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Double Jeopardy law - Ehrenberg Video

Hear Professor Andrew Ehrenberg describe the Double Jeopardy law in his own words.

This video was recorded in the late 1990s at London South Bank University, at what was to become the Ehrenberg Centre.

Review of “How Customers Think” by Gerald Zaltman: This book talks a lot about insight but doesn’t deliver much.

Disappointing.  If you have read some bestsellers touching on with recent findings in neuroscience (e.g. Antonio Damasio) and memory (e.g. Daniel Schacter) then what’s left of this book for you is largely an advertisement for Zaltman’s commercial and patented (!!) market research technique called ‘Zaltman’s metaphor elicitation’.

Yes there are good reasons to doubt focus groups (more reasons than Zaltman discusses) as well as management intuition and market research that asks consumers why they bought what they bought.  But that doesn’t mean we need to resort to Zaltman’s consultancy which bears a strong resemblance to some of the excesses of 1960s motivational research.  Anyway Zaltman makes a very poor case for this logical leap, he simply presents it as a fait accompli (I believe so so should you).

For marketing managers the greatest weakness of this book is the lack of integration with known facts of buying behaviour.  The discoveries of even 20th Century marketing science are ignored.  So there no facts in this book about how consumers actually buy, or consume media.  So of course these facts aren’t used as a check against Gerry’s ideas.  Indeed there is no testing of any ideas.

The marketing examples are purely anecdotal, and often very vague – suggesting a lack of first-hand knowledge (they read as if they were mentioned by 3rd parties to the author at the end of a seminar or over a chat).  I can’t recall anything convincing about sales results, or anything that could be externally validated, the anecdotes have to be taken on trust.  Even so they tend to make very weak vague claims:

e.g. “managers at Coca-Cola’s German office found that new research on memory contradicted many of their prevailing assumptions about how memory worked and how to design effective advertising campaigns.  By applying several key findings about memory.. [they] launched a successful marketing program in that country.”  You don’t say, wow !  What assumptions, what research, what sort of advertising program ?  All we readers get is:

“Specifically, the company created more meaning (sic) and effective advertising by understanding the reconstructive nature of memory and the various factors affecting the encoding and retrieval of memory”.

It would perhaps be acceptable if that sort of anecdote came at the start of the book – you’d expect more exciting, harder, detailed evidence to come later once the reader was familiar with the book’s key concepts.  But this example comes from page 258 – this sort of lame anecdote is about as good as it gets as far as evidence that this book has any real-world application value.

As other reviewers have noted it’s also an overly long rather abstract book, with somewhat indulgent structure, for example the third part is about management thinking not “how customers think”.  This book talks a lot about insight but doesn’t deliver much.

Professor Byron Sharp

Does advertising only work via driving intentions and preference ? No!

Apart from a very small amount of direct response advertising, advertising works (to generate sales) through memories.  This is an uncontroversial statement, yet it’s common for marketers and academics to forget the essential role of memory and instead think advertising works largely through persuasive, rational or emotional, arguments that shift brand evaluations.

The dominant way that advertising works is by refreshing, and occasionally building, memory structures that improve the chance of the brand being recalled and/or noticed in buying situations and hence bought.  Memory structures such as what the brand does, what it looks like, where it’s available, when it’s consumed, where it is consumed, by who, with whom and so on.  Associations with cues that can bring the brand to mind.

Some advertising creates a purchase intention, gaining a reaction like “I should buy that” or “that’s interesting, I must check that out”.  It’s commonly assumed that such advertising must be more sales effective, but this does not follow.  Memory structures, even if they don’t result in intentions, still cause sales – decades of research shows that most sales typically come from people who had not formed an intention (Juster, 1960).  One reason is that intentions are memories too, and subject to faulty recall, so even firm intentions are weakly motivational.

A similar point can be made about brand preference or attitude.  Some advertising, much of it being quite similar or identical in style to intention forming advertising, generates a reaction like “that’s good” or “that’s the brand for me”.  Again, it is commonly assumed that such advertising must be more sales effective.  But again such attitudes are usually weakly motivational, because they are often not recalled in buying situations.

