Advertisers, Consumers Disagree on Ad Effectiveness (Harris)

Advertisers, Consumers Disagree on Ad Effectiveness

Though advertisers and consumers both agree that amusing ads are effective and scary and guilt-inducing ads are not, they don’t see eye-to-eye on the efficacy of other types of advertising appeals, including those that make people stop and think, provide new information, and show before/after scenarios, according to (pdf) a LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll.

The study also found that ads that “talk money,” including those that show a value proposition and offer luxuries for less during the recession are much more appealing to consumers than those that take an empathetic or cheerleading approach in these times of economic hardship.

Effectiveness of Specific Ad Types

When it comes to types of ads, the study found that advertisers and consumers agree on the effectiveness of some, but disagree on others:

• While more than half of advertisers believe ads that make people stop and think (53%) and ads that give people new information (51%) are very effective, just three in ten consumers (30% and 29% respectively) feel the same.
• 26% of advertisers think ads that are integrated into the feel of the program, that is has the same tone as the program it is based in, are very effective compared with just 7% of consumers.
• When it comes to ads that show before/after, 24% of advertisers say they are very effective while 13% of consumers say they are very effective.
• One in five advertisers (21%) say ads that reinforce a message already known are very effective, compared with only 10% of consumers.
• Consumers and advertisers both like ads that amuse. More than one-third (34%) of consumers and 41% of advertisers say entertaining ads are very effective, and one-third of both consumers (33%) and advertisers (32%) say funny ads are very effective. However, there is a fine line in amusement as just one in ten consumers (11%) and 14% of advertisers say ads that don’t take themselves seriously are very effective. Almost one in five consumers (18%) say these ads are not at all effective.
• 41% of consumers (41%) 32% of advertisers believe that scary ads are not at all effective.
• 27% of consumers and 18% of advertisers say ads about a serious topic that make people feel guilty are not at all effective.

Recession Consumers Like Value Propositions

The study also examined the perceived effectiveness of ads currently being used to address the economic crisis, and revealed that value proposition strategies and “luxuries for less” approaches resonate most with consumers.

Notable findings:

• Three in five advertisers (61%) say they are using a value proposition strategy, promoting sales, coupons and discounts. Almost three in five consumers (57%) say that this strategy is working very well or well to help them sell their products or services.
• Two in five advertisers (39%) are using empathy approaches, attempting to convey that companies understand what consumers are going through. But only one-quarter of consumers (24%) say empathy works very or somewhat well, and one-third (33%) say it does not work at all.
• One-fourth of advertisers (25%) say they are using cheerleading (”we’ve made it through tough times before, we’ll do it again, and we can help you do it.”) Almost two in five (38%) of consumers, however, say that these types of ads do not work at all.
• Though less than one in five advertisers (18%) say they are using the “luxuries for less” proposition, one-third of consumers (34%) say these types of ads work very well or well in selling products or services

The study also found that there is a generational divide as the younger age groups (18- 34) are more likely to say each of these four strategies works very well or well. In fact, more than half of 18-34 year olds (51%) say they think “luxuries for less” works very well or well compared to just 19% of those 55 and older.

Previously published results from the same poll also revealed that consumers are very frustrated by many of today’s popular types of internet ads.

About the survey: The poll was conducted online within the US from June 24-26, 2009, among 2,025 adults (ages 18+) and between June 22 and 30, 2009 among 1,105 advertisers. For the adults, figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents‘ propensity to be online. Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population.

Michelob Joins Keg Party at Twitter, but Will Its Tweets Draw Heat?

Trouble May Follow A-B, Given Age-Verification Flap That Felled Bud.TV

by Jeremy Mullman Published: June 01, 2009

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Twitter users who opt to follow the online musings of Anheuser-Busch's Michelob may be surprised to receive a quick direct-message inquiry from the beer brand asking if they're of legal drinking age.

Being asked how old they are isn't likely to deter underage drinkers desperate to read Michelob's tweets, which focus on beer styles and food pairings and the like. But it does underscore how carefully alcohol marketers -- required by industry guidelines to limit ad messages to venues where at least 70% of the audience is of legal drinking age -- are treading into Twitter.

