9

brand advertising

Advertising is one of the most frequently used and powerful communications mediums for brand building. How then does one maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of this medium?

Selecting an Ad Agency^*

First, if you don’t have an advertising agency, select one. Begin by thoughtfully defining what is most important to you in an agency, and clarify where you need the most help. This decision will be an important touchstone throughout the remainder of the process.

Cut out your favorite magazine ads and record your favorite television commercials. A good place to find great ads is creativity-online.com. Other sources are One Show and Communication Arts awards books. Also, most cities have ad clubs that judge and recognize the best ads from local agencies. Check with these clubs as well. Once you have selected several ads that you like, find out which agencies created them. Of those agencies, find out which are already working for your competitors. Rule them out. Talk with marketing peers at other companies about their perceptions of the agencies that are left. Ask about the agencies’ capabilities in each of the following areas: product, company and marketplace knowledge, creative, strategic insight, media planning, and production. (I have found that the two most important aspects of an effective agency are strategic insight and translating that insight to creative communication.) Contact the top three to four agencies of those that are left.

When you meet with agency representatives, ask to see their best ads. Have the agencies demonstrate how they would address your most pressing strategic issues. You might also ask each agency to create three campaigns to move your brand forward. (Be sure to pay each of the agencies for their work. This protects you if you use an agency’s ideas but do not end up hiring that agency.) Look for the agency that you can best work with based on personal chemistry.

Some other tips:

• Don’t assume that going with the biggest well-known agency is best. Unless you have an enormous advertising budget, you are likely to be assigned to the agency’s “C team” and may not be happy with the work.

• There are significant advantages to choosing an agency that has strengths in multiple areas, such as strategy, creative, media planning and buying, direct marketing, online marketing, website design, and trade shows. It will make it easier to manage your overall marketing budget and, more important, all of your communication is more likely to be consistent and “on brand.”

Unfortunately, very few agencies are tops in more than a few aspects of marketing. I prefer to work with a small number of “best in class” agencies, although it requires a strong coordination effort. You need to have well-thought-out and accessible brand identity standards, an accessible brand image library, and frequent (quarterly) “brand champion summits” (in which all agency partners are invited, so they remain informed and aligned with the strategy and key messages). It is particularly important to coordinate the efforts of advertising strategy and creative with that of media planning and buying if performed by separate agencies. The two agencies should meet often and learn to work well together.

• Some agencies are best at (and enjoy most) the development of new breakthrough campaigns. They are critical to your brand’s success but also tend to be more expensive. Other agencies don’t have a “strategic bone in their bodies” but provide on-spec collateral pieces at a fraction of the cost. I use both types of agencies. Some agencies try to address both needs at different hourly rates, using different individuals and processes. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

• AgencyFinder.com indicates that you may be more successful using an RFI (request for information) or an RFD (request for dialogue) than an RFP (request for proposal) to find the best agency for you.¹

Figure 9–1 gives additional tips on how to get the most out of your advertising agency.

Importance of a Well-Designed Brand to Brand Advertising

As you begin to work with an agency (even during an agency review), you will make greater strides if you have already designed and positioned the brand. Remember, your brand’s promise should leverage all three of the following: a) a compelling point of difference in the consumer’s mind, b) your organization’s unique strengths, and c) your competitors’ vulnerabilities. This positioning implies that you have identified the brand’s target consumer, essence, promise, archetype, and personality. The brand promise, in turn, implies that you understand your brand’s competitive frame of reference and the consumer’s benefit structure within that frame of reference. The brand design and positioning will drive brand advertising and every other brand marketing activity. Make sure your ad agency thoroughly understands and embraces your brand’s design. (Although you should take the lead in crafting your brand’s design, ideally your advertising agency should be actively involved in the process, including immersing itself in the underlying consumer research.)

