Communication & Effectiveness
Key numbers (at least for those of us who are numerically inclined) tend to stay in one’s mind. That’s the problem with pseudo-numbers. We may first see them with flashing warning lights (such as “X% at a 95% confidence level”), but the caveats fade and the numbers remain when the numbers are public and it's election season.
My favorite pseudo-numbers are the Nielsen Ratings. They purport to tell us (to the decimal point) the number and share of viewers who watch each television program.
Mass marketers embarking on a big campaign start with television and then move on to social media. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are no longer merely afterthoughts, but they are not typically the centerpiece for the effort except for smaller brands targeting younger people. And, while we have a lot of brands that are and always were Internet-focused (Amazon, E-Trade and Facebook itself come to mind), we don’t yet have m-brands, but we will.
About a decade ago, the marketing world focused on the Internet and its power. The impact of search marketing and e-commerce was evident and we all scrambled to adapt. The old days of mass TV advertising were dead, we all thought.
One of my recent posts was about the virtues of not targeting because we don’t do it particularly well and actionably enough. I am content with that perspective – for brands that are built and budgeted to sell millions of units each year.
But, what about smaller brands?
Targeting is the key to good marketing. Figuring out who to appeal to is often the critical ingredient to a successful campaign.
The target specification is always there – in media buys, in research specs, in strategic plans. There is always a demographic aspect and often a behavioral one. Sometimes there are attitudes or psychographics. A great deal of thought and research dollars go into these decisions…and yet, how sound is the thought?
Who owns the brand?
I have been looking at this issue from the perspective of the media coverage, which focuses on the marketing and communications aspects in the age of social media. Any consumer can put your brand in the spotlight and often does so in a negative way after a bad experience. The examples are legion – starting with angry cable subscribers and PC buyers.
Corporate brands often run into trouble, or into a strong new competitor, or simply run out of steam. Companies then put significant effort into rebranding or developing a new corporate brand positioning, sometimes with a new corporate brand name, often with a new visual identity. Too often, once these efforts are complete, they move immediately into telling the world what the brand (now) means.
A few reflections on grading the ads:
- Very divergent views in USA Today, WSJ and NYTimes
- However, unclear what standards each are using
- USA Today viewer meter continues to trouble me because it always tilts to entertaining (if not gross) ads with animals, so we get more and more of those types of ads
First Quarter:
Ads about as weak as the Patriots at the start of the game.