosing a Brand Name

At social events everyone has a rather difficult time remembering names. Some are better at it than others, but overall it's challenging for people. One study done on the subject reported that people who had to study biographies remembered the subject's job first (69%), followed by their hobbies (68%), their home towns (62%) and then, finally, their first name (31%) and their last name (30%).

There are different theories as to why this is. But the most popular explanation is that names are mostly arbitrary. We become used to the fact that there is no common trait for people named Dave or guys named John. And because of this their last name--which is probably more unique--falls away forgotten along with the first.

There's a parallel here for company names. A drive around any city calls this to mind. Take pizza joints: we've become so used to seeing "so and so's famous pizza", or anything for that matter next to "pizza" that we largely forget the entire name. "Pizza" is the equivalent to "Dave" and whatever's next to it is the equivalent of the last name. The whole thing, like a person's name, becomes difficult to remember.  

Recall is helped from being bold and unique either in name or in execution. This doesn't give license to be weird, but it does give way for smart creativity.

As is always the case, the brand makes the name. And people, it turns out, have the ability to associate desired meaning to seemingly unconnected things if the execution and personality is worth re-occurring patronage. Virgin can be an airline. Puma can be shoes. Paul Smith can be a luxury shirt. This is freeing for entrepreneurs and brand creators.

There's the unique single word: IKEA, Cisco, Twitter, Usher, Pandora and IDEO. It's helpful to be first here. Flickr was among the first to adopt the web-trend of dropping vowels, which was great for them. But this is now becoming so common that the pizza joint example above starts to come to mind.

Then there's the friendship name ability that Al Ries once wrote about; the ability to shorten something and make it personal with a nickname. Much like how Michael becomes Mike. And how Walt Disney becomes Disney. This is a big, successful category: American Express, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, Louis Vuitton and Harley-Davidson all have this ability of easy shortening. (But it's sometimes disappointing when a company assumes their friendship name fully and drops the full name--such as AOL and JWT. And sometimes not: IBM.)

Then there's a final category that is always fascinating: the strange phrase or association that shouldn't be easy to remember but it is. In music, take A Tribe Called Quest. In engineering, take CH2M Hill. In book titles, take The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Not very common, but terrific when they hit. 

What "Like" Means

"As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception conveyed by a word, with the more self assurance do people use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and clear that it is not worthwhile even to discuss what it actually means."

Tolstoy wrote that in the very insightful book What is Art? and it applies to words such as "beautiful" and "creative" and, nowadays, "like".

Everyone thinks they know what "like" means. But it turns out that what consumers primarily think it means and what companies think it means are different...

When consumers "like" a brand the number one thing they expect today is to be eligible for exclusive discounts and offers. This is followed closely by the ability to enter unique promotions or opportunities.

However, organizations have a different perspective. They believe that people primarily want to be heard and that they want to read news about brand and product developments.

These were the findings of a new study by the CMO Council. And they follow what IBM reported in "From Social Media to Social CRM" early last year where they graphed the social media perception gap between consumers and businesses:

It's not really surprising that many organizations are focusing more on chatter than they are exclusivity. Since 2007 social media consultants from all over the world have talked constantly about "the conversation" and how "engaging in the conversation" is the essence of social. But as social continues to evolve that terminology may now be a bit misguiding.

Per the CMO Council, when consumers want to converse with a company they choose six methods over social channels:

- Email: 76%

- Phone Call: 54%

- Tradeshow: 27%

- Online Form: 21%

- Offline Event: 20%

- Visit Retail Location: 19%

- Online Forums: 12%

- Brand Facebook Page: 11%

- Tweet: 8%

Some companies, such as Amazon, are wise to the fact that social channels are towards the bottom of the communication list. In an excellent November Wired article Jeff Bezos relayed Amazon's approach to customer service and the social web:

"Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn’t want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect. I’ve been saying for many, many years, people should talk to their friends, not their merchants. And so we use all of our customer service information to find the root cause of any customer contact. What went wrong? Why did that person have to call? Why aren’t they spending that time talking to their family instead of talking to us? How do we fix it?"

A terrific thing about "like" is that every organization, no matter how small, has the ability to treat their fans to special opportunities. Who's great at that? The music industry--rock bands and their fan bases. They appreciate every single fan and it shows at every touchpoint, from their websites to whenever they win an award and thank the fans while standing on stage.

Right now consumers who "like" just assume that the organization "likes" them too. But organizations largely view it as "look at all of these people who like us." If companies had to "like back" the relationship would probably feel different on their end. 

