AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2020 provided a multi-dimensional perspective on the industry’s challenges and opportunities, as well as the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on measurement and growth. VIEW LATEST INFORMATION KEYNOTE SPEAKERS AUDIENCExSCIENCE keynote speakers are making an impact on today’s challenges and shaping the future. They left attendees inspired and informed about how to advance their measurement and growth goals. 2020 TRACKS The 2020 program featured 9 tracks, with 30+ breakouts sessions, from some of the biggest names and brightest minds…

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted consumer behavior and created difficult questions for marketers, such as: Are long-held marketing beliefs about brand loyalty still relevant? How should consumer marketing strategies be rethought? What does the widespread shift to digital mean for brands/retailers? July 27-28, the ARF hosted an entirely virtual event, where notable marketers and researchers shared their thoughts on what consumer behaviors will persist in the “new normal” and how companies can prepare. Presenters discussed e-commerce shifts, brand loyalty and…

For decades, marketers have relied on marketing mix models (MMM) to understand the ROI of each component of marketing spend. But in a new twist, COVID-19 is disrupting MMM with changes that don’t fit any previous observed pattern. Can MMM provide guidance based on recent history about whether to put the brakes on advertising, how to reallocate the dollars available, and when to resume it? How do we consider changes in product availability and consumer demand? How do we react…

Has advertising gotten weaker over the past 15 years, focusing less on creative and more on performance-based ads? This Insights Studio hosted one of the industry’s brightest minds, Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer at System1 Group and author of the best-selling book Lemon (IPA, 2019). Wood presented a unique combination of neuroscience, cultural history and advertising research to describe a change in advertising style that has occurred over the last 15 years and link this to falling advertising effectiveness. Wood…

Leveraging Human Psychology to Build Brands and Sales Why do people buy some products and not others? How do media messages influence a shopper’s buying choices? What makes buyers tick and what makes them click? How can marketers effectively harmonize emotion and action? What are best practices for combining big data and small data to understand and predict customer behavior? We (humans) like to think of ourselves as rational animals. Over the past two decades, the notion that humans are…

Market research, media research and advertising research all faced plenty of obstacles prior to the Coronavirus outbreak. Response rates and cooperation rates were already widely discussed problems. Access to gated communities, the wide use of Caller-ID, and restrictions on mobile phone numbers had already challenged survey researchers trying to achieve representative samples. Worries about “professional respondents” in online panels or in qualitative research databases did not arrive with the pandemic. However the pandemic has introduced a whole set of new…

The only certainty brands face as they grapple with two drivers of uncertainty — a pandemic and recession — is the need to adjust their marketing and communications strategies. Messaging sociability, travel and large events (think restaurants, cruise lines and concerts) can appear tone deaf in today’s environment. Research has proven the critical importance of ad creative and messaging, but it has also found that the contextual environment in which the ads appear can influence their acceptance and success. For…

Every crisis is unique, but every crisis also has antecedents in history – especially with regard to the crisis’s effect on public opinion. In some ways, the current moment is similar to 9/11 in that it involves charged emotions and fears that go beyond those associated with a mere economic downturn. After 9/11 appeals to patriotism and to solidarity with victims and first-responders resulted in a short-term “rally-round-the-flag” sentiment. Now, a global pandemic plus nationalist rhetoric is leading to some…

How to plan and recover from a recession market 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…

The market research industry, along with everyone around the globe, is trying to come to terms with the Coronavirus (COVID-19), a fast-breaking and scary event. Some of the best analysis and predictions — including scenario planning structures and budgeting — have been shared in an online forum known as The Wonks List. The ARF feels strongly that more should be in the know, which is why we are bottling some of this lightning into a virtual town hall. Join us…