Michelob is A-B's only tweeting brand, while its chief rival, MillerCoors, has yet to use Twitter at all for marketing purposes. "It's appealing to us, but we're looking at how we'd wash it against the marketing code," said a MillerCoors spokesman.

Tom Shipley, senior director-digital marketing at A-B, said the brewer is using Twitter "because our adult consumers increasingly want to have a conversation with us." He said asking would-be followers how old they are is consistent with the age checks the brewer uses on its branded websites.

Age-verification concerns with online media have flummoxed A-B before. Its much-touted Bud.tv site, on which it spent millions creating its own content, was ultimately undermined by a vigorous firewall that checked viewers' age claims against databases of state IDs, in some cases keeping out of-age consumers. Yet activists and state attorneys general said A-B wasn't doing enough to keep underage users off the site, leaving the No. 1 brewer in a lose-lose situation.

'Lack of dignity'
It wouldn't be hard for brewers and distillers to provoke a similar backlash regarding social networks. "Twitter is for kids, and this is a way to put these brand names in their faces," said George Hacker, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which lobbies for more restrictions on alcohol marketing. "This is just the latest example of a lack of real dignity in the industry."

And that's in response to relatively few efforts from older-skewing brands such as Michelob and Beam Global's upscale Tres Generaciones line extension of its Sauza tequila brand, which retails for upward of $40 a bottle.

Beam, which adopted more-stringent codes for its marketing in 2007, has created a Twitter persona for deceased tequila patriarch Don Cenobio Sauza.

Peter Wijk, senior director-global tequilas at Beam, said Twitter is a perfect fit with Beam's word-of-mouth-driven approach to brand marketing, which puts the company's entire marketing budget in the service of creating chatter about its brands. "We want to have brands people want to talk about, and social media is an excellent way to start a dialogue," he said.

But can Beam, which earned plaudits in 2007 by adopting tougher marketing standards than the spirits industry requires, do that without skirting its own guidelines? Mr. Wijk said it can, noting that Twitter provides the company with demographics information that shows that more than 75% of the people reading its communications are of legal drinking age.

Still, he said, social media is not a risk-free proposition for brewers and distillers. Sauza, he said, has spawned a series of fan pages on Facebook and other corners of the internet, and there's no guarantee those sites will show the brand in a good light, or to the right audience. "You do let go of some control in social media," he said. "In our industry, that can be somewhat worrying."

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses

New Orleans Pizza Joint, Chicago Yogurt Chain See Results From Promos on Microblogging Service

by Abbey Klaassen  Published: May 18, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- All those brands trying to figure the ROI of Twitter? They might do well to follow the lead of the local pizza joint.

NAKED PIZZA: Recent Twitter promotion brought in 150% of a recent day's business.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business.

"Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful," said Jeff Leach, the restaurant's co-founder. "Sure, there's the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. ... But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?"

Mr. Leach is one of many small businesses using Twitter as a marketing tool -- and his group could turn out to be a lucrative market for the fast-growing site if other local entrepreneurs have similar experiences.

Twitter's real-time messaging service is turning out to be a boon to local establishments, who are starting to get onboard -- mostly because the message pops into users' Twitter feeds and they're close enough to act on it. For Mr. Leach, who is targeting people within a three-mile radius of his store, that's key. He's gone so far as to erect a billboard outside his store publicizing Naked Pizza's Twitter handle (which got him written up in TechCrunch). After that, Twitter contacted him; he's going to be working with the company to beta test some applications for small businesses.

Low barrier to entry
Twitter has a golden trait that appeals to small businesses: It's easy.

"It's simpler than a blog, than setting up a Facebook or MySpace page," said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, which specializes in the local-marketing sector. "It's very much like e-mail. And e-mail, from small-business standpoint, has been one of the most effective marketing tools." The social nature of it is also appealing: Consumers are already using Twitter as a question-and-answer recommendation service and to forward ("retweet") messages they receive from brands.

