News You Can Use

How to Optimize Your Sponsored Content

• Posted: July 20, 2015

Writing for iMedia Connection, David Mennie provides tips for creating a successful sponsored content strategy:

-Choose your channel wisely: there should be a good fit between the media channel and the brand.  Select a publication that is authentic to your brand’s message.  Also, consider the audience the brand is trying to reach.

The author stresses the importance of labeling the sponsored content appropriately to avoid losing the trust of the readers.

-Use social media to gain more readers and increase credibility.  It is important to understand the brand’s audience for each social platform to encourage retweets and likes.

-Strike the right balance: a thoughtful approach should stress the brand’s authenticity and provide a consistent brand voice.

The author concludes with the following advice, “Should you choose to dive into the world of sponsored content, do so carefully and with a strong sense of who your brand is, who your readers are, and how to publish stories that are true to both of those audiences.”

 

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Corporate Innovation Mistakes

• Posted: July 13, 2015

The authors of this study published in The Harvard Business Review analyze the six most common mistakes made by executive teams when encouraging corporate innovation.

Scott Anthony, David Duncan, and Pontus M.A. Siren believe these are the most common innovation-related missteps:

1. Asking employees to generate ideas without creating mechanisms to do something with them.
2. Pushing for answers without defining the problems worth solving.
3. Urging risk-taking while punishing commercial failure.
4. Failing to provide access to a well-stocked laboratory.
5. Expecting breakthroughs without allocating A-team resources.
6. Demanding disruptive ideas, without dedicating resources for them.

The authors advise leaders seeking to increase their ability to grow their companies through innovation to “simultaneously direct it strategically, pursue it rigorously, resource it intensively, monitor it methodically, and nurture it carefully.”

 

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Millennials Highly Desired by Marketers

• Posted: July 13, 2015

This New York Times article by Hilary Stout discusses the degree of urgency with which marketers are studying, analyzing, and pursuing millennials, a generation born between 1980 and 2000.

This generation is larger than any other demographic group at 80 million consumers. They will spend $1.4 trillion annually by 2020 according to Accenture, and their current life stage involves entry into the workforce, marriage, parenthood, and related major purchases.

However, Stout article also points out that there are downsides to solely pursuing the youth market.  Millennials have less wealth and more debt than other generations did at the same age.  Baby boomers are more affluent and spend more heavily.  Also, millennials are not the only digital natives. Older generations have become frequent users of digital devices and respond to campaigns via digital channels.

Non-millennial consumers who feel that companies and brands are “neglecting”  them may respond in kind.

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Teens Influence Household Purchasing Decisions

• Posted: July 13, 2015

The MarketingCharts staff analyzed the results of a YouGov Omnibus Parents Survey. This analysis focused on US teens and the considerable influence they have on the purchases made by their parents.

-96% of teens have some degree of influence on the apparel purchased for them.

-95% of teens influence the selection of a fast-food restaurant.

-93% of teens influence the purchases of their personal care products.

-78% influence the purchase of in-home entertainment content.

-45% influence which vehicle the family purchases or leases.

This study shows that American youth strongly influence many parental purchases.  According to the survey, pester power is the top tactic according to 71% of the parents.  Additional teen strategies include promising to do additional chores or earn better grades or offering to pay for some portion of the product desired.

The significant direct and indirect influence of these teens should be considered by marketers when developing campaigns both for teens and for products and services used by the entire household.

 
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The Addictive Power of Smartphones

• Posted: July 13, 2015

Writing for Digital Intelligence Today, Dr. Paul Marsden discusses the addictive relationship consumers have with their smart phones that extends to the level of nomophobia (no mobile phone fear).  On average, consumers check their personal mobile devices about 150 times a day.

Among the statistics presented by Marsden:

-Attention spans have dropped to 8 seconds since 2000.

-43% of consumers abandon emails if they take more than 30 seconds to read.

-40% of people leave sites that don’t load within 3 seconds.

-32% require speakers to make their point in less than 15 seconds.

Marketers must respond to the consumer’s shrinking attention span and demand for instant gratification.

 

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Immediacy and Its Importance to Digital Sales and Service Channels

• Posted: July 13, 2015

 

Scott Heron, writing for ClickZ, discusses the gap between consumer expectations of digital sales and service channels and the ability of companies to meet these expectations.

Customer inquiries or complaints need to be handled quickly, but how quickly?

More than 50% of Twitter users expect a response in less than two hours, according to Heron.  He points out that the response time depends on the complexity of the customer’s request, and the degree of input required from legal or product specialists.