Specifying the Marketing Objective for Advertising

The next step in advertising development is specifying the marketing objective for the advertising. That is, what do you want the advertising to achieve? Do you want it to increase brand awareness, attract new customers, increase brand loyalty, encourage add-on purchases, motivate people to switch from competitive brands to your brand, increase frequency of use, reinforce ongoing use, etc.? Make sure the objective is quantifiable and measurable.

As an example, the marketing objective for Hallmark’s brand insistence advertising campaign was very simple and tactical: to get consumers to flip the card over and look for the brand name on the back cover.

During your brand positioning work, you should have developed the brand promise, including identification of the brand’s relevant differentiating benefit. Next you augment the brand promise with proof points (reasons to believe). Proof points may include the following:

• Product features and attributes (including the design itself or its formula or ingredients)

• Performance features, statistics, and research results

• Performance guarantees

• Service claims

• Side-by-side comparisons

• Third-party endorsements

Writing the Agency Brief

The marketing objective and the brand promise with its proof points are key elements of the agency brief, a document that communicates the strategic direction of a new advertising campaign. Once you have completed the agency brief, your ad agency will use the brief to develop campaign ideas/concepts (e.g., storyboards, print ads). They will likely show you several different campaign ideas.

Figure 9–2 lists the elements of the agency brief.

Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness

When evaluating the potential effectiveness of different campaign ideas, I use the following questions:

1. All Advertising:

- Does the ad clearly identify your brand? Does it do so immediately and throughout the ad?

- Does the ad clearly and forcefully communicate your brand’s unique promise?

- Does the ad feature a tagline that reinforces the brand’s promise?

- Are the ad’s tone, voice, and style true to your brand’s essence and personality?

- Does the ad reinforce your brand’s identity?

- Does the ad connect with the reader on an emotional level? Does it win the reader’s heart or capture the person’s imagination?

- Is there something about the ad that makes the reader admire the brand?

- Is your ad significantly different from that of your competitors? Does it look and feel different from anything else featured in the same media?

- Does the ad reinforce the positive value and values of your brand?

- Does the ad seem truly inspired?

- Is your ad so powerful that it has the potential to keep your competitors awake at night worrying about your brand?

- Is the ad persuasive?

- Could another competitor make the same claim? If you inserted a competitor’s logo in the ad, would it make no sense or be unbelievable?

- Does the ad lead readers/viewers to believe that they will be better off in some way for having interacted with your brand? Does it create a more favorably perceived end state for your readers? Does it leave a vivid picture in their mind?

2. Print Advertising. The benefits of print advertising are good reach and frequency. Print can handle complicated propositions, reaches consumers in a receptive context, and can be very targeted.

- Does the headline immediately “grab” the reader? (In his book Ogilvy on Advertising, advertising guru David Ogilvy’s states that five times as many people read headlines as read body copy.) Ideally, the headline is nine words or less.

- Does the headline promise an important benefit? (Ogilvy also states that ads with headlines that promise benefits are read by four times more people than those that don’t explain a benefit.)

- Is the body copy long enough to provide the reader with useful information and ample proof points for your brand’s promise? Long copy is more effective than short copy. This is particularly true for business-to-business advertising. (Alternatively, Roper Starch Worldwide, which maintains a database of more than 2 million print ads, has found that excessive copy reduces the effectiveness of ads and recommends keeping ad copy to fifty words or less. With whole generations having now grown up on “sound bites” of information, some cohort groups will respond better to shorter copy.)

- Increasing white space around the ad or the headline increases the ad’s effectiveness.

Figure 9–3 ranks ad placement and size according to impact.

3. Television Advertising. Television advertising benefits are broad reach and the ability to dramatize the brand.

- Do you try to grab people’s attention immediately so that they do not become preoccupied with other activities?

- Do you have enough time to tell a story with your commercial? (Two-minute commercials are more powerful than thirty-second commercials.)

- Have you carefully selected the music for your commercial? (Music can make or break a commercial.)

- Have you consistently used a sound or visual mnemonic to reinforce the brand in your commercials?

