Rational Marketing

Category: Advertising

  • Unkown Facts About Advertising

    A great blog post from The Ad Contrarian published this list of ten great facts that deserve to keep going.

    Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising

    1. 99.9% of people who are served an online display ad do not click on it.
    2. TV viewership is now at its highest point ever.
    3. 96% of all retail activity is done in a store. 4% is done on line.
    4. DVR owners watch live TV 95% of the time. 5% of the time they watch recorded material.
    5. 99% percent of all video viewing is done on a television. 1% is done on line.
    6. The difference in purchasing behavior between people who use DVRs to skip ads and those who don’t:  None.
    7. Since the 1990s, click-through rates for banner ads have dropped 97.5%.
    8. Since the introduction of TiVo, real time TV viewing has increased over 20%.
    9. Baby boomers dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods categories. 5% of advertising is aimed at them.
    10. TV viewers are no more likely to leave the room during a commercial break than they are before or after the break.

    The author, Bob Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman/Lewis, listed the following as his sources.

    1. DoubleClick, Benchmark Report, 2009
    2. Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010
    3. U.S. Department of Commerce, Q2 2010; Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010
    4. Duke University, Do DVRs Influence Sales?
    5. Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010
    6. Duke University, Do DVRs Influence Sales?
    7. Li, Hairong; Leckenby, John D. (2004). “Internet Advertising Formats and Effectiveness”. Center for Interactive Advertising. And DoubleClick, Benchmark Report, 2009
    8. NielsenWire, Nov. 10, 2009
    9. Marketing Daily, July 22, 2010
    10. Council for Research Excellence, May 10, 2010

  • Understanding Marketing History

    One of our favorite quotes is “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

    In a discussion with the members of LinkedIn’s Direct Mail Group, author Dave Lewis, reviewed the history of broadcast faxes as an advertising medium and made some interesting comparisons with e-mail. He concluded that e-mail works great for people who really know each other. As a marketing medium, it seems to be losing effectiveness because of its greatest advantage – low cost. The low cost is leading to more and more volume which is leading to increased filtering and blocked messages.

    E-mail as an Advertising Medium

    He concluded his thoughts by saying, “meanwhile your six or seven pieces of direct mail will be waiting patiently for you at home, like the family dog. You can take your shoes off, flip through the mail, and see if there are any intriguing offers from one of the folks smart enough to invest some money in getting your attention.”

  • High End Consumers Don’t Like Splashy Logos

    Low- and high-end fashion products tend to have less conspicuous brand markers than midprice goods, according to a paper published in The Journal of Consumer Research. 87% of sunglasses priced $100 to $200 carry a brand name or logo, the same is true for only 28% in the over-$600 price range, according to research by Jonah Berger of Penn and others.

    Maybe this information will help you as you craft your direct mail and other marketing messages.

  • Great Marketing Power in Hands of Few

    Following up on our post about Marketing Power and the suggestion that 80% to 90% of people believe reviews posted by customers.

    Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, authors of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business have found that just 16% of users of blogs, review sites and social networking sites generate 80% of the messages posted about products and services.

    They also found that 62% of all messages about products and services are posted via Facebook alone.

    That is amazing to think that so few people have so much power to shape opinions about your products and services. It is also not too far from the classic 80 – 20 rule of 80% of business coming from 20% of customers and 80% of complaints coming from 20% of people.

    What can we do to help you court these sought after “super customers”?

  • More WOW! Numbers

    “55 Percent of Survey Respondents Cannot Effectively Measure Marketing ROI of Mobile, Social Media and Video,” this is the recent context of press release from Omniture. Omniture perceives this as an opportunity.

    We reported on the results from a different study from R2integrated that found that 65% of companies had not increased revenue or profited using social media.

    Is this really opportunity, or this an opportunity to reevaluate the great hope that new media would be the key to increased revenue?

    Let us help you explore if a direct mailing campaign will help you grow your revenue.

  • Slow Company?

    A post that appeared on BNET offered some examples of how companies are gaining success by being slow. Slow goes against so much tradition and experience but the article offered two examples of companies that seem to be successful because they do things slowly. Perhaps a slower more deliberate approach is more appropriate for the issues faced by most businesses today because the challenges are deep and complex, not especially susceptible to quick fixes.

    The leaders of five major magazine companies have come together to sponsor a campaign called, “Magazines, The Power of Print“. In one ad, they asked, “Will the Internet kill magazines? Did instant coffee kill coffee?” in another ad they stated, “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.” Then they share two very interesting statistics, WOW numbers, during the 12 year life of Google, magazine readership actually increased 11 percent. In the coffee ad, they state “even the 18 to 34 year old segment continues to grow… typical young adults now read more magazine issues per month than their parents.”

    Numbers and statistics continue to support the facts that a quick fix and reliance on one media for marketing communication may not be the answer. Direct mail makes sense now more than ever before, because it is able to target exactly and it gives reliable feedback to continue to improve.

