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.

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.

Differentiation vs Distinctiveness

Differentiation’s role in marketing strategy is rethought in this journal article (which builds on an earlier report for corporate members). It presents a small mountain of varied empirical evidence, including direct measures of perceived difference:

Romaniuk, Jenni, Byron Sharp, and Andrew Ehrenberg (2007), “Evidence concerning the importance of perceived brand differentiation,” Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol.15 (2), pages 42-54.

(Download journal version of differentiation)

Differentiation (a benefit or “reason to buy” for the consumer) and Distinctiveness (a brand looking like itself) are different things. This isn’t just semantics, as any lawyer or judge will tell you. Distinctiveness (branding) is legally defensible, while differentiation is not (other than time limited patent protection).

Market-based Assets (early article)

Here is my 1995 article which introduced the term “Market-based Assets” which was picked up by Raj Srivastava in his excellent 1998 JM article “Market-Based Assets and Shareholder Value”:

Sharp, Byron (1995), “Brand Equity and Market-Based Assets of Professional Service Firms,” Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 13 (1), 3-13.My article is very hard to obtain now, I couldn’t find it on the web and even on my computer it was in an old file format. So before it is lost to the world I thought I should post it here. It might be of interest to some readers.

Protected: How to measure Brand Salience

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Tesco cola is not the reason Tesco has been doing well lately

Recently both Coles and Woolworths, the two dominant Australian supermarket chains (with combined share of more than 80%), announced a shift in strategy towards private labels. Coles has said that by 2007 30% of its sales will come from its own labels.

Australia is an interesting evolving case study because it has one of the very highest levels of retailer concentration yet private labels (or retailer brands) are only a small part of the Australian supermarket industry, reportedly sitting at 12% of sales or less.

Coles and Woolworths are now trying to mimic the strategy of most/all of the UK supermarkets.

But have they got it wrong ? I suspect that they have misunderstood a crucial aspect of UK retailers strategy, which isn’t surprising because I think UK marketers haven’t noticed it either.

The real success of Private Labels has been less about taking on the big successful brands, and more about quite simply improving the branding of the supermarket by putting the retailer’s brand everywhere it can be, while at the same time not in anyway degrading the shopping experience for consumers.

Let me explain….

This weekend I visited a Coles supermarket to see how their private label roll-out was going. The answer is obviously very slowly. You could very easily completely miss noticing their private labels.

They were present in only a few categories, where they seem to be trying to take on the big brands. For example, here is a picture of Coles Corn Flakes right next to the leading brand Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The Coles packaging is good, and priced substantially cheaper - although marked as on special.

From the amount of boxes missing on the shelf it looks as if it is selling fast - though this could be misleading - Kellogg’s Corn Flakes may have been restocked more recently.

I was interested to see how Coles looked in comparison to a UK supermarket like Tesco. And the answer is very different. Tesco brands most, if not all, their fruit, vegetables, seafood, roasted chickens, meat cuts and anything that is not usually strongly branded. Coles makes the occasional, half-hearted effort, but the vast majority of such items carry no name or the name of some farms no one has heard of or cares about. A few things like packaged cuts of meat carry a tiny Coles logo. They seem to be missing the easy and obvious ways of branding their store.

So Coles have a very long way to go, and a lot to learn about branding.

I was also struck by the huge opportunity to replace thousands of obscure brands with the Coles name. There are so many ‘brands’ in an Australian supermarket that would be barely recognisable to shoppers, even the ones who buy them. These are brands that are never advertised. Some are even from large companies, like the Mars/Masterfoods Promite brand (a competitor to Australian icon Kraft Vegemite).

In short Coles could easily achieve 30% of their sales from Private Label with us (and brand managers) hardly noticing the exclusion of any brands.

But instead they seem to be concentrating on mimicking big brands. Presumably because these are high volume items. And they can encourage big brands to lower their prices - which can be a good thing.

But this comes at the cost of creating tension between major supply partners. And it increases complexity for shoppers (buying Corn Flakes is now more, not less, complicated).

A more “easy win” for a supermarket is to replace as many of the ‘non brand’ brands as possible with their label. Over many years, in different categories and countries, this is where we have seen Retailer Brands enjoy great success - replacing the differentiated but unadvertised brands. The brand that’s only on the shelf because it is the ’super cheap’ brand, the ‘Australian’ brand, or the ‘organic’ brand. Supermarkets are full of these ‘non brands’ that take up far more shelf space than their sales justify.

Supermarkets like Tesco have, where practical, cleaned out a large number of these ‘non-brands’ (or “brands without brand managers”) and replaced them with their own label. It has vastly improved the branding of their supermarkets - your bag of tomatoes or punnet of strawberries sitting in your fridge now says Tesco (not R&J Smith fruit farm or some other such name which meant nothing to you). And, importantly, made the shopping experience easier - the number of brands has decreased with almost no loss in variety.

Sure Tesco has also tried taking on some of the big brands. But I think this part of their strategy and success has been vastly overrated. Tesco cola is not the reason Tesco has been doing well lately. They’ve done well in winning share from other retailers, not from Coca-cola.

The lesson for retailers is avoid diversifying into the business of marketing individual packaged goods brands. Retailers sell shopping experiences, that is how they compete against other retailers, and to take your eye off this ball can be fatal. Better for retailers to take the easy route of using Private Label to improve store branding by replacing brands that aren’t doing sufficient branding and advertising. And keep and support brands that are working hard to maintain and grow their consumer franchise.

And the lesson for national brand manufacturers is that if you don’t work hard to maintain and grow your consumer franchise, if all your marketing investment is simply in-store sales promotions, then you deserve to be replaced by Private Label.

Dr Byron Sharp. Professor of Marketing Science
Director Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
University of South Australia
www.MarketingScience.info