Michael Farah, founder and CEO of Berry Chill, a yogurt shop with three Chicago locations, has been using Twitter to send out "Sweet Tweets" -- promos that require users to show they're Twitter followers of the store. In a month, he's logged 700 followers and, he said, "sweet tweets" haven't diminished his daily sales.

"Our last big promotion we gave away 1,100 yogurts -- $5,500 worth of product -- but sales were the same as the day before," he said. "The people who were existing customers standing in line attracted people who hadn't tried it."

Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence

Add the location-based technology nearly every mobile device will soon have, and many say it'll really earn its keep as a killer local app.

Potential
"The reality is Twitter's got all sorts of business models available to it," said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Venture Partners and a Twitter investor. "We're putting together monetization framework, things like features for commercial accounts, which could be for global companies all the way down to local companies." He said the business model will be largely driven by the creativity and needs of the businesses using it.

Naked Pizza's wish list includes analytics tools that help it understand the most effective times of the day or week to deliver promotional messages, much like an e-mail-marketing-services provider would, and other applications geared toward helping consumers find local offers. Mr. Leach, who spends up to $60,000 a year on direct mail and almost $2,500 a year on e-mail-marketing services, said he'd gladly pay a monthly fee for services like those.

In the next 90 days, he said, he's aiming to sign up 5,000 followers that have city of New Orleans as their location. As he puts it: "That's 5,000 people I don't have to mail a postcard to."

How Eminem's Marketing Team Is Using Twitter to Build Buzz - Twitter Results

Oblique Tweets About Fictional Rehab Facility Heighten Mystery Around New Album 'The Relapse'

by Charlie Moran 
Published: May 18, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Musicians from Q-Tip to Jimmy Eat World have discovered Twitter as a DIY means of engaging their fans, using the conversational medium to not only let people know they'll be in Tulsa this summer but make them feel personally involved enough to actually show up. Now one of the best-selling artists of the past decade is using it in a very different way -- and building up substantial buzz for what may be the first album of the year to go platinum.

Eminem

In the world of hip-hop, a five-year absence is an eternity. So for Eminem's new album, "The Relapse," the marketing team at Aftermath/Interscope Records has mounted an audacious campaign that playfully smears the lines between the rapper's troubled past and the nightmarish, fictionalized world of his latest work. By using Twitter to dispense short, often disturbing thoughts and links to multimedia components revolving around a mental institution, they've helped make the album the most highly anticipated hip-hop release of the year -- and set it up for a sequel in the second half of 2009.

Paul Rosenberg, the nine-time Grammy-winning rapper's manager, said the marketing effort isn't necessarily the biggest push Eminem has attempted, but it's clearly the most creative.

"In the past, when we've tried to do things in a new way for Eminem, it was just more of OK, cookie-cutter types of ideas," he said. "But in this one we really pushed ourselves, because of the time we're living in, to create a different experience."

Two kinds of tweets
That experience lives on several social networks, but for many fans it has originated on Twitter. Some of the tweets are behind-the-scenes updates leading up to the album's release tomorrow ("They are still editing my video") while others are seemingly non-sequitur paranoia ("There's no place to hide ..."), complete with links to images that suggest Eminem is in a mental hospital and/or rehab facility called Pompsomp Hills.

Other tweets have included a link to the album's cover, a mosaic of pills that form an image of Eminem's face; a screenshot of his upcoming paid iPhone and iPod Touch game set in Pompsomp Hills; a link to a blood-splattered video for his single "3 A.M." that's set in the fictional clinic; and a link to an interactive web experience that's set there as well. That a simple Google search reveals a just-amateur-enough-to-look-real website for Pompsomp Hills makes the narrative details even more discomforting for fans familiar with Eminem's recent real-life troubles with prescription drugs, which put him in rehab and led to his hospitalization for pneumonia in early 2008, as he recently revealed in a Vibe cover story. Omelet, a branding, advertising and entertainment agency based in Los Angeles, helped develop the Pompsomp Hills website, along with other facets of the nontraditional push.

The entirety of "Relapse" was leaked onto the web last week, and in it the rapper reportedly describes his problems in both blunt terms and twisted fantasies, bringing life, marketing and product full circle.