4. Radio Advertising. Benefits are that radio advertising is very efficient, a good frequency medium with coverage flexibility.

- Does the first five seconds of the ad “grab” the listener?

- Have you chosen the right voice?

- Does the dialogue sound natural?

5. Outdoor Advertising. Outdoor advertising is a true local medium. Other benefits are very low CPM and the ability to communicate a single “idea” effectively.

- Does the billboard have no more than seven words? Does it have less than five? (“Got Milk?”) Remember, motorists often have to “get it” (your message) in a second or less!

- Is the ad “big” in every way? Is it outrageous? Does it turn heads? Does it pique the reader’s curiosity? Does it shock the reader? Does it make the reader laugh?

Successful Advertising Approaches

Here is a list of effective general advertising techniques:

• Always dramatize your brand’s most important benefit.

• Create simple ads—they are usually more powerful. Create copy in smaller chunks (sentences, paragraphs, etc).

• Use natural and “real-life” writing or dialogue.

• Subtly tap into people’s fears and anxieties.

Here are some print advertising techniques that have proved to be effective:

• Try to evoke the reader’s curiosity. Begin by asking a provocative question and/or feature an image that piques the reader’s curiosity.

• Put quotes around your headlines.

• Romance/dramatize your product or service.

• Try to trigger multiple senses; use words that help people feel, hear, smell, and taste your product.

• Tell a story.

• Communicate “news.”

• Provide information that is useful to the reader.

• Always write in the present tense.

• Be as specific as possible.

• Include customer testimonials (they should seem natural, not scripted or polished).

• Know how readers read (from right to left, top to bottom in the United States) and place your headlines, illustrations, captions, and copy accordingly. (In his book Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams indicates that savvy photographers and graphic artists have known for some time that there is a spot on a piece of artwork to which the eye is irresistibly drawn, roughly between the middle and upper right corner of the artwork.)

• Use white space to focus the reader’s attention on something important.

• Use words that sell: at last, now, new, introducing, announcing, finally, limited, save, free, win, easy, guarantee, breakthrough, wanted, etc. (Keep in mind that as consumers become more sophisticated and savvy, there may be instances where these words might be clichés or overused and thus may not be as effective.)

• Avoid metaphors, analogies, puns, double entendres, “insider” references, and other nonstraightforward language. Alliteration is sometimes effective.

• Avoid jargon, dialect, acronyms, and model numbers, especially in headlines.

Here are some successful approaches to television advertisements:²

• Company leader as brand spokesperson. Examples are Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic, Dave Thomas of Wendy’s, John Schnatter of Papa John’s, and Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams brand).

• Interesting character as brand spokesperson (Mr. Whipple for Charmin).

•Customer testimonial.

• Visualization of the brand benefit and/or the “reason why.”

• Product demonstration (demonstrating product usage and showing brand benefit).

• Torture test (Timex “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’”).

• Problem-solution.

• Before-after. To some large degree, advertising sells the hope of an improved future with the use of a particular brand of product or service. Before-after advertising reinforces this hope.

• Competitive comparison. Although it is usually not wise to identify the competitive brand by name, a special case would be the comparison to premium brand(s). However, this can lead to greater category price sensitivity.³

• Slice-of-life vignette (telling a story about the benefits of the brand).

• Presenter/“talking head” (in which a person attempts to persuade the viewer about the benefits of the brand).

In his book, Cutting Edge Advertising, Jim Aitchison indicates that every ad must have an idea. He suggests that ideas may come from any of the following: “product name or logo,” “packaging,” “how the product is made,” “where the product is made,” “the product’s history,” “the product’s old advertising,” “something that is happening around you,” “what happens with the product,” “what happens without the product,” “what happens with and without the product in the same ad,” and “where the ad will run.”

The following will likely result in bad brand advertising:

• Design by committee.

• Opinionated reviewers and approvers who don’t understand marketing.

• Writing ads that appeal to you rather than the target consumer.