In fact there is typically only around a 50% chance that a person will state an attitude about a brand twice in two surveys (Dall’Olmo Riley, 1997; Sharp, 2002) – sometimes they recall their attitude, sometimes they don’t.  Either that or they are rather unsure of their attitude (it’s not like brand attitudes are very important).  Of course many of our intentions are rather vague and weak, e.g. “One day I must start eating more healthy foods and getting more exercise”.  We like a good many rival brands, including some we haven’t heard of yet, and we attitudinally reject very few of the many available options.

So it is quite misplaced to conclude that advertising that affects intentions or attitude works better than advertising that simply refreshes and/or builds memories.  This fact undermines much academic advertising research that derived rules about effectiveness by examining the effect of advertising exposure on stated intentions.  Similarly, advertising pre-tests (copy tests) that use intentions or intention shift are biased towards particular types of advertising content, and very often reach incorrect conclusions about the sales effectiveness of particular commercials.

Many firms are still trapped in the intentions/preference paradigm.  They brief their agencies and evaluate their advertising in line with this mental model.  As a consequence they produce unoriginal advertising filled with persuasive arguments (often about trivial benefits) that are rejected or fail to engage consumers.  They often produce advertising that fails miserably to refresh or build appropriate mental structures – because management attention is on the selling message. They take their ‘eye off the ball’ failing to consistently communicate the distinctive aspects of the brand.  Consequently many firms produce campaign after campaign where each looks and feels different – as if each were for a different brand.

Somewhat ironically, firms operating to this model of how advertising works will sometimes produce what they call “image advertising” or “awareness advertising” yet they do not expect this to produce sales.  Why on earth anyone should spend money on advertising that isn’t expected to deliver a behavioural response is beyond me.

In summary, advertising largely drives sales by refreshing memory structures.  Occasionally it works to (slowly) build memory structures.  Occasionally it works by also creating a purchase intention or preference.
So marketers need to understand the memory structures that have already been built for their brand.  They need to use these, and ensure their advertising refreshes these structures.  Then they need to research what other memory structures might be useful to the brand, and then work to build these.

Over decades leading brands have done stellar jobs at building relevant memory structures.  Coke is a great example, this was once a brand that sold in drug stores it was something associated with drug store visits in Summer by teenagers.  Today Coke is associated with a host of memories…Coke and the beach…Coke and nightclubs…Coke and pizza…Coke at parties…Coke…Coke red…Coke swirl… and so on.  These memories make it more likely that Coke will come to mind, they make it easier to notice, and they make is easier to process Coke advertising.

In Summary, advertising largely generates sales by refreshing memory structures.  Occasionally it works by (usually slowly) building memory structures.  Occasionally it works by also creating a purchase intention or preference.  The way you commision, judge and research your advertising should reflect this.

References:

Juster, F. Thomas (1960), “Prediction and Consumer Buying Intentions,” American Economic Review, 50, 604 -22.

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute report 3 “Advertising and Brand Attitudes“.

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute report 13 “Brand Advertising as Creative Publicity“.

Sharp, Anne (2002), “Searching for boundary conditions for an empirical generalisation concerning the temporal stability of individual’s perceptual responses,” Doctor of Philosophy, University of South Australia.

Do TV commercials need a USP ?

The answer would appear to be no, given that much advertising does not even make the slightest attempt at saying the brand is better than others.  But a fair amount of advertising does – so is this particularly good advertising ?  Does it work better ?

David Stewart, a Professor at University of Southern California, has published several important large content analyses of TV advertising.  The 1980s US TV ads (more than 2000)  were analysed in terms of 160 aspects of content, e.g.

• appeal based on enjoying life
• surrealistic visuals
• male principal character/ female principal character
• demonstration of results using product
• number of times brand name is mentioned
• health related information
• presence of a brand differentiating message

Such aspects of creative design were then correlated against the advertisements performance in laboratory pre-tests, specifically in terms of recall, comprehension and ‘persuasion shift’ (the difference in the % of respondents selecting the brand in a lottery before and then after exposure to the commercial).

With such a large list of creative design aspects many featured in too few ads to allow for meaningful analysis.  So only aspects that occurred reasonably frequently were reported, and they had to perform across product categories and new and established brands.  In some analyses these executional aspects were collapsed into about 25 factors.

