Interactive Media Creating a “Pull” Economy

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Bob Rehak

Compared to printed media, online publications offer several powerful draws.

Lower costs of publication
Lower cost of consumption
Interactivity
Choice/variety (an infinite number of channels)

These appeals are causing a far-reaching shift from a “push” to a “pull” information economy. The decline in ad revenues for printed newspapers and magazines is a barometer of this change. People report spending less time with traditional mass media while spending more on interactive media which enables them to find exactly what they want, not only in terms of information, but also in terms of products and services.

People can now find what they want
instead of what someone else wants them to want

As a consequence everything we consume is increasingly customized. A shift to computer-aided manufacturing is creating the ability to mass-customize goods and services. The technology of manufacturing and the technology of communication are converging in a way that allows manufacturers with unique capabilities and consumers with unique desires to find and collaborate with each other.

Push vs. Pull in the Marketplace:
The Changing Balance of Power

As a result, we’re seeing a steady shift in information/goods/services being pulled through the economy by consumers rather than pushed by publishers and manufacturers.

The “push economy” characterized by mass production in the last century anticipated consumer demand. The “pull economy” reacts to it. Small niches of consumers once dismissed by sellers are a growing market force.

You can see this trend in everything from micro-breweries to built-to-order cars and computers, personal publishing, user configurable software, customized clothing and more.

You can hear this trend in everyday language – “me” is replacing “we.” Intellectual freedom is replacing group-think. People still want to identify with groups; they just don’t want to lose their individuality in the process. Interactivity empowers them. It’s no longer about being part of the machine. It’s about controlling the machine.

Anticipating Demand vs. Collaborating with Customers

Marketing today is still about creating products and services that fit into people lives. The shift is from anticipation to collaboration. Instead of trying to guess what the largest number of people want, marketers need to be agile enough to collaborate with customers to create what each wants on demand.

Digital Media and Purchase Decision-Making

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Bob Rehak

So I got into a debate last month with a friend who runs a very successful Internet marketing company. The subject was purchase decision models.

I argued that before people purchase a brand, they must prefer it. And before they prefer it, they must consider it. And before they consider it, they must be aware of it. The entire process is like a leaky funnel. At each step, a certain number of people fall away.

My friend argued that the only things that mattered in his world were finding the right key words, optimizing web content for search engines, obtaining the top spot on page one of search results, and funneling leads to people who could close the sale. Who was right? We both were.

Awareness

There’s no argument that being the first brand people see when they begin to shop is a huge advantage. (It’s called awareness.) Being first in a Google search is like being at eye level on an end-aisle display in a grocery store, or placing your ad on the inside front cover of a magazine. You virtually guarantee people will see you. But that’s no guarantee people will buy you. You have only gained awareness.

Consideration

In most product categories, people consider three to five choices. They compare prices. They assess performance, risk, value, convenience, and many other factors. Finding the right key words for SEO is very similar to finding the right words to put on a package or in a headline. In all cases, you highlight the benefits most important to a specific target audience. The objective is to get on the prospect’s shopping list – to make them consider you. But success at this stage still doesn’t guarantee a sale. Every organization has competition. You still have to become the preferred alternative.

Preference

Becoming the preferred brand among those considered requires the customer to see your brand as the best fit with his or her needs. When prospects use search engines, they are essentially defining their needs. For instance, they may be looking for a “safe compact car under $20,000.” Search engines help sort options the same way that shoe leather and shopping trips do. “Optimizing” the pitch for a specific audience is always necessary to become the preferred choice. Before search engines, the words we used for optimizing were “market segmentation” and “targeting.”

Purchase

What it takes to win a sale varies by industry. In many, it is crucial to funnel leads to sales people. In others…not so much. Regardless, making the sale is always the final objective in the process and the amount of sales will vary relative to success of efforts earlier in the process.

Purchase Decision Process

In retrospect, I think my friend and I were arguing over semantics. I was talking about a general process. He was talking about how a specific tool worked within the context of that process.