People who like each other share things and offer things that they don't give everyone else. Embracing that "like" is automatically reciprocated may encourage more organizations to post those unique promotions and create those exclusive offers directly to people they like. Which would help align the primary expectations of what "like" is meaning to consumers these days.

Two Minute Summary: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Retail Sales

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For Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend a record 226 million shoppers hit stores spending $52 billion which was 16% more than last year according to the National Retail Federation. A complete look at the last six years of shopping activity is below:

A couple of random retail notes about last weekend: Men purchased more than women with an average spend of $484 versus $317 and, on average, US shoppers visited 3.1 stores per shopping trip*.

Online spending over the weekend was up 26% per comScore to $816 million as 50 million US shoppers took to the web on Black Friday, 35% more than last season. Amazon led all sites with 50% more visitors than any other retailer.

How much did each shopper spend online? According to IBM Coremetrics the average order was $190 for 6 items--interestingly, both of these figures were slightly lower than last year*. But overall a jump of 26% in online spending is good news considering that last season online spending rose only 9%*.

There were also a notable amount of consumers looking online for offline deals, further supporting the idea that advertising online does indeed sell stuff offline. For example, TheBlackFriday.com had 3.2 million visits last weeked up 137% from last year*.

Mobile shopping was another area that saw significant growth this season with PayPal reporting a spending increase of 516% over last year courtesy of four times as many people shopping Black Friday sales on their mobile phones*.

Most reports cite three key reasons for the holiday weekend upsurge:

- Pre Midnight Openings

- Positive Strong Merchandising

- Competitive Price-to-Value Relationships

This is probably true as yesterday's Cyber Monday (a phrase coined in 2006) continued the positive sales momentum. Online traffic yesterday was up 43% from last year with online sales up 18% (as of 9pm last night). Electronics were the most popular item purchased, up 26%.

Moving into December the National Retail Federation has estimated that holiday sales will increase to $465.6 billion this year, up about 2.8% versus last season.

Yet while all of these numbers are strong, and publications like Reuters are posting headlines like holiday shopping is off to a solid start, it doesn't necessarily mean this holiday season will be breaking records. RetailSails provides us with a good historical reminder...

"Black Friday weekend has historically not been a very good predictor of overall Holiday retail sales. For example, both the National Retail Federation and ShopperTrak saw record spending over Black Friday weekend in 2008, but overall that Holiday season saw by far the worst performance on record as overall sales in the November-December period tumbled 4.4%."

Additionally, with 84% of American households saying today that they will spend the same amount or less than they did last holiday season we should look for retailers to continue their aggressive approaches all month long with some doing exceedingly well at the expense of others.

[ Sources can be found via links next to stats above ]

A Collection of Thoughts And Stats Around Online Advertising Today

We've reached a time in online advertising where it's good to pause and reflect. Consider that today the majority of the US has become digitally social, smartphones are now used by 40% of us and the last several years of sizable tech adoption, brand trial & error and numerous research studies have all enabled an opportunity to see what's working.

It's also nice to observe that what was once overwhelmingness has now faded to normalcy...

If you work in marketing you've probably seen this logo collection several hundred times in presentations talking about what to do online:

When we first saw this we all panicked because there was so much to learn and we all felt so behind. But today we know that such an exercise was kind of like putting up a logo sheet of all the restaurants in your city. Yes, there's a lot of places you could eat but you'll get along just fine not spending time at all of them.

We seem to be settling in; not becoming complacent but, rather, comfortable about what each of us like online and what we don't. What's right for our brand, and what isn't.

So taking all of this in, when it comes to online advertising planning and spending in 2012, what are some good insights to consider?

 

Online Display Advertising

Here's a good question: If you primarily sell things offline what's the value these days of buying display ads online?

A recent study by comScore and dunnhumbyUSA revealed that display ads may be working harder than previously thought. When offline buying habits of households were compared between two different groups--those exposed to online ads and those who weren't--offline sales increased 21% among those who were exposed to the online ads.

What's even more telling is that when predictive targeting was applied to online ads the study showed an in-store sales lift of 42%. So even though nearly three quarters of us say that we're opposed to such behavioral targeting tactics being applied to our web habits, when it comes to our actual actions, we don't seem to mind after all. (Wonder what we'll think about this?)

What's interesting to note here is the value beyond click-thru. Browsing the web is like strolling through town... as we stroll we see billboards. But the narrowest those can get in a city is simply close to the retailer sponsoring the board. They don't get to our unique lifestyle because they're designed for mass awareness. On the web, billboards can get amazingly close to our lifestyle. And it's confirmed that the closer they get the more we click...