Dennis Dennehy, head of marketing and publicity at Interscope, said Twitter has been the perfect platform to slowly build anticipation since October 2008, when the album was first announced.

"By the nature of the way the information came out, you've had a trail of breadcrumbs to the album," Mr. Dennehy said. "The way we approached this is 'Let's keep that trail coming.'"

Impressive results
While Eminem hasn't relied exclusively on Twitter to get the word out, the effort has produced some impressive results. According to Compete, Eminem.com reached 113,868 unique visitors during April, while the most popular of his tweets -- which linked to Therelapse.com on May 7 -- reached at least 41,704 people within just one week, according to an analysis of data provided to Ad Age by Tweetreach. And data provided by Native Digital, the start-up behind music-buzz tracker We Are Hunted, suggest that Eminem was the most-talked-about artist on Twitter last week, the week before the album's release.

Elliott Wilson, founder and CEO of RapRadar.com, said the micro-blogging tool is perfectly suited to the rapper, because it attracts voyeuristic fans the same way his autobiographical songs do. Mr. Wilson pointed out that one of Eminem's fictional characters, Stan -- a dangerously obsessive fan -- has, in the web lexicon, morphed into lowercase slang for a diehard yet non-violent admirer.

"Twitter is, in a way, the world of 'stans' who now have access to artists," Mr. Wilson said. Although Eminem is using the service in a "real typical promotion way, the fact that he's willing to be part of that, to be in that world, has helped him build up mystery around the record."

Scott Yeti, a marketing consultant to film studios and record labels who runs the hip-hop-marketing blog Woooha, said Eminem's use of storytelling on the web for this campaign goes well beyond the scope of most music marketing.

"The 'Relapse' campaign is very similar to how we would break out a major movie," Mr. Yeti said via e-mail. "The same elements are there, which is rare these days considering the lack of money labels usually have."

"To me, he is taking album marketing to a whole new level," he added. "It truly is an event."

Not the first
Eminem isn't the first artist to build up a reality-melting, cinematic backdrop for an album release. For Nine Inch Nails' album "Year Zero" in 2007, frontman Trent Reznor hired 42 Entertainment to expand the album's dystopian story line into a dizzying array of cryptic websites that could be discovered only by rabid fans. Mr. Reznor recently announced -- through Twitter, of course -- that he's continuing to develop the concept, and it may become a TV show.

'Relapse'

Some in the hip-hop-marketing world downplay the impact of the messaging service, and Eminem and Aftermath/Interscope are not putting all their eggs in the Twitter nest. They're also hitting a variety of media normally used in music campaigns, such as radio appearances, a performance at the MTV Movie Awards, and cover stories in Vibe and XXL. Yet some of those "old media" placements are atypical as well: On Vibe.com, Eminem is a celebrity judge for the "No. 1 Stan" freestyle-rap competition, and XXL is featuring the first part of a Punisher-Eminem comic in conjunction with Marvel Comics; the second half is free online.

Eminem has hit up "Jimmy Kimmel Live" once already, and is planning to make two more appearances within the week and bring 200 laid-off autoworkers to one of the late-night talk show's tapings. He also co-starred in animated form with "Stewie Griffin" from "Family Guy" as the pair hosted Fox's Sunday animation block last night.

Characteristic publicity
Now that the album is out in the wild, some of the rapper's lyrical barbs are generating much of the attention-grabbing publicity he's created in the past. The single "We Made You" and its video skewer a number of women pop stars and make lewd references to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, which prompted an unsurprising response from conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly, and some have taken notice of (and offense to) the track "My Mom," which contains an unflattering pill-popping reference to the late Heath Ledger. But perhaps the biggest blowback from the album has come from TV personality Nick Cannon, who took offense to criticism of his wife, pop icon Mariah Carey, and publicly challenged Eminem to a fight.

That kind of public beef only feeds Eminem's mystique, and, regardless of how well "Relapse" sells, his work on the album and its holistic promotion are signs that Twitter can be just as effective at drawing out mystery and building anticipation as it is at making bands and brands more accessible.

