On April 16, the ARF and Kantar unveiled a newly developed best-in-class framework, Cracking Brand Purpose, which is meant to shape, guide and evaluate purpose campaigns even in the context of a difficult news environment.
This discussion addressed three presentations that described insights from surveys on how the pandemic affected consumer behavior during the pandemic and to what extent observed changes will persist. The presentations addressed trends in behaviors and attitudes regarding media (such as linear TV vs. streaming), travel, and also shopping, cooking, and education.
Broadbeam Media found past assumptions of consumer behavior being upended by the pandemic. To better understand the transformation happening in the American home, they conducted proprietary research to focus on the respondent’s perceptions of the last year, through sight, taste, hearing, smell, touch, and feel, to influence respondents to think about their last year in a fresh way. The following includes what they learned through the research.
The presenters summarized insights from HUB’s on-going series of surveys on viewers’ ownership, behaviors, and opinions about all aspects of TV and video. Since they have data going back to 2018, they are able to analyze long-term trends, including the impact of the pandemic.
The average home has over 300,000 items, and consumers may be exposed to 6-10,000 ads daily. We need to overcome measurement silos to truly understand what triggers the different paths to purchase for the same products. Third party data sources need to be vetted on their sources and collection techniques, their validation methods and how they help us understand traditional metrics such as recency, frequency and consistency. Loyalty card data can help CPG companies track the 90% of purchases that still occur offline. IRI’s retailer and other partnerships offer a more holistic view of purchase behavior. In a masked case study, COVID reduced linear and cable but increased connected TV viewing, putting a premium on “equity spots” for in-home occasions such as food preparation/consumption. Multi-touchpoint fractional attribution (MTA) can distinguish the impact of creative from other aspects of digital ads.
There have been dramatic changes in loyalty due to the pandemic, requiring a re-examination of the measures of loyalty, churn, and the value of new vs. loyal buyers. NCSolutions analyzed why it is important to compare loyalty measures longitudinally to gauge a brand’s health, as well as to understand which advertising and promotional strategies have been successful and to determine whether to focus on driving penetration or brand loyalty.
Rex Briggs, Founder & Executive Chairman of Marketing Evolution, who had developed forecasts of US COVID infections and deaths early in 2020, before it had been declared a pandemic, talked about the difficulties in “exponential forecasting” of events like a pandemic, compared to “stable state” forecasting of the impact of media, marketing, and creative. Just as companies might not have anticipated the impact of COVID-19 as it spread, they may be caught “flat-footed” in forecasting the exponential decay of the disease as vaccinations spread in 2021. Business forecasts of the impact of COVID in 2021 should take into account vaccination rates by age and surveys on acceptance of the vaccine.
Robin Garfield, EVP of Research & Scheduling at CNN, discussed the unusual fervor of the American electorate over the past two years: The turnout in the 2018 mid-terms was the highest for any mid-term election since 1914, and the turnout for the 2020 race was the highest for any presidential election since 1908. Campaign spending and viewing of cable news programs soared in 2020.
The ARF’s second Virtual Town Hall, How is the Coronavirus Impacting the Global Advertising Industry?, focused on the recent coronavirus outbreak and how to best plan and recover from a recession market. Huge parts of the U.S. economy have shut down. From restaurants to gyms to hotel chains, workers are being hit hard as layoffs snowball daily. The advertising industry is feeling the shock as advertising budgets dry up due to postponed launches and canceled sporting, entertainment and business events.
Consumer behaviors have changed dramatically creating new challenges for brands and their marketing measurement. During this Insights Studio, we explored the measurement challenges brands have faced in the wake of significant consumer changes. We also discussed best practices brands should be using to ensure their marketing measurement is set up for future success as consumers continue to react to major societal change. Executives from OptiMine, an agile marketing analytics provider, Kepler, a global digital agency, and Beachbody, an innovative health and fitness company, shared their observations on how changes in consumer shopping and media consumption behaviors have been reflected in marketing measurement.