In terms of purchasing, Amazon, Google, and Facebook are all involved in launching or piloting one-click ordering systems.  The goal is to remove the friction in the sales channel for the consumer.

Both corporate revenue and reputation will be positively impacting by satisfying the consumer’s demand for immediacy.

 

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How Social Word of Mouth Drive TV Viewing

• Posted: July 6, 2015

Ed Keller, CEO of The Keller Fay Group, Mitch Lovett, Associate Professor of Marketing at The University of Rochester, Renana Peres, Associate Professor of Marketing at The Jerusalem School of Business Administration and Beth Rockwood, SVP, Market Resources & Advertising Sales Research at Discovery Communications presented findings of the latest study from The CRE, which is a group of senior research professionals interested in bettering methodological research. They formed a Social Media Committee to ask, “How does social media and other forms of communication influence the choice to a particular program?”

• To what extent do people engage with social media when deciding what primetime television show to watch? What is the impact of social media compared to word of mouth, promotions, PR, and the “dark social” mix of texting, IMing and emailing?
• For its study, CRE looked at 78,310 journal entries from 1,665 respondents to gain insight into the consumer contact points that best drive viewership, including Twitter and Facebook.
• Among their findings: Twitter has a bigger impact when people Tweet while watching the show. By contrast, offline word-of-mouth and Facebook exert stronger influences to watch the next episode when people are not watching the program.

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Revitalizing a Legend through Science and Strategy – Big Heart Pet Brands and Deep Relevance

• Posted: July 6, 2015

Courtney Moore, VP, Consumer & Customer Strategy Insights at Big Heart Pet Brands and Bob Woodard, Founding Partner at Deep Relevance Partners started this session mentioning some of Milk-Bone dog treats challenges such as category commoditization and stagnant growth.  Milk Bone had a 100 year history of leadership, trust and was #1 in the category, and needed to recapture that leadership.  There was a need for a differentiated and emotionally compelling narrative to allow these treats to re-assert category leadership and ignite new growth.

Specific research techniques including, ZMET Mindmap and IAE were selected to understand the dog owners’ feelings associated with dog treats and the role treats play in their lives with their dogs.  Research aided in the development of new brand positioning, and served as the basis for a planned innovative extension.

Approach by Deep Relevance:

• Development of advantageous and inspiring connection.
• Translate into creative campaign strategies.
• Precise communication assessment and optimization.

The research enabled the brand to be successfully revitalized, and the first line extension to be successfully launched.

Key learnings:

• Separate development of 15 seconds; do not cut down from 30 seconds.
• Test early creative.
• Brand positioning important.

Results:

• The base Milk-Bone brand gained +3.4% in sales vs. the prior year exclusively from TV advertising.
• The brand extension, Milk-Bone Brushing Chews, had an extremely successful launch, driven by effective advertising, a strong retail presence, and excellent performance of the product.

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The Next Frontier: Content Analytics

• Posted: July 6, 2015

 

Bill Harvey, Co-Founder & Chairman of ScreenSavants opened this session stating that about 65% of ROI comes from the creative and 35% from the media. Research to date has focused on optimizing media planning and helping decision-makers make go/no go decisions, but rarely has the research been designed specifically for diagnosing how to improve the content for greater chances of success. Bill presented a new method of pretesting content and helping to maintain series on the air based on a combination of online panel, set top box data, second by second voluntary nuanced response, and an empirically validated set of 270 keywords called DriverTagsTM. These Tags were tested with previous successful and cancelled programs and validated with Nielsen ratings using correlation analysis.

Key benefits of this method are:

• Explains the “why” of a program’s rating.
• Answers the question “how can we make it better.”
• Speaks better the “language of creative.”
• Helps optimizing ad placement based on the ad “fit” with the DriverTagsTM correlated with the programs.

 

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Silence is Golden: Brands Win Supporting Roles

• Posted: July 6, 2015

Dan Aversano, SVP, Client & Consumer Insights at Turner Broadcasting and Chad R. Maxwell, SVP, Research at Starcom MediaVest Group developed a partnership to increase the effectiveness of IPPs (In-Program Placements).

Insights included:

• Authenticity and relatability are vital if the brand is to communicate effectively. Both content and context are important to effectiveness.
• Subtler executions of IPPS can be more effective.
• Adjacencies with traditional ads can be maximized. When and where rules for adjacencies are important.  But whether the companion ad for the IPP should be placed before or after the IPP depends on the situation, and should be tested.

Effective IPPs can be created if the following contextual components are considered:

• Viewers have different relationships with different product categories.
• Consistency is important.
• There are issues around “crossing the line.”
• Iconic brands are held to different standards.

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