Go Figure!

Here are this month’s “excellent answers to meaningless questions”:

72%: The number of U.S. companies that have no policy regarding office romances or dating.

$414 billion: The total annual spending controlled by functioning illiterate consumers.

56: The number of brands the average American mentions in their weekly conversations.

30%: The amount the average human face has shrunk in the past 10,000 years.

1,000+: the number of changes made in biographies of U.S. House and Senate members by staff members deleting unflattering mentions or enhancing entries.

Bogus Engagement

A recent article in Ad Age noted that “engagement" has begun to resemble a Holy Grail of magazine metrics, and with that we wholly agree. Magazines – all media for that matter – need some form of ROI, and engagement seems to be the way to go in the 21st Century given the complexities of the media marketplace.

A new study on engagement, one among many efforts to demystify the subject, ostensibly delivers a blow to true believers. The study conducted by Starch, seems to contradict “conventional wisdom,” but only if you believe “engagement” with “frequency with which they are read, time spent with each issue and how much of each issue gets finished.”

If you believe that, you are fooling yourself. What you have right there is the perfect example of Maslow’s quote “when the only tool that you’ve got is a hammer, the whole world starts to look like nails!” It is a perfect example of mid-20th Century thinking.

Engagement is none of those things as it applies to the advertising, and they should be the beneficiaries of the ad placement, shouldn’t they? Well, OK, your readers have to actually read you, but the frequency, length of time, and how many pages they get through in the magazine (or how many minutes they stare at a TV screen) don’t have anything to do with engagement as it applies to the advertising.

We have a model. It correlates with attention paid to the ad, how well consumers think about the brand. Heck, it correlates with sales.

And it has nothing to do with how much time anyone spends with a magazine!

Authenticity

Having had the opportunity to work with ad legends like George Lois and Alan Zwiebel, and Marvin Honig, and Charles Karmiol, I was bemoaning the fact that creatives of their caliber are more difficult to find these days.

Their 21st Century versions can be found at:

http://transnationalblueblood.com/AdMan/adman_9.html

and are proof that authentic creatives build castles in the sky. The wannabes move into them!

Banking On Engagement

Given the difficulties encountered in today’s multi-brand, multi-faceted, multi-media world, it isn’t surprising that marketers have difficulty engaging customers. No matter how much marketing or advertising they do, they sure can’t bank on engagement just happening!

Luckily, customer loyalty metrics provide a leading-indicator assessment of the likelihood that consumers will “engage” with one brand versus another.

Our Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Index is the basis of the 2006 Brandweek Customer Loyalty Awards and determines (at the 95% confidence level) which products and services – in 35 different categories – people will buy in the coming 18 to 24 months, and how engaged they’ll be with the brand.

Brandweek magazine published the Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in today’s issue, and for a complete list of 2006 Customer Loyalty Award winners, go to:

http://www.brandkeys.com/awards/index.cfm

It’s worth keeping in mind that engagement is like a bank account. Sometimes it increases, and sometimes it decreases. And sometimes it pays to invest in some predictive metrics to make sure that customers don’t lose interest.

You'll Know It When You See It

Brand Keys has developed some really effective engagement metrics. We’re really good at predicting consumer engagement.

In balance, it’s easy to identify engagement when you have the numbers in front of you. But we also have a reputation for telling clients when they shouldn’t do research. Sometimes you don’t have to. Some clients, on the other hand, think that they can recognize real engagement when they see it. But that kind of engagement consists of seeing what everybody has seen and has been thinking but that nobody has measured. Anyway, that kind of engagement and actually successfully “seeing it” doesn’t happen all the often. It certainly doesn’t happen by accident.

Anyway, Dan Brown’s controversial, conspiracy-cum-religious thriller, The Da Vinci Code, opens today. It won’t surprise any sentient being that the story has become a global industry; 50 million hardback copies, 10 million paperback sales. It’s inspired bus tours, critical documentaries, and, by last estimate, 22 other books.

It has been denounced by The Vatican. The US Catholic League and Opus Dei, the villains of the book, have demanded a disclaimer that highlights the film's fictional basis. It’s been the subject of a high-profile court case. The publicity all this attracted has been more than any studio Marketing Department could have dreamt of.

According to Twentieth Century Fox, there was no sinister sub-plot to the secrecy surrounding the release of the blockbuster. "It helps increase the global hype - the whole world is waiting for the movie."