• Using flowery language that sounds good but that means nothing. (This is a common ailment of neophyte copywriters. Substance is good. Using an economy of words is good. Simple, persuasive copy is good. Fluff and filler are bad.)

• Squeezing as many features and benefits into the ad as possible (unsophisticated advertising clients often request this information).

• Revising an emotional or metaphorical ad to make it more literal (another common ailment of unsophisticated advertising clients).

• Focusing on reach vs. frequency (as discussed later in this chapter.)

• Assuming that business-to-business advertising is significantly different from consumer advertising (e.g., “it needs to be factual and informative, not emotional”). Don’t forget, business decision makers are people, too. And people are ruled as much by their hearts as by their heads. Harding’s study of buyers in ten corporations demonstrated that corporate buyers overwhelmingly rely on personal and emotional reasons over rational ones in their purchase choice.

• Jingles. Unless they are very, very good (and most are not very, very good), they will distract from the brand message.

• Celebrity endorsements (because they tend not to be believable).

• Making claims that your brand can’t support.

And, although it may not result in bad advertising, for consistency’s sake, it is also not a good idea to have a new marketing manager, feeling the need to make his or her mark on the brand, hire a new advertising agency and create a totally new advertising campaign (whether or not the old campaign was working).

When building the brand, the best advertising vehicles to use tend to be radio, television, and with the widespread emergence of broadband, the Internet, due to the auditory elements. These vehicles create a slower build but are more effective in the long run. Trade magazines and shows and direct marketing (regular mail and e-mail) are effective for business-to-business marketing because the target audiences typically are geographically dispersed but highly targeted. Newspapers and the radio are often used to promote brand building events because they can efficiently and effectively deliver a more immediate message. Radio advertising should be scheduled for immediate effect, and radio ads should be scheduled to run just before or during a sale or other event.

The Art of Persuasion

There are certain techniques that advertisers, politicians, salespeople, speech-writers, preachers, and others have long known to be effective in persuading people. Social psychologists have studied many of them in great detail. Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson, in their book, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, outline four basic strategies to effectively influence others: 1) defining/structuring how an issue is discussed, which includes setting the agenda and creating the frame of reference, 2) establishing credibility (authority, likability, and trustworthiness), 3) vividly focusing the audience’s attention on the key point the communicator intends to make, and 4) arousing emotions in a way that can only be satisfactorily addressed by taking the communicator’s desired course of action.

In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D., focuses on six principles of persuasion: 1) reciprocation (people try to repay favors out of a sense of obligation); 2) commitment and consistency (people behave in ways that support an earlier action or decision); 3) social proof (seeing other people doing something makes it more acceptable and appealing); 4) liking (people are more likely to say yes to people and brands that they know, like, and trust); 5) authority (people are inclined to yield to authority); and 6) scarcity (people are more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something).

Cialdini also indicates that many approaches lead to “liking”: physical attractiveness (which studies have shown to be a function of body/facial symmetry), similarity (people feel comfortable with you and can relate to you), compliments, familiarity (through contact and cooperation), and direct or indirect association with other likable entities.

Both books are quite interesting and well worth reading, if only to help you better understand how third parties attempt to persuade you on a daily basis.

Other considerations in creating highly persuasive communication:

• Always design the message to play off of the audience’s preexisting beliefs, values, and prejudices.

• To be effective, your point of departure must be from a place of agreement.

• Try to define the issue in a way that your brand can’t help but “win.” This is why it is so important to choose the optimal “frame of reference” in brand positioning.

• Sometimes, just asking the right questions can reorient people’s thinking about a topic in your favor.

• Comparisons/contrasts alter perceptions of the items being compared/contrasted. For example, when I moved to Rochester, my Realtor first showed me a number of overpriced houses that required much work. When we got to the houses that she wanted me to buy, they seemed even more appealing than they might have otherwise if she hadn’t first shown me the other houses. This concept is also used in establishing reference pricing. Create reference prices that make your price seem more reasonable or even a “bargain.”