1. Eminem / Marshall MathersIt's 3 a.m.
   83,933 followers · from Detroit · updated about 1 hour ago
2. MrEminem / eminemLiven it
   4,775 followers · from in my head · updated 7:27 PM May 10th
3. TheRealEminem / EminemThe real Slim Shady
   2,872 followers · from Detroit, Michigan · updated about 17 hours ago
4. EminemUK / Eminem
   2,375 followers · updated 6:59 AM Feb 6th
5. slimshadyrec / Eminem
   692 followers · updated 6:23 AM Apr 11th
6. Kuri012 / Eminem's Wife!
   518 followers · from Charleston South Carolina · updated about 8 hours ago
7. mfb_Eminem / mfb eminem
   308 followers
8. jonhmpk83 / EMINEM FANEhttp://www.myspace.com/joeyred83
   241 followers · from CALIFORTNIACATION · updated 1:37 AM May 18th

Amid Constant Deluge of Requests, Marketers Must Work Harder to Persuade People to Join Their Pages

Ed: With the massive change, deluge of surveys and irrelevant data - are brand marketers simply lost?

by Emma Hall 

LONDON (AdAge.com) -- Welcome to social-media message overload.

The constant barrage of invites to sign up for this group or download that app are starting to wear on social-network users, presenting big challenges for the brands and marketers who are looking to use these sites to aggregate fans and cultivate relationships with customers.

LOVE IT OR HATE IT: The strong opinions of Marmite provide fora fun discussion space.

Nearly a third of social networkers say they are fed up with the constant requests to join groups and try new applications, according to research by the Internet Advertising Bureau in the U.K. That means marketers will need to work harder and keep innovating if they want to harness the consumer power of social networks and persuade people to join their sponsored sites or pages.

When asked "What do you dislike about social networks?" by far the highest response, at 31%, was that there are too many invites to install applications, followed by 16% who said "when advertising isn't relevant to me." Slightly more than 5% complained about messages from brands and another 5% actually lamented the addictiveness of social networks. About 12% said they had no complaints. The research showed that 7% of respondents sign up to find out about brands.

"From a marketer's perspective, social networks look brilliant on paper," said Alistair Beattie, head of strategic planning at AKQA, London. "It's a switched-on crowd with a huge amount of time who hold brands close to them. The difficulty is that they regard this as their space. We have all become our own source of entertainment. ... But there is a resistance to being advertised at in our own spaces."

Keeping spam down
Amy Kean, IAB senior marketing manager, said, "Despite [social networking's] popularity, this study shows that respect for the user is just as important in social media. Users will not respond to spam or irrelevant advertising." And controlling those intrusions will have to become a higher priority for social networks, said Union Square Venture's Fred Wilson at Ad Age's recent digital conference.

"One of [social networks'] biggest costs is 'environmental mediation,' or keeping the bad people at bay," Mr. Wilson said.

AKQA had success with a Marmite group on Facebook. The savory spread's advertising message is "Love it or hate it," so the group works well as a discussion topic for social networkers. Fans post recipes, discuss weird and wonderful ways to enjoy the sticky black spread, tell tales of conversion to the taste and share frustrations about not being able to purchase it outside the U.K.

Too often, Mr. Beattie said, advertising on social networks is "still a traditional interruptive approach where brands are piggybacking on content that people value."

The IAB research found that exclusive content, which appeals to 28% of social networkers, and a genuine interest in the message, which attracts 37%, are the keys to a positive response from consumers on social networks. And because only 5% say that they actively dislike messages from brands, there are big opportunities for marketers who can hit the right notes.

"To be popular, brands need to have a personality and be someone that people want to be friends with," Mr. Beattie said. "The guiding principle is to offer things that are not available elsewhere, things that give social kudos or bragging rights. Brands are part of the fabric of people's lives and ultimately most are happy to be identified as friends of a brand."

The IAB study of nearly 2,000 internet users also showed that social networks are taking on extra relevance in the current economic climate. Forty-one percent of members say they now place even more value on ratings and reviews from family and friends on a social network. Mobile social-networking is also on the increase. Updating social-network sites via mobile handsets is increasing, with 25% of all respondents logging on to check or update their pages.