Planned or unplanned, anticipated or serendipitous, all of this has combined to create real engagement, and is one of the few instances where metrics would not have substantively aided the cause!

Engaging Advertising That Leaves Nothing To The Imagination

You be the judge.

Go to this page:

http://blog.coolz0r.com/2006/05/14/levis-jeans/

Coming To A Dark And Dank Subway Tunnel Near You

Thirty years ago Neil Postman, educator and media critic, cautioned about the impending arrival of, what he called, a “media ecology.” What he was referring to was an environment that would be virtually 100% composed of messages and messaging, enveloping consumers in the same way that, well, air and sun, do. I can’t quite peg the time that the media ecology actually arrived, but it was sometime around 1985 and since then it has continued to inflate.

The newest expansion of this media environment is happening in New York City’s subways. The Metropolitan Transit Authority is considering using the underground tunnels as advertising space, broadcasting commercials to straphangers, with rates determined by train speeds. Talk about a captive audience!

In a perfect case of irony, MTA officials stressed that the authority doesn't want to overwhelm riders. You think? Another media critic noted that advertising’s function was to make the worse appear the better. Maybe accomplishing that will be easier if the ads are mere blurs through the window of a train!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

We have – for the past few Holiday shopping periods (Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanza) – noted that the market for gift cards (pre-paid and/or stored value) has been expanding rapidly. And continues to do so.

Yes, it’s true that some people would prefer to give/receive a personal/more suitable gift rather than a less-personal card. But on the other hand, those of us who have been on the receiving end of a truly hideous tie or a book that had long-languished on the remainder table understands the freedom of choice that a gift card provides.

So the growth in the category isn’t surprising. But, to paraphrase the poet, a card is a card is a card. How, then, can retailers differentiate their cards from those of their competitors? Given the current state of technology, there are ways to adapt traditional promotional strategies of the 20th Century to gift card differentiation. For example:

Swipe-and-win sweepstakes:
Creating a sweepstake opportunity when the gift card is redeemed is an excellent way to drive additional use.

Give bonuses/cash-back for adding value:
Particularly useful for stored value cards that replace cash and need customers to re-load them, a bonus could be given when they add value to the card, just like they do with Metrocards in the New York City transit system.

Points:
Every time you use the card you accumulate “points” which can be cashed in at alternative retailers, i.e., iTunes, eBay, Amazon, etc.

Customized coupons:
The card is programmed to provide the customer with a receipt that is also a specially designed coupon that can be used to drive customers to locations that need an increase in traffic.

Life may not consist in holding just good cards, but in playing those you hold well. The same might be said about gift cards.

Engagement: Live And Recorded

What:
Announcing a strategic marketing conference that addresses the problem of marketing and engagement in a world of killer competition. Robert Passikoff & Jack Trout and a star-studded panel of experts talk about “Moving Marketing Out of Crisis Mode” - how to make marketing more effective engaging in your organization.

Why:
Join marketing leaders as they discuss how to implement ground breaking practices into your organization. Key session topics include:
• Improving Targeting, Positioning and Engagement
• Strategic Planning
• Involving Management in Marketing Success
• Brand-Driven Product Innovation
• Customer Loyalty

Who:
Speakers include:
- Jack Trout, Founder, Trout & Partners
- Robert Passikoff, Founder, Brand Keys, Inc.
- Bob Waldron, CEO, Yoplait USA
- Kevin Clancy, Chairman, Copernicus Marketing
- Jack Kaplan, Columbia Business School
- Jeffrey Merrihue, CEO, Marketing Sciences Div, Accenture
- Allen Gerber, Brand & Corp. Advertising, KeySpan Energy
- Joe Jaffe, President, Jaffe LLC
- Charlene Weisler, Senior VP, Rainbow Media
- Steve Rivkin, President, Rivkin & Associates
- Andrew S. Whitman, Managing Partner, 2x Management, LLC

Where:
May 21-23, 2006
The Fairmont Hotel - Chicago, IL

How:
For registration, go to: http://www.marketingpower.com/strategic

For those of you unable to travel, we invite you to listen to MarketWatch radio all this week as Robert Passikoff discusses the engagement implication of Hershey’s new alliance with eBay and Budweiser’s foray into the barbeque sauce category.