Long-tail sites, as they've been called, are the millions of smaller websites for niche audiences. Advertisers too often avoid buying these because they don't have as many eyeballs as short-tail sites and the pages aren't as polished. But click-thru rates of long-tail sites outperform short-tail sites by a healthy 24%.

Click-thru rates have also been measured in relation to their location on the web page; ads that appear above-the-fold are seven times more effective at getting click-thrus than those below-the-fold.

 

Online Video Advertising (Not the viral stuff... That's a different post.)

Russell Davies once wrote:

Something That's Growing Is Not The Same As Something That's Big.

Something That's Declining Is Not The Same As Something That's Small.

He probably didn't intend for it to be used this way but this is helpful to keep in mind when thinking about entertainment online. What was forecast by some to be the end of TV hasn't proven to be the case as it's the second fastest growing medium today behind the web. And what's interesting is that web video providers have found that the best online video advertising format is... what's done on TV.

Studies show that when users view full episodic 22 minute dramas online 94% of them will watch a standard ad break. For short videos and clips 59% of us will watch an ad.

And while we watch how do we click?

In general terms, it turns out there's little variance between who clicks and why. However, according to eMarketer/TidalTV, the best performing day of the week is Wednesday for whatever reason. 

That's not very helpful.

But this is: While the creative may be similar to standard TV the magic comes in the ad buying. The rise of behavior targeting models have created demand side platforms (DSPs), such as MediaMath, that can serve ads to specific inventory slots based on relevancy to individual consumers and are priced based on the demand for that target audience.

At Ignited, an agency that oversees digital media buying for many Hollywood studios, they look at it like this:

We need the reach and efficiency that you can only get from DSPs. They help us achieve scale and better returns on our ad spend... We measure cost per video completion as our primary success metric. Unique reach and frequency are what really matter to us. 

 

Search

When asked which marketing channel small business marketers couldn't do without, word of mouth was highest at 50% and search marketing was last at a mere 3%. 

But paid search is growing at 15% annually and accounts for half of all online media spending. Some forecasts are expecting this to lessen as more is spent on banners, video and email.

Search will be most interesting to watch on mobile. Mobile search is growing 6% month-over-month and search companies are predicting that mobile will become the dominant search form in five years.

Five years.

Consider how important being top ranked will be in 2016 when most search is done on a mobile device...

Let's look at a current search.

Searching for "mens shoes" on a desktop returns this:

That same search on the phone returns this:

Note Zappos.com. On the desktop they're one of four on the top along with many down the side. On the phone they have the only top sponsored site on this search, flanked with the SEO in the third position.

Building search strategies, best practices and budget allocations now is of the highest importance as future search on the phone will be more visually pleasant for the users and more difficult for the advertiser to be a top selection.

 

Social & Email

In the US total social media use is up 25% over last year. Additionally, Internet Retailer says that Facebook accounts for about one third of all online display ads. However, their click through rates are small at less than 1%. Facebook's Sponsored Stories will help as studies have shown them to boost those click through rates by about 46%.

But even Sponsored Stories don't get Facebook close to the effectiveness of email. While Sponsored Stories might get a 1.5% click through, email marketing can average an 11% click-through rate. Apples and oranges? Maybe, but it correlates. Fan/Like growth is sexy because it's public and there's tertiary benefits of known popularity and an owned channel of what can be a staggering number of fans. But classic, well-scrubbed database building remains golden.

For Facebook, here's what their Sales Director said earlier this summer:

I see Facebook as a complement to other forms of media. What sticks out is that Facebook is a much more social and personalized experience. In the age where people are getting hit with hundreds of marketing messages a day -- depending on what study you use, it can be as high as 700 messages a day -- how do you stand out from that? I think a recommendation from a friend is extremely powerful.

Which gets us to that 'fingernails-on-a-chalkboard' expression of 'joining the conversation.' (They're each seven syllables.) Facebook has always been the place to connect. Honda does a terrific job of this. Their page is based around the common bond of owning a Honda, not just the Honda company. And it starts with their Facebook page logo--all about connecting:

But we don't all connect physically. Sometimes it's just connecting through observation. And observation is hard to track as engagement. Half of us are introverts which means that comments, likes and shares largely done by the extroverts are telling what could only be half the story. In addition, a recent study reported that 77% of consumers interact with brands on Facebook primarily through reading posts and updates.

For organizations connecting with people on social networks is becoming more challenging as engagement on brand Facebook walls is down 22%.