Stewart and his co-authors concluded that “presence of a brand differentiating message” was the aspect of content that was most associated with the three measures of ad quality.  This would seem to be powerful empirical evidence of the value of a brand differentiating message.

Ahh, if only the secret to quality commericals were this simple.

The main reason that “presence of a brand differentiating message” came out well was that it was a very general (i.e. non specific) aspect.  One would hardly expected specific tactical aspects such as “photographic stills used in part of the commercial” or “number of camera cuts” to have been the key to effective advertising.  And it would be difficult for aspects such as “contained nutritional or health information” to perform across product categories.

And when the authors said that “brand differentiating message” performed best, they mean it was able to explain a tiny amount (a few percentge points) of the variation in the effectiveness variables.  Yes, the correlation was that weak.

So what are we to conclude ?  Advertising that you are better and different from the other brands is probably sometimes useful.  Probably when you really do have something believable and important to say.  Then it is relevant news, and your ad will be of more interest and better liked for it.

But a brand differentiating message is not essential for every ad, nor is it guaranteed to improve a TV commercial.

References:

Stewart, David W and David H Furse (1985), “The Effects of Television Advertising Execution on Recall, Comprehension, and Persuasion,” Psychology and Marketing, 2 (3), 135-60.

Stewart, David W and David H Furse (1986), Effective television advertising: a study of 1000 commercials. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Stewart, D. W. and S. Koslow (1989), “Executional Factors and Advertising Effectiveness: A Replication,” Journal of Advertising, 18, 21-32.

A problem with ad awareness norms to assess advertising quality

It is now common for market research agencies to promise their clients norms against which they can compare their advertising campaign.  For example, they might report…

“The new campaign for Fabulo achieved 37% ad awareness, this compares well to the average of 31% for new campaigns after 3 weeks”.

This sounds like good practice, but the norm is meaningless.

Better yet the research agency might compare against campaigns in a particular product category, or adjust for a particular GRP/TARP weight.  But this still isn’t good enough, GRPs (Gross Rating Points) tell us nothing about the reach and frequency of the campaign.

Worse still the metric confounds both media strategy effects and advertisement quality effects.  What is really needed is measurement immediately after the ad goes into the market, just of those consumers who had a potential exposure (OTS).  This can measure the ability of the advertisement to cut through and impact on memory structures, i.e. assess the quality of the advertisement live in-market.  Only then, when you know if the ad itself is working well or not, can you later use ad awareness metrics to evaluate the media strategy.

Do different awareness measures measure the same thing ?

There is a history of discussion amongst marketers about the relative merits and meaning of different awareness measures. Then in 1995 an article was published that appeared to lay all this debate to rest:

Laurent, Gilles, Jean-Noel Kapferer, and Francoise Roussel (1995), “The Underlying Structure of Brand Awareness Scores,” Marketing Science, 14 (No. 3, Part 2), G170-G79.

Gilles Laurent and colleagues appeared to show that different brand awareness measures were systematically related, simply reflecting different levels of difficulty for respondents (i.e. brand prompted being easier than unprompted). So the different measures all tapped one construct, and a score on one measure could be used to accurately predict a score on another measure. We thought that was an incredibly important and practical finding. However, not was all that it seemed.

Nearly a decade later we replicated this research, and extended it to ad awareness. We achieved the same empirical results, but in doing so we were able to more clearly see what the previous research had, and had not, found. The measures tend to vary together, brand to brand, because some brands are much larger and more salient than others, so all their awareness metrics are higher too. However, we also examined the relationships between the loyalty metrics for each brand over time. Contrary to Laurent’s conclusion we empirically found that it isn’t possible to use their model to predict a brand’s score on one metric from its score on another.

So while all these brand awareness measures share something in common they do not perfectly tap one underlying construct. That’s as important a finding as Laurent’s might have been (if it had turned out to be true). Different awareness measures measure (somewhat) different things, even if they are all loosely related to the brand’s overall salience (and market share).

Romaniuk, Jenni, Byron Sharp, Samantha Paech, and Carl Driesener (2004) “Brand and advertising awareness: A replication and extension of a known empirical generalisation” Australasian Marketing Journal, 12 (3), 70-80.