• Be careful when labeling, categorizing, or describing competing brands or approaches in ways that cast them in a negative light. While it is an effective technique (that is, it usually works), in the long run, it may cast a less favorable light on your brand.

• Making people feel as though they are a part of a group (assigning brand labels, brand-as-a-badge) helps sell products and brands.

• Fear and guilt sell. (Example: “When you care enough to send the very best.”)

• Paint vivid pictures of desired or dreaded end states with words or images, or both.

• Let people touch, try, use, and otherwise interact with your product or brand before they buy it. Once they have done so, they are much more likely to want to purchase it. This works for a wide variety of situations: from automobile test-drives and in-home free-trial uses of products, to overnight stays on the campus of a college that you are considering attending (assuming the experience is positive).

• Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a well-studied technique that increases persuasion. Through NLP, you can establish a strong rapport with the audience by mirroring the mannerisms and expressions of the audience, which allows you to more easily lead them in the direction of your choice.

• “Largest,” “fastest growing,” “most popular,” “highest rated,” and other similar claims provide strong third-party endorsements for a product or brand. (Alternatively, they may be perceived to be puffery by a jaded audience unless you back them up with credible proof points.)

• Repetition increases the effectiveness of communication.

Brands and Storytelling

Recently, I was drawn in again by a street person’s story. It is not the first time. A good story tugs on your heartstrings. While, as a marketer, I am always leery of being taken in by total fiction, at the same time, if the story is good enough, it doesn’t even matter if it is true. It has entertained me. I give the person some money. Several times a week my wife and I get phone calls from various not-for-profit and political organizations asking for contributions. Again, there are stories. What will happen if they don’t get enough money? What will happen if they do? The telephone solicitors are scripted to paint a compelling picture with words. Don’t religious leaders do the same thing? How many of Jesus’s parables are recounted in the Bible? And there are Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, Taoist, Sufi, and Hebrew parables and stories. I can’t think of a religion or a culture that doesn’t have its stories. I even hear stories from people who want to sell me investments, stories of people getting rich. They paint a picture of how I will significantly increase my net worth too if I invest in what they are selling. And how about the stories told by places? Come to our country or city or resort and have this type of experience.

Brands tell stories about their history and their heritage and their founders. They also tell stories about their heroic and other admirable deeds. Many brands like to tell stories that demonstrate their values or their legendary service.

Every brand story requires the following elements:

• Core values that underpin the story

• Moral of the story (central premise)

• Hero (protagonist)

• Villain (antagonist)

• Plot (tension/conflict/resolution)

• “Aha” moment

• Transformation

Here are two other storytelling frameworks that you might find useful.

Mark Lightowler⁴ uses a storytelling map that includes the following nine elements:

1. Story setup (the background information the audience needs to know)

2. Protagonist (the hero)

3. Conflict (what stands in the way of the journey’s completion)

4. Outer motivation (protagonist’s motivation)

5. Deep issues (the deeper issues addressed by the story)

6. Opportunity (the protagonist’s inward reward for overcoming the conflict)

7. Arc (how the protagonist grows or changes inwardly over the course of the story)

8. Empathy (what causes the audience to empathize with the protagonist)

9. Tension (the unspoken feeling feeding the conflict)

According to Chris Vogler,⁵ the hero’s journey consists of the following steps:

1. The ordinary world

2. The call to adventure

3. Refusal of the call

4. Meeting with the mentor

5. Crossing the first threshold

6. Tests, allies, enemies

7. Approach to the inmost cave

8. The ordeal

9. Reward

10. The road back

11. The resurrection

12. Return with the elixir

Furthermore, you should have answered these questions before you write your brand’s story:

• What is the brand’s archetype?

• What is the brand’s personality?

• What is admirable or endearing about the brand?

• What is the context or need that makes this story relevant?

• Where should we tell this story? Using which media?