The Internet is somewhat different from mass media in that it can simultaneously be a channel for communication, sales and distribution. Regardless, the steps that consumers or businesses go through in deciding which brand to purchase remain basically the same.

The question is not “Is awareness necessary?” The question is “How will we build awareness?” Any business leader who thinks awareness is not necessary in the Internet Age is limiting his/her potential.

The question is not “Can we skip the consideration and preference phases and send prospects straight to sales people or an order button?” If people want to consider several brands, they will. It’s important for companies to provide enough information to enable prospects to evaluate the alternatives.

Even though the technologies of selling change constantly, buyers never do.

Digital media primarily affect the efficiency with which marketers can reach people, present information and take orders.

Impact of TV Commercials on Preschooler Food Preferences

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a study from the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention in January 2001 titled: The 30-second effect: an experiment revealing the impact of television commercials on food preferences of preschoolers.

DL Borzekowski and TN Robinson, the study’s authors, sought to determine whether televised food commercials influence preschool children’s food preferences.

Study Design

They divided 46 2- to 6-year-old preschool children into two groups. One saw a videotape of a popular cartoon with a commercial embedded in it. The control group saw the cartoon, but without the commercial. The children, from a Head Start program in northern California, were then asked to identify their preferences from pairs of similar products, one of which had been advertised in the embedded commercials.

Findings and Implications

They found that children exposed to commercials were significantly more likely to choose the advertised items than children who were not. They concluded that even brief exposures to televised food commercials can influence food preferences within this age group.

Further, the authors advised adults to limit preschooler’s exposure to television advertisements. They also raised a public policy issue – given the epidemic of childhood obesity – about advertising to young children.

My Take

From personal experience, both as a parent and advertising-industry professional, I believe that this age group lacks the cognitive capabilities to differentiate commercials from programming. Thus, they are exceptionally vulnerable at a time when they are forming preferences and habits that could influence the trajectory of their lives.

Hit the pause button for a moment of ethical reflection.

Kids like “fun.” (Don’t we all?) Advertisers know this and so they pack commercials targeted at kids with flashy animation, bright colors, happy music and fantasy characters. These are the tools of the trade. Advertising targeted at adults uses the same tools for the same reasons.

If the products and services being advertised are not harmful, I believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. We should also remember that television is a competitive marketplace of ideas. Nothing prevents anyone from using the same tools to encourage consumption of healthy foods like Popeye cartoons once did.

Late in life, I gained a significant amount of weight from eating too much unhealthy food. After nutritional counseling, I began eating virtually nothing but lean meats, vegetables and fruits. I lost eighty pounds, nine inches from my waistline, and feel infinitely better now.

However, a curious thing happened in the process. Much of the food advertising I see on TV now repulses me. What used to make me drool – gooey cheese in pizza commercials, for instance – now makes my stomach turn back-flips. Seriously, it’s such an unpleasant feeling that I must look away from the TV. Someone needs to research this phenomenon to see if a heart healthy diet is the best defense against the seductive pull of advertising for less healthy foods – among children and adults. There could be something happening on a cellular level here. When I was fat and tried to diet, the first two weeks were always the hardest. Every time I saw one of those gooey pizza commercials, it triggered cravings. Now, the opposite happens.

Anncr VO: “And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.”

Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six is a comprehensive survey of research stretching back 50 years. It was prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation by the Center on Media and Child Health, Children’s Hospital Boston in 2005. It explores the history of research about the effects of electronic media on children while their minds are still developing and when they are most vulnerable, i.e., before they fully develop critical thinking skills and become conscious of how media can affect them.

Even the youngest children in the United States use a wide variety of screen media. As the Kaiser Family Foundation notes in its introduction to the study, “Some children’s organizations have expressed concerns about the impact of media on young children; others have touted the educational benefits of certain media products. This issue brief provides a comprehensive overview of the major research that has been conducted over the decades on various aspects of young children’s media use, and also highlights the issues that have not been researched to date.”