  • Paper Beats Digital For Emotion

    According to a study by branding agency Millward Brown retold in a Neuromarketing blog post, physical media left a “deeper footprint” in the brain, even after for controlling for the increase in sensory processing for tangible items.

    Images comparing Brain Scans of Paper vs Digital
    Images comparing Brain Scans of Paper vs Digital

    The study concluded:

    • Material shown on cards generated more activity within the area of the brain associated with the integration of visual and spatial information.
    • Physical material is more “real” to the brain. It has a meaning, and a place. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.
    • More processing is taking place in the right retrosplenial cortex when physical material is presented. This is involved in the processing of emotionally powerful stimuli and memory, which would suggest that the physical presentation may be generating more emotionally vivid memories.
    • Physical activity generates increased activity in the cerebellum, which is associated with spatial and emotional processing (as well as motor activity) and is likely to be further evidence of enhanced emotional processing.

    Paper has advantages over digital media. To maximize these concepts:

    • Think about the touch and feel of the piece. Heavier stock and a textured finish could emphasize the “tangibility” of the mailed item.
    • Seize the advantage of the brain’s emotional engagement with tangible media and craft a message that will make an emotional connection.
    • Find ways to maximize your brand imagery and perhaps feel, brand recall may be enhanced by the paper medium.

    We talked about the power of touch and how that can increase how likely people are to purchase an item because of the increased connection.

  • Commercials Lead to More Enjoyment

    People say they prefer to watch television without ads, yet they enjoy programs that have commercial interruptions more.

    The Harvard Business Review recently published the results of a study and asked the authors to “Defend the Research”. The authors found that People who watched a program with commercials were willing to pay 30% more for a DVD compilation of similar programs than people who watched an ad-free version, according to a team led by Leif Nelson of UC Berkeley.

    The researchers concluded that it was not the commercial itself, but the interruption. Think of a massage. The longer a massage goes on, the less you really enjoy it. But if it stops briefly, then starts again, it retriggers that initial enjoyment. People report enjoying interrupted massages more even though they predict they’ll like uninterrupted ones more. Think of the law of diminishing return. You enjoy the thrill of your first car purchase more than the last car you bought.

    I hope that helps us all to reconsider much of our feelings and impressions about traditional marketing and advertising, including direct mail.

  • A Tribute to the Underdog

    As a tribute to cute costumes and a way to help you consider a possible branding message, we want to share some highlights from Harvard Business School professor, Anat Keinan.

    The weaker party is often more attractive to many people. The reason might be due to consumers wanting to identify with the underdog. In today’s economically difficult times, it appears, underdog brands are gaining power in the marketplace.

    Stories about underdogs overcoming great odds through passion and determination are resonant during difficult times. They inspire and give hope when the outlook is bleak. They promise that success is still possible. Throughout history Americans have embraced the American Dream, which proclaims that through hard work and perseverance anyone can be successful.

    Underdog brand biographies (that highlight the companies’ humble beginnings, hopes and dreams, and noble struggles against adversaries) are being used by both large and small companies and across categories. Even large corporations, such as Apple and Google, are careful to retain their underdog roots in their brand biographies.

    The common themes that link these brands’ underdog biographies are

    1. a disadvantaged position in the marketplace versus a “top dog,” a well-endowed competitor with superior resources or market dominance, and
    2. tremendous passion and determination to succeed despite the odds.

    Marketers can use underdog narratives to positively affect consumers’ perceptions of and purchase of brands. “Underdog narratives are often delivered to consumers through the rhetorical device of a brand biography, an unfolding story that chronicles the brand’s origins, life experiences, and evolution over time in a selectively constructed story.”

    Many contemporary brand biographies contain underdog narratives. Product packaging, corporate Web sites, direct mail advertising, blogs, and marketing communications tell the biographical stories of brands.

    • Avis’s classic slogan “we’re number 2” emphasized that it was playing second fiddle to a giant in the rental car business.
    • Brands such as Google, Clif Bar, and Apple celebrate their garage origins. Hewlett-Packard recently bought, and has a whole section on its Web site dedicated to, the garage in which it started. It is now a historical landmark.
    • Starbucks, in an effort to reverse declining sales, recently launched Pike Place Roast, which emphasizes the brand’s humble Seattle coffee culture beginnings.
    • Adidas’s “Impossible Is Nothing” campaign emphasized the underdog stories of famous athletes.

  • Marketing Power

    We attended a seminar that suggested that 80% or 90% of people believe posted consumer reviews. The Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat stated that each year, consumers make more than 500 billion online impressions on one another about products and services.

    These WOW numbers reinforce the idea that once your potential customers find you or know about they may start looking deeper for more information about you. Can we help you boost your trust score by sending some mail to your treasured customers to ask them to post something nice about you? Once you have accumulated some great reviews, send a postcard to your warm prospects to put your name in front and suggest they see for themselves comments from your satisfied customers.