Storytelling is a strong selling tool. Every brand should have its stories. The stories should be engaging, entertaining, admirable, endearing, and even purchase motivating. Does your brand have a story to tell? If your target customers heard it, would they love your brand even more?

Advertising Research

Although advertising is part art and part science, there is more science to it than one might realize. There are many “rules of thumb” that ad agencies and advertisers have developed over time, based on experience or research or both. I have found the following types of research to be important to creating strong brand advertising:

• Qualitative Research. Focus groups, minigroups, one-on-one research, and anthropological research are useful to better understand the target customer’s hopes, needs, desires, aspirations, fears, and concerns.

• Brand Preference Testing (before and after exposure to the ad). Asking people what they would tell others about your products and services before and after exposure to the ad is also insightful. (Ogilvy on Advertising states that people whose brand preference increases after having seen an ad are three times more likely to purchase the brand than those whose preference does not change.)

• The Split-Run Technique (a.k.a. A/B Testing). This technique allows you to test two forms of the ad in the marketplace to determine which one is the most effective.

• Understanding Customer Response. Occasionally, you may want to understand how existing loyal customers are responding to your ads, especially if your ad’s intent is to attract new customers. For instance, are the ads offering new customers something that you are not offering existing customers? Are the ads promising something that current customers have found not to be true? Are your ads helping existing customers to feel better about your brand? Are they reinforcing the wisdom of having purchased your brand?

When measuring the effectiveness of your ads, increased top-of-mind awareness and purchase intent are the two most important measures. Ad likability, another useful measure, correlates highly with purchase intent.⁶ Other measures tend to be specific changes in customer attitude or behaviors based on the specific marketing objective for the ad.

Keep in mind, too, that because advertising’s effect is gradual and cumulative (much like the growth of a child), it is difficult to measure the effect of an individual ad on sales or market share. For that reason (and for diagnostic reasons) it is important to measure the effect of advertisements on attitudes. Ad recognition and recall and message takeaways also help diagnose an ad (which is particularly important when an ad is not working).

A word of caution regarding advertising research: It is unwise to delegate this task to your advertising agency. It is best to conduct it yourself or to employ a third party to conduct it. Checks and balances are a good thing. And there is no sense in “hiring the fox to guard the chicken coop.”

If you are interested in learning more about advertising research, you should consult the Advertising Research Foundation’s website (thearf.org) and consider subscribing to its Journal of Advertising Research. Another source is the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing Research (www.marketingpower.com).

Advertising Rules of Thumb

• Between 8 percent and 12 percent of revenues should be budgeted for advertising and other marketing activities. This amount obviously varies significantly by company and industry. An average company spends approximately 6 percent of sales on advertising alone. Advertising expenditures for computer and office equipment are as low as .09 percent vs. 16.8 percent for toys, dolls, and games.⁷ Industrial companies tend to spend less on advertising (one percent to 5 percent typically) than consumer products companies.

• You should spend more on advertising and marketing if the following conditions exist:⁸

- You are building a new brand.

- You are launching a new product or service. (Some new businesses and brands spend between 50 percent and 100 percent of revenues the first year of launch.)

- Your product offering is large and complex.

- You charge premium prices.

- You sell products and services in a “low involvement” category (typically low-priced items for which there is little risk of failure).

- More than 10 percent of your revenues come from online sales.

- You are selling commodity products (advertising will be the primary differentiator).

• Spend approximately $1 on proactive publicity for every $10 you spend on advertising. (PR budgets are one percent of a company’s revenues, on average.⁹) It will multiply the effectiveness of your advertising. (Advertising in trade magazines also gives you a relationship with the publications, alerts you to editorial opportunities, and sometimes impacts your brand’s presence in articles.)

• Production costs are usually 10 percent of the media buy.

• You need to know what your brand’s “share of voice” is—or the amount of advertising (or consumer communication) dollars your company spends compared to competitors’ spending for a given product category. It is a good rough measure, despite its flaws, which include:

- The focus is on traditional advertising spending only.

