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I was prompted to ask myself this question when passing the Oxo Tower. When Liebig took over and developed this building in the late 1920’s they wanted to include a illuminated signs to promote their Oxo brand but permission for the advertisements was refused. Their neat way round this problem was to incorporate ‘windows’ with coloured glass that, to this day, have back lighting and spell the name OXO on each side. Now I have no direct knowledge but I would be pretty sure the stir caused by building the tower increased the fame of their brand that already had a reputation for providing a meaty taste to many who could rarely afford the real thing. Nowadays though, it is part of the fabric - still recalled as the Oxo Tower by most Londoners - but of negligible influence on brand sales. I suggest this neutralisation is a common phenomenon: beyond a bit of trade entertaining, when did the Stella Artois Tennis championship stop having a positive sales effect? When did interest in the Gold Blend soap opera get separated from the coffee? Does our linkage of gondoliers with ‘Just One Cornetto’ still make us more likely to eat the ice cream? There is a real danger of thinking that communication recall and strong brand linkage are necessarily good things. Keeping communication effective means knowing when it is right to move on and it takes very sensitive research to spot the ‘tipping point’. Terry Prue
The one – completely accidental – exception came several years ago when I purchased an iPod some months before they were available in the UK. I opted for a 5Gb version as it seemed unimaginable that I could ever require any more memory.
I was fondly recalling both my brief moment as an “Early Adopter” and my continued insistence in buying iPods with insufficient memory when my current iPod told me that I had again run out of memory.
The reason for the shortfall was down to my love of the podcast.
Just a few years ago, podcasting was hailed as the next big thing in media, something that would revolutionize and democratise audio output and threaten the future of traditional radio. After a brief moment in the sun….nothing; podcasting seemed to be forgotten.
Podcasting though has continued to develop and grow. It is estimated that around 8 million adults in the UK have downloaded a podcast (16% of the adult population, around the same number who have ever used Twitter) and that half download and listen to a podcast every week. There are similar estimates from America.
Some of the download figures for individual shows are impressive – Adam Carolla’s podcast from the USA (a free daily 90-minute show) was downloaded sixty-million times in two years and The Ricky Gervais Show has now been downloaded over 300 million times since 2005.
One interesting aspect of podcasts (for those programmes that are commercially minded) is the role they may play in advertising.
With over 150,000 podcasts available a month, they tend to cater for niche audiences. At a point where there is legitimate concern that digital media will overload consumers with advertising messages, could podcasts offer a more targeted and trusted alternative?
A study by Edison Research (Consumer Attitudes To Podcast Advertising Study. 2010) seemed to suggest a real opportunity. Speaking to podcasts listeners the study found …
In summary, more likely to be positive towards a brand, receptive to their messages and a preference to purchase.
Anecdotally, I would also argue that sponsor recall is also increased. I personally find the stickability of brand names far stronger than for other media.
I believe that recall and brand acceptance is aided by two factors. The lack of advertising clutter is clearly a benefit - the number of messages per hour is significantly reduced as compared to commercial radio.
The second reason supports the findings of the Edison Research study. The various sponsors act as the podcast audience’s enabler – their investment allows them the opportunity to receive free content they personally value. All the brand asks in return is that the audience listen to 2-3 minutes of brand messaging within a given hour – it seems a fair trade off.
Hosts of podcasts will often openly build on this relationship.
On Adam Carolla’s podcast, Carolla will do his own live reads for his advertisers and sponsors (as is common on America radio).
When talking about his sponsors, Carolla openly talks about the basic economics of the business with his audience – primarily a wildly loyal audience of one of the most valued advertising targets of men, 18-49. He asks them to reward the sponsor for their support by giving them their business or at least to investigate what they have to offer.
His advertisers on his network have ranged from Amazon to Bing, to online brands that can measure their impact through promotional codes (proflowers.com, gotomeeting.com) to newer brands such as Man Grate (a grilling tool), which has reported impressive rises in direct sales due to their involvement with the podcast.
The Edison Research supports the potential impact of this personal advocacy from talent, with listeners claiming to be more four times more engaged with advertising messages read by the podcast host.
Adding to the attractiveness of the commercial proposition is that the reach and impact can be cheaply and accurately assessed (download numbers, direct call to action measured with a show specific code to enter at checkout).
Despite the potential the podcast opportunity remains largely untapped, with the audience size increasing far quicker than the advertising revenue. Indeed the advertising revenue remains a tiny proportion of online spend (less than 0.2%).
However, if the audience continues to grow (and traditional media’s audience continues to decline) and podcast listeners continue to show a positive propensity towards sponsors, these shows surely offer an interesting alternative or supplementary strategy to intrepid brands.