Topics examined include:

Health
Aggression
Violence
Pro-social media
School Achievement
Attention and Comprehension
Fear Reactions to Frightening Content
Parental Intervention
Learning
Reality
The Family Environment
Response to Advertising
Computer Use

In regard to advertising, research has shown that children in this age group are unable to understand its persuasive intent. This raises questions about unfair manipulation that could affect a child’s later growth and trajectory in life. For instance, among the studies cited, research showed that:

• The likelihood of obesity among low-income
multi-ethnic preschoolers (aged one to five
years) increased for each hour per day of TV or
video viewed. Children who had TV sets in their
bedrooms (40% of their sample) watched more TV
and were more likely to be obese (Dennison, Erb &
Jenkins, 2002).
• Children (average age of four years) preferred
specific foods advertised on video more than
children who had not seen the foods advertised on
video (Borzekowski & Robinson, 2001).
• Body fat and body mass index increased most
between the ages of four and 11 among children
who watched the most TV (Proctor, Moore, Gao,
Cupples, Bradlee, et al, 2003).

This survey of research concludes with a call for more research in specific areas. One of those is “media interventions.”

“In order to mediate the effects of media on young children, interventions such as media literacy programs and parental education curricula should be designed and evaluated. There have been almost no media literacy programs designed for zero- to six-year-olds. The United States is far behind other countries in this regard; Australia
and the Netherlands begin teaching media literacy in
preschool and continue it through higher education.
Research in older children indicates that media literacy
may be the most effective intervention with which to
counter negative media effects. Media influences on young children are not only strong and pervasive, but also potentially controllable – especially in the early years when parents determine the majority of their children’s media exposure.”

My next post will deal with media literacy programs which these researchers say may be the most effective form of intervention.

Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Bob Rehak

A 2009 study by Jennifer L. Harris, John A. Bargh, and Kelly D. Brownell of Yale University published in Health Psychology and titled Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior poses some interesting questions about whether exposure to food advertising stimulates the appetite even when you are not hungry. The study sheds light on how exposure to food advertising may contribute to the obesity epidemic which both a U.S. Surgeon General and World Health Organization have labeled a leading cause of death, disease and disability.

The study tested the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing contributed to obesity by triggering the urge to snack on available food.

The researchers studied two groups: elementary-school-age children and adults.

Children watched a cartoon that contained either food or non-food advertising and received a snack while watching.

Adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted:

Fun product benefits
Nutrition benefits

They also measured a control group that saw no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment.

For both children and adults, they measured the amount of snack foods consumed during and after exposure to the advertising.

They found that:

Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising.
Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the control group.

They concluded, “In both groups, food advertising increased consumption of products not advertised. This effect was not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences.” They say that their experiments “demonstrate the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors and thus influence far more than brand preference alone.”

My take: People overeat for many reasons. This study shows the power of television to stimulate the appetite is one of them. However, it doesn’t address how much television contributes to overeating compared to other causes. That’s not criticism, just an observation about the study’s scope.

Speaking as someone who suffered serious health consequences from overeating and who recently shed 80 pounds, I found that my obesity was largely related to eating too many high-calorie meals at restaurants.

The meals were both over-portioned and high in fat. I began losing weight simply by becoming more aware of the caloric content of my foods through a 99-cent iPhone app. It helped me make healthier food choices. I also began vigorously exercising for an hour each day. I still watch just as much television as I always have.

I suspect that the priming effect discussed in this study is a contributing cause to obesity but not the main cause. Insofar as television influences food choice, we should also not forget that it can influence food choice in a positive direction. In my opinion, the largest factors contributing to obesity are lack of conscious thought about:

How many calories we consume each day
How poor food choices can negatively impact health.

All that food on television may look appetizing, but after $250,000 bypass surgery, believe me, a 99-cent iPhone app looks far more appealing.

Credibility of Advertising

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Bob Rehak

More than three in four consumers say most of the claims that brands make in advertisements are exaggerated, according to a study by Lab42.

Specifically, among surveyed consumers, 57.4% say advertising claims are “somewhat exaggerated,” and 19.0% say they are “very exaggerated,” Lab42 reported.

Only 2.8% of consumers surveyed say the claims in various ads are very accurate. For the full report, click here.