- Competitors are usually in different portfolios of businesses, so it is difficult to break the spending out for the same categories across all competitors.

- Advertising effectiveness for the same level of spending varies widely.

• It is nearly always more productive to focus on frequency vs. reach. Many people will say that it is more efficient to focus on reach because there are diminishing returns with each new ad exposure. That is, the advertising response curve is usually concave. This is particularly true if your goal is to create an immediate sale of a ubiquitously purchased consumer product. In that situation, reach almost always delivers “more bang for your buck.” However, if your funds are limited and your audience is highly targeted, you would do better to focus on a reach schedule of 3+, seeking out media with significant audience overlap.¹⁰ For brand building purposes, I usually focus on advertising frequency targeted at those who are most likely to influence the remainder of the market: primary target opinion leaders and “hard core” users.

• Ads produce better results if they highlight or dramatize the brand’s unique compelling benefit.

• The most effective ads combine a subtle emotional appeal with a practical benefit.¹¹

• The more an ad can get people to identify with one of its characters, the more powerful its effect will be.

• If the ad is designed so that people hear the message indirectly or through entertainment rather than being told about it directly, they will be less rigorous and defensive in their analysis of the message.¹²

• If a significant portion of your product’s sales result from repeat purchases, it may be more important for your advertising to reinforce the purchase than to persuade people to purchase your product for the first time.

• Carrying a particular brand voice and visual style (and mnemonic device) from one ad campaign to another increases the effectiveness of the new ad campaign.

• Scents have the greatest ability to evoke memories. Music has the second greatest ability to do so. Both are mnemonic devices.

• Repeatedly featuring a product’s packaging in advertising makes its more noticeable at point-of-purchase (and, therefore, more likely to be purchased).¹³

• Fifteen-second commercials are seldom effective, because it is difficult for them to break through the clutter and they are far too short to tell a story. They are best used as reminder commercials (reinforcing messages from previous longer commercials).

• One of the seminal studies on advertising’s impact showed that the following factors increase advertising effectiveness:¹⁴

- Differentiating brand message

- Product demonstration (use, result, and benefit)

- Total time viewed

• The following factors have been shown to decrease advertising effectiveness:¹⁵

- Detailed component or ingredient information

- Multiple propositions

• For manufacturers, advertising can affect sales in two ways: One, it persuades the end consumer to purchase your brand, and two, it persuades the intermediary (retailer) to carry your brand, increasing the brand’s accessibility.

• Persuasive ads diminish in their effectiveness over time—a process the industry calls “wearout.” This argues for front-loading GRPs (gross ratings points) to maximize the effect.¹⁶

• There is a strong correlation between how much a company spends on advertising and its share of market.¹⁷

• Brand familiarity and popularity increase with increased advertising.¹⁸

• Advertising influences purchase decisions by affecting the order in which alternatives are evoked (top-of-mind awareness) and the desirability of a particular alternative (positioning). The former is the most important effect. It puts an alternative in people’s consideration sets.¹⁹

• More than 70 percent of the impact of advertising on market share results from increasing brand awareness (vs. creating or building brand image).²⁰

• As the number of messages in an advertisement increases, two things happen: Demand increases and recall decreases. The ratio of these effects varies by media and for high- and low-involvement categories.²¹

• Millennials tend to multitask and are more distracted while watching videos, leading to decreased ad recall. Ad duplication and exposure timing across devices could help increase recall.²²

• It is extraordinarily difficult to try to change the consumer’s mind about your brand. You would do best not to try. If you must, link the change in perception to something that consumers currently believe about your brand.