Dan Lewis
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not HPI Research.
From the week long build-up and crazy press conferences, to the corporate tie-ins and highly sought after advertising slots broadcasting to over 110m Americans – It’s a serious business, but it’s also an innovative one, which often show glimpses of the future of TV advertising.
Given that it costs $100,000 a second to advertise on TV during the Super Bowl itself (a 20% increase on last year), it’s no real surprise to see this year that ads were encouraging viewers to tweet about their brand with hash tag prompts at the close of the creative, to make it work a little bit harder (and for longer). Audi were the first to do this in 2011 and continued their Super Bowl advertising innovation this year with an ironic Twilight-themed commercial that not only trended on Twitter, but had 6.5 million YouTube hits inside 48 hours and various social media spin-offs on Facebook and the like.
So how does this and can this influence the UK? Well, X Factor is about the closest the UK comes to country-grinds-to-a-halt TV – Audi (again), dairy giants Yeo Valley and Muller and British stalwart M&S have all had very memorable recent slots, but a formula for success which the Super Bowl has (ie. obscure messaging and the brand not taking itself too seriously) has yet to emerge for the UK market. Indeed, these brands with seriously hyped ads during X Factor have had, to be honest, pretty mixed success.
While advertisers may want to create a Super Bowl equivalent on this side of the pond, I think the UK might just remain an enigma. X Factor viewers remain demographically skewed towards females and 16-34s, while the Super Bowl audience is hugely varied. Other massive events like the World Cup only come around every 4 years (and, let’s face it, often don’t last too long) and are frequently broadcasted by the BBC to some extent anyway, much like 2012’s biggest event. We also suffer from having a number of ads which aren’t made for the British market.
What we should look to do is take some of the best bits from the new Super Bowl ads each year, like the increased online interactivity we saw for 2012. Oh, and while we’re at it, probably try to get on board with this slightly strange egg-chasing game – It certainly seems here to stay.
Tom Wakeman
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not HPI Research.
If you think about ‘rational’ communication there will always be a problem of different levels of receptiveness across subgroups:
Making your case through the emotions neatly sidesteps these problems because we can all respond - wherever we are in the buying cycle and whatever our proclivity for absorbing rational information. The nature of much emotional response is that it is beyond our control to avoid being affected - it goes straight through!
Does this pose a problem for communication response research? Not in our experience, because within commercial probabilities (i.e. excluding wider emotional events that may cause trauma) an emotional ‘hit’ will not be hidden from our rational selves. We know when an ad has really moved us and will respond accordingly if the research is sensitively conducted.
This is not to decry the value of recording direct biometric responses per se but to give context - the depth interview, the focus group and a good quantitative survey are still quick and effective safeguards against putting large budgets behind ineffectual work.
Terry Prue
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not HPI Research.
Latest report from IBM says that 13% of online Christmas shopping in the US was done via mobile devices, up from 4.5% a year ago. The majority of these transactions came from iPhones and iPads. However, is ‘mobile’ a rather optimistic term to use for this channel? How many of these transactions came from consumers actually out and about, standing in a shop, riding the bus, waiting for a friend in a bar?
Alas, the way the data were collected meant IBM couldn’t ask the killer question: “Where were you when you placed your order?” My hunch is that a goodly proportion would have said ‘on the sofa’. We know from other US research that over 60% of iPads never leave the house. So why the huge increase in m-commerce, apart from just the sheer availability of the devices? For me, being able to shop from my phone or my tablet means I can shop in private with no one looking at my browser history or looking over my shoulder. Even better, with John Lewis click and collect, I can slope off to Peter Jones and bring back the goodies when I know Him Indoors isn’t around. No more battles with Yodel/Home Non-delivery Network, and fewer brown boxes eliciting comments from our ever-vigilant receptionist.
And another thing: shopping from my tablet or phone means that behavioural ads then don’t follow me around the rest of my browsing. (Yet.) Again, I don’t think Him Indoors has cottoned on to the fact that sites such as telegraph.co.uk is showing him the edited highlights of my browsing history for various purveyors of footwear and handbags.
All in all, great news for advertisers. Your customers are now slumped in front of the telly with their iPad, tweeting their views on the nude scene in Sherlock, all ready to click across to an offer, a competition, or just find out more about your newest washing machine/fabric conditioner/cold remedy. So, forget about the fact that it’s being reported as ‘mobile’ and just consider it another way of pinning consumers to the sofa with interesting content, relevant offers and an easy-to-use experience. Oh yes, and plenty of stock!
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/reference/ibm-reports-a-big-rise-in-mobile-shopping/256
Sarah Ramanauskas
All content my opinion and not that of HPI. Or my husband.
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