Customer Loyalty & Engagement Excellence

Satisfaction awards have become ubiquitous on the marketing and communications landscape. The way the data gets sliced and diced, you have to pity the brand that can’t manage to satisfy some segment of consumers in some segment of the category to get one of it’s own. A brand that really wants to differentiate themselves will, apparently, be the one who relegates their award to their corporate trophy cabinet and not their advertising!

OK, it’s not that satisfaction isn’t important, it’s just that satisfaction has become “table stakes.” If you haven’t got it, you don’t play in the game anymore. Recently I saw 2 banks claiming the same award. Wow! Talk about being undifferentiated!

Anyway, readers of our blog or email missives will know that the Holy Grail for marketers today is engagement and loyalty, which are leading-indicators – predictive measures – of sales and profitability and consumer bonding. All the good stuff that guarantees positive attitudinal and behavior effects that result from your marketing and communication efforts.

That’s why on Wednesday, May 17, 2006, Brandweek and Brand Keys will celebrate the 2006 Brandweek Customer Loyalty Awards at an Executive Summit and Awards Luncheon in New York City.

The top 3 winners in 35 categories, chosen by more than 20,000 consumers, will be honored for achieving the highest loyalty ratings through engaging marketing, advertising, and customer service.

This event will be hosted by Brandweek at the historic The Altman Building,
and Joseph Perello, CMO of the City of New York will give the keynote address.

And, if you are a dedicated reader of this blog, or a “Friend of Brand Keys,” you are entitled to a discounted registration fee!

You may register at http://www.customerloyaltyawards.com or call 646-654-5128 for more information.

We hope to see you there.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Reward Points!

“On-line travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity may find it advantageous to award their customers points in hotel chains' frequent guest programs, but the major hotel groups have resisted that step so far,” this according to a report by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research.

The research suggests that, eventually, one hotel chain may break the current reluctance to offer loyalty points for on-line merchant sales.

You think?

No hotel (no brand, for that matter) wants to actually have to give away anything more than they need to, but anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave in Nepal for the past decade knows that rewards points have become an easy trap for many marketers to fall into.

The secret, of course, is engaging your customers in ways that don’t require you to have to fall into the promotional ring-a-round, as so many brands have in the past decade. Differentiation counts for more and more these days.

If you are able to actually differentiate yourself from your competitors – via something other than “get points,” “get more points,” “get more double points” – you get to keep your customers happy without having to give away the store. Or the hotel room, as the case may be.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

Here’s a quote that someone sent us: “Some branding exercises fall short of their goals because they're just aiming to sell the product rather than creating a deeper emotional bond - perhaps even a heartfelt empathy - with consumers.” This blindingly obvious statement came courtesy of the marketing firm, Fletcher Knight.

Unable, we suppose, to lay claim to the phrase that accounts for that kind of connection – emotional bonding – the company came up with yet another phrase to confound the industry, “brand soul,” which they maintain is the emotional bond between the consumer and the brand. This sounds like a line of logic that that should be filed at the Department of Redundancy Department.

Well, we can’t disagree about the need to create the emotional bond between the consumer and the product or service. Brand Keys estimates that engagement and bonding are 70% emotional and only 30% rational. But saying it and doing it are two different things, no matter what name you call it.

Here’s another quote. It was made many years ago by Bill Bernbach: “At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive man, what instincts dominate his action even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him.”

Sound familiar?

Reality Sucks

Recent TV ratings suggest that Donald Trump's reality show, "The Apprentice," is running out of steam. The latest season's shows seemed to have lost 41% of their 18-to-49-year-old audience as compared to a year ago. Issues of real engagement and entertainment notwithstanding, losing a lot of your audience like that is generally frowned upon, and has been know to get shows fired.

More related to issues of viewer engagement, Media Life reports that, the show “lost viewers as the hour dragged on.” That can’t be good. 18-to-49-year-old viewers used to channel surf or wash the dinner dishes and then tune back in to watch the contestants turn on one another and listen to The Donald pontificate in the boardroom before he fired someone!

Industry observers speculate that this may be the last season of "The Apprentice.” The never-humble Mr. Trump, however, defends the show vigorously as "a very successful show. We have more sponsors than we have shows by a factor of five."
“The Apprentice” seems to have become the poster child TV show for product placement, so much so that some media buyers grumble that it has all but turned into an infomercial, a situation which may explain how precisely desperate advertisers have become!

Given the current situation, Mr. Trump might well remember that getting fired is nature's – and the networks’ – way of telling you that maybe you had the wrong job in the first place.