• Often people cannot articulate the brand associations that drive their feelings and decisions because the associations are unconscious or non-declarative.²³

• Themes and slogans that reinforce the current brand image generate awareness faster than those that support a new positioning.²⁴

• In general, the more unique the message, the more successful its communication.²⁵

• Highly recalled messages tend to be the result of “well-funded longstanding advertising campaigns.”²⁶

• The more often a brand repeats a claim, the more likely people are to believe that the claim is true, especially if there is no evidence to the contrary.²⁷

• For low involvement categories (in which the alternatives are often virtually identical), advertising can tip the balance in the favor of the advertised brand. For these categories, it is particularly important that the ads break through the clutter and focus on one simple message.²⁸

• For high involvement categories, advertising plays less of a role overall. Typically, its role is to put the brand in the consideration set, not to influence the final buying decision.²⁹

• People actively seek out information in high involvement categories. Print media, more information, and longer copy work well with this audience.

• It is acceptable, and even preferable, to include a “call to action” in brand advertising. (An impact on short-term sales results will help you justify the expenditure.)

Media Planning

It is best to leave media planning to media planning professionals. The following are some of the things that they will consider when they develop a media plan for you:

• Reach (percentage of people—or target audience—exposed).

• Frequency (number of times, on average, a person is exposed).

• Impressions (the number of times the target market comes in contact with a media vehicle).

• CPM (cost per thousand exposures), which measures efficiency.

• CPMTM (cost per thousand target market exposures), which measures effective efficiency.

• Most appropriate media vehicles (audience fit with target market, environmental fit with advertising message). For instance:

- Websites and trade shows provide a high capacity to process information when customer information needs are high, while short TV spots are best used when information processing needs are lower.³⁰

- Some media are more appropriate when the purchase decision is based primarily on facts, while others are more appropriate when feelings and emotions are the key influencers.

• Evaluating vehicle effectiveness (clutter, distractions).

• Adjusting potential exposures to actual exposures (e.g., for television, it has been found to vary from 50 percent to 70 percent).

• Developing a media strategy and schedule that maximizes advertising response (against the advertising objective).

With the fast pace at which digital media is evolving, it is advantageous for companies to conduct marketing mix modeling to optimally allocate their marketing investments, especially in a dynamic, real-time way. The following companies are providers of marketing mix modeling services: Analytic Partners, Hudson River Group (HRG), IRI, MarketShare, Marketing Evolution, Marketing Management Analytics (MMA), Nielsen, Ninah, and ThinkVine.

When we conducted laddering research at Hallmark, we discovered that most product and brand benefits ultimately supported the underlying need to preserve self-esteem. (Laddering is a research technique that probes consumers to better understand underlying basic human values the brand addresses. It investigates benefits that underlie product attributes, consequences that result from the benefits, and values that underlie the consequences. The results are often mapped to outline the brand’s benefit structure.) Different benefits may have followed different paths to that end, but, ultimately, the need that they fulfilled was the same fundamental one: to preserve self-esteem. We explored certain emotional end benefits—self-affirmations that contribute to different aspects of a person’s self-esteem; among them:

• I am frugal.

• I am a good mother.

• I am a good wife.

• I am a good friend.

• I am making a positive difference in the world.

• I am competent.

• I am successful.

• I am unique.

• I am lovable.

• I am in control of my life.

Although the following data is from a study conducted decades ago, it points out that some of the most powerful motives are fundamental ones. Some of the most effective advertising over time has tapped into these motives. I have observed that the most powerful brands and products are those that help people stay healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In fact, brands and products that can help people with the following (largely spiritual needs) are extraordinarily powerful:

• A sense of purpose

• A sense of self-worth

• Personal empowerment

• A sense of well-being

• Healthy, trusting relationships

• A sense of community

• Peace

• Hope

• Joy

To that list you could also add communication that taps into any of the higher order needs from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: affiliation, esteem, or self-actualization.

Use the checklist in Figure 9–4 to assess the efficacy of your brand management practices in the area covered by this chapter. The more questions to which you can answer “yes,” the better you are doing. The checklist also provides a brief summary of the material covered in the chapter.

* Much of this section is adapted from an approach David Ogilvy outlines in his book, Ogilvy on Advertising (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp. 66–69, combined with my personal experience.