How did we come to this sad, sorry state of affairs? How did a whole industry undermine its own credibility without raising alarms? Here’s my personal take. The advertising industry I joined as a young man (at Leo Burnett in Chicago in 1972) was much different than the industry today. It seemed every commercial I wrote was scrupulously reviewed by agency lawyers, industry associations, and government regulators. Likewise, research ruled.

Commercials were tested, refined and retested in animatic form before production. Then commercials were tested again in finished form after production. Commercials were more trusted then and felt more compelling. They worked. Even clients believed … in the process.

Then during the Eighties, creatives revolted. They felt straight-jacketed. They argued that:

Research forced everything into the same expected mold.
Lawyers sapped the fun out of commercials.
Advertising was failing to differentiate brands and make them stand out.
People didn’t watch TV to look at the ads; they watched it to be entertained.
Advertising needed to be more entertaining to succeed.

At that point, the race for eyeballs had begun. The creative development process was more about eye-candy. Writers and art directors argued that if people weren’t watching, there was no way the commercial could succeed. Of course, they were right.

But that logic contained several fatal flaws:

It assumed that people weren’t attending to commercials.
Gaining attention is only the first battle for customers’ hearts.
Unless advertising also manages to convert that awareness into interest and preference, it has failed.

While the Nineties were certainly a fun period to be in advertising, the industry was sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The eye-candy theorists failed to realize the devastation that unregulated, unpersuasive advertising would wreak on the industry.

Today, that eye-candy leaves many with a bad aftertaste. Perhaps it’s time for the pendulum to begin switching back. Better yet, perhaps it’s time for agencies to evolve to a higher level and to understand some basic truths.

In many cases, advertising makes people aware, but fails to gain interest. Therefore, prospects don’t seriously consider the client’s product or service. Said another way, prospects don’t put the client on their shopping lists.

The process looks like this. Information needs increase at every level.

Before people will purchase a brand, they must prefer it.
Before people will prefer a brand, they must be interested enough in it to put it on their shopping lists and explore it further.
Before people will be interested in a brand, they must be aware of it.

The battle for dollars takes place on four levels, not just one. Awareness, interest and preference come before purchase. Overlooking any of those steps is fatal to a sale.

And trust is essential to every single one of them. If people don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you. People don’t buy from advertising they don’t trust, and they certainly won’t buy from companies they don’t trust. Exaggeration for the sake of eyeballs does not serve clients well.

How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing: The Value of References

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Bob Rehak

Source: nielsen.com.
New research by NM Incite helps uncover what impacts social media may have for marketers trying to build their brands and connect with their audience more directly.

Consumers are spending more time than ever using social media, as demonstrated in the Social Media Report recently published by Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company. Building on this report, research by NM Incite helps uncover what impacts social media may have for marketers trying to build their brands and connect with their audience more directly.

Social media plays an important role in how consumers discover, research, and share information about brands and products. In fact, 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites. Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and 3 out of 5 create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81% of females vs. 72% of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.

Research shows that social media is increasingly a platform consumers use to express their loyalty to their favorite brands and products, and many seek to reap benefits from brands for helping promote their products. Among those who share their brand experiences through social media, at least 41 percent say they do so to receive discounts. When researching products, social media users are likely to trust the recommendations of their friends and family most, and results from Nielsen’s Global Online Survey indicate that 2 out of 3 respondents said they were either highly or somewhat influenced by advertising with a social context.

Social Media also plays a key role in protecting brands: 58 percent of social media users say they write product reviews to protect others from bad experiences, and nearly 1 in 4 say they share their negative experiences to “punish companies”. Many customers also use social media to engage with brands on a customer service level, with 42 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledging that they expect customer support within 12 hours of a complaint.

Research dated October 14, 2011. For the full report: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/how-social-media-impacts-brand-marketing/

My personal take: the value of social media in a marketing program is “references.” Other research I have seen (see post on Future of Digital Media & Responsive Design) indicates that click-throughs from conventional banner ads are not the primary value.

Media Impacts

Unintended Consequences

Tag Archives: Brand Preference