Perhaps the reason is because brands can do a better job posting content that rides the edge of pop culture. People want to talk about pop culture, especially in the US. Take this year's Royal Wedding, for instance, where 65% of social media chatter came from America.

When something positively big happens in culture we should try to roll with it when it makes sense. And having a relevant twist for your own audience is what's important. Tim at Snarkmarket phrased this well recently when analyzing his most popular Tweets:

People love pop culture references... What people really seem to love are oblique, unexpected pop culture references that hit a particular niche. They’re tweets that say: “this message was only for you; now share it with everyone you know."

This is something we talk about a lot at the agency.

And it's good to see we're not alone. Tim Leake likens much of the successful marketing today as that of an Improve Group. And one of the core principles of an Improve Group is that of "Yes, And..." Or, in other words, taking what's happening on stage and riffing on it versus talking about something entirely different and selfish.

"Yes, And..."

So, in the end, we all should look to do something like Anthony's Pizza did when Dominos spent tens of millions talking to us about their new recipe:

 

 

Sources: Please see links next to stats throughout post.

Finding A Hit

No one can ever really say for certain what's going to be a huge hit. For example, I watched the Packers/Falcons game last night... Football fans will recall how Aaron Rogers, a rumored top 5 NFL draft pick in 2005, ended up being selected 24th that year... and look where he is today.

Geico produces a lot of marketing material. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't. They make lots of "small bets" until something gets a lot of traction. Burger King did this the last several years and Taco Bell found a long running character among a collection of random TV spots produced in the mid 90s.

These successes are surrounded by things that were not successes. But no one really dwells on those very long. We enjoy the hits. We see this mentality with many tech companies, too. They release lots of stuff, seeing what takes. And when something doesn't work they don't seem too bothered. 

I think it's important to note that many companies don't have this luxury. Either financially or logistically. That's important to keep in mind when studying the portfolio and work style of mass production brands.

Anyway, I think we'll be seeing more of these characters from Martin and Geico.

Adele or Gaga?

We can learn a lot from the music business. Here's another example for marketing and brands...

There's the Lady Gaga approach: Standing out wins, marketing is a lifestyle, lots of customer engagement, etc.

"Gaga has done something unprecedented... building a business empire notable for both the speed of its creation and diversity of platforms." -Fast Company

And there's the Adele approach: No Tweeting, no major festivals or appearances, restrictive access, etc.

"What's become lost in the Lady Gaga-era is the confidence in the idea that less is more. A large element of Adele's success is that she remains something of an enigma and we don't know everything about her." -Paul Rees, Editor, Q

Both work. Which is nice because when the product quality is superb, we can choose whichever is most fitting.

The Two Kinds of Idea Science

Often in advertising and marketing there is debate as to whether the industries are more art or science. I happen to think that good science and good art don't have many differences from each other and that it's actually the combination of what might typically be referred to as "artistic" approaches and "scientific" approaches working together that breed the best insights.

But there are two different processes we can go through to get to those insights... And that's where an interesting difference lies and where the science of idea finding comes in.

Facts --> Idea

The first is Facts to Idea, or the brick-by-brick approach. Based on a logical progression of information this is the more traditional process where A leads to B then to C and so on... It begins with an observation which is followed by the accumulation of data and then the analysis of that data. Once everything is analyzed there is more observation to verify the facts and then the process is done. This is the most common approach in business as it's relatively safe with many opting out points. Facts to Idea is widely taught in business schools. The approach has brought us frozen food at the supermarket and the proof of gravity's existence. 

Idea --> Support

The second is Idea to Support. In this approach one doesn't start with an observation but rather with an idea brought forth from background knowledge. Once the idea is thought of the rest of the process goes about disproving why the idea won't work via experiments and prototyping. A diagram from Stephen King's excellent 1981 presentation of Advertising: Art and Science highlights this wonderfully:

Idea to Support is what Galileo and Einstein practiced. We see it today in the likes of Bezos and Jobs. They start by disproving accepted ideas through volunteering something entirely new.

These are two very different approaches. So which one is right?

I've studied and experimented a lot with both and I must say that neither side has convinced me they are exclusively optimal. I think more to the point is how well you do each of them. And when you do each of them; "change the category" and "change the world" ideas usually come from Idea to Support because it's starting from a place of dissatisfaction with the status quo.

It's important to be cognizant that there are two types of idea creation and that everyone probably has a preferred method. Which means if you're choosing a method that goes against-type for someone it's helpful to discuss the differences at the beginning.