The concept of brand awareness has been hijacked by poor measures

When marketers first came up with the very worthy concept of brand awareness they were thinking, obviously, about the number of consumers who know the brand. Intuitively you would measure this by showing it to consumers and asking them if they are familiar with it. But last century this was expensive, phone surveys were cost effective but the brand couldn’t be shown (and printing pictures in mail surveys was expensive).

So rapidly the measures of brand awareness became verbal/written product category prompts, e.g. “what brands of fabric conditioner are you aware of ?” The problem with this type of measure is that it doesn’t really fit the concept. This measure doesn’t so much measure awareness as association of the brand with the product category cue. It also assumes that consumers can remember and say or write the brand name.

Some have argued that it is vital that consumers know that the brand is a member of a particular category. If that’s the case it can be measured directly (e.g. “what do Ben & Jerry sell?”). It is no credible argument that category cue prompted recall is a decent measure of brand awareness.

Another measure is to present the brand name and ask consumers if they recognise it. Again this tests the link only to the brand name. It doesn’t tell us how well other cues, like colour, cause the brand be recognised. And it tells us nothing about noticing, which is different from brand name cued recognition.

So unfortunately a good concept has been hijacked by cheap and convenient but poor measures.

Some people will disagree with me saying it is a good concept, and that what matters to the marketer is whether or not the brand is noticed or recalled in potential buying situations. I agree, and this is what we call, for want of a better name, brand salience.

Media buyers fail to deliver reach

It’s a provocative title, but it could have been worse – “media buyers don’t understand media” is almost as apt. The reality of modern media buying is that media agencies are essentially buyers of media, not planners. They have been pushed into this situation by uneducated advertisers who find it hard to know what is good media strategy from bad, but do appreciate costs. So media agencies have squeezed out costs, and by and large this has meant that their investment in media knowledge has shrunk to almost nil.

It’s a sad situation for advertisers, but of their own making, though Universities also share much of the blame for sending graduate marketers out into the world with almost no training in media.

Yesterday I came across an example of the distorted crazy market for media. According to Regional Television Marketing figures, 36% of Australia’s population lives in regional areas, but just 17% of the marketing dollars spent by national advertisers appear on our television screens. This is in spite of these regional areas featuring some large cities, and a population with higher than average spending power.

Why do big brands ignore regional TV ? They distribute their brands into regional Australia, but they don’t advertise them there. The reason is that regional TV is more difficult to buy, i.e. more costly for media agencies, it can’t be bought from a “single desk”. Also media agencies, under pressure to demonstrate their “buying power”, bulk buy metro TV space in advance. They seldom do this for regional TV. So they have a huge incentive to shift the space they have, if they don’t sell this their profits take a serious blow.

So it’s common practice to recommend metro TV and ignore regional TV. This can be subtle, just part of the company culture where all the attention goes to metro TV, or overt where regional TV is actively discouraged – this is unethical behaviour, but it happens.

So, for an Australian advertiser, the most simple cost effective way of gaining some pure reach is to split out some of the metro TV budget and allocate it to regional TV. It’s an astonishingly easy way to enhance the sales effectiveness of the ad spend.

I’m sure there are hundreds of similar examples, around the world, of silliness in the media buying industry.

Should cheap low quality ads be charged more for their TV air time ?

Now that the US has finally got ratings for the commercial breaks (via minute by minute recording) the TV networks are all interested in maximising their ratings during the break (ie not losing too many viewers while the ads are on). Which is all good news for advertisers.

One of the things that affects viewing of the ad breaks is the quality of the ads. Low quality ads turn viewers away, and ruin things for all the other advertisers. Put around the other way, poor quality ads enjoy a bit of a ‘free ride’ on the audiences retained by the good quality ads. So should networks give discounts for higher quality, more entertaining advertisements ? And charge more for annoying and boring advertisements ?

Advertising agencies should encourage it, as it would be a further incentive for marketers to commission bigger budget advertisements. In fact it is potentially a win-win situation for everyone. Consumers get ads they actually want to watch. Advertisers get a financial incentive to produce these ads. And networks that feature higher quality ads should enjoy better ratings.

I’m hopeful that innovative networks will begin offering pricing along these lines and/or agencies or clients will start negotiating deals along these lines.