Companies spend an enormous amount of money annually to establish contact with their prospects and customers. A large chunk of that money -- a reported $244 billion in the United States -- was spent last year on various forms of advertising. This includes money spent on everything from the TV commercial that appears on "Frazier" to the direct mail solicitation from American Express that arrives on your doorstep.
Marketers spend this money with an important purpose in mind. They seek to deliver a brand message to consumers. A brand is the promise that the company makes, and a brand cannot survive and prosper if this promise isn't known. It does a company no good to develop a promise if nobody knows what it is. Sharing the brand promise is why companies spend money and why they hire ad agencies.
Not all of this money is equally well spent. Not all of these efforts to share the brand promise reach the intended audiences, and not all generate the intended impact. In fact, many marketers would agree with pioneering Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker, who is credited with an infamous comment about his advertising: "Half of the money I spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half."
There is an increasing need for accountability for these billions of dollars. Companies who spend this money often talk of their plans to make their promise-sharing efforts more efficient and effective. That's why many of these companies have programs that monitor the impact of their communications efforts. They conduct consumer research to determine whether their considerable and expensive efforts are somehow getting through.
Actions and outcomes
What measures help companies determine how well their money is
being spent? Interestingly, the measures many advertisers use don't
relate directly to the outcomes they actually seek. Instead, they
use surrogate measures to find out whether the audiences they're
hoping to reach have any awareness of what the company is doing. In
essence, they ask the question: "Do you know that we are
advertising?"
What's wrong with that? Nothing -- except the company isn't spending millions (or billions) just to increase the numbers of consumers who are aware that the company is advertising. Awareness of advertising may be step one, but it is almost never the company's ultimate goal. Most companies would be sorely disappointed if their spending resulted in nothing more than an increased awareness that they were spending money. Yet, in far too many cases, advertising awareness is the key (or even only) outcome used to assess how well the money has been spent -- and to justify spending more of it.
The problem in many cases is that the ultimate goal of marketing communications is exactly that: it's ultimate. It unfolds over time. Thus, companies have relied on more immediately sensitive awareness measures, which can detect the more subtle ebb and flow in audience response.
If that's as far as it goes, however, the company may be making some major mistakes. And, despite whatever it is spending on audience monitoring, it will be no better off than John Wanamaker's quizzical guess.
Some recent case studies from The Gallup Organization illustrate this point.
One of these cases involves a telecommunications service marketed in Asia. The company was spending millions to launch a new service product in a highly competitive category. Not surprisingly, they wanted to see how well they were doing.
A survey of 510 target consumer prospects revealed the usual and expected results. Consumers were more aware of the company's TV advertising efforts than they were of its newspaper or out-of-home (billboard) ads. In addition, in response to the company's very heavy ad spending, advertising awareness was fairly high. None of this was surprising, and none of it was very helpful in addressing John Wanamaker's age-old question.
Much more helpful was a "linkage" analysis undertaken by Gallup researchers. Why explore linkage? Because the goal wasn't "ad awareness." In this case, the objective for this new service offering was to build target prospect consideration. The company wanted to encourage consumers to be willing -- even eager -- to learn more about the product's features and benefits and to actively consider acquiring this new service.
The company was also justifiably worried about this new service offering, since its initial sales reports were discouragingly low. The linkage analysis shed important light on why this might be so.
The first step in the analysis was to link message awareness to image and attribute perceptions. Gallup researchers noted that prospects who were aware of the company's TV advertising were about twice as likely to rate the company as having a wide range of service options (1.9 times). These prospects were also significantly more likely to view the company as having outstanding international credentials (1.6 times) and superb technological capabilities (1.4 times).
The TV campaign was all about communicating the company's resources. Thus, the TV message was apparently getting through.
Prospects aware of the company's newspaper ads were, in contrast, no more likely to praise its technology or international resources. Instead, they were more likely (1.6 times) to rate the company as offering really low prices. That's what the newspaper ads talked about: price. Thus, the newspaper ads were also getting through.
Great news? A successful campaign? Maybe not -- and that's why full linkage analysis is essential. The next step was to link these image and attribute ratings to consumer purchase consideration and intentions.
When the researchers examined the connection between the TV-driven and newspaper-driven attributes and the ultimate intended outcome (purchase intention), they found that none of these attributes proved to be key drivers of purchase consideration. High scores on perceived variety of options, international capabilities, technological resources, and even low prices did not relate to increased purchase intention or to increased willingness to consider buying this new service.
What did? Reassurance of a truly trouble-free experience. Those who rated the company as likely to have very few service problems were over twice as likely to select the company as their most desired service provider (2.4 times). Nothing else really mattered -- at least, not significantly.
The company's intended messages were indeed getting through, but they weren't the right messages. The company needed to recognize that a plethora of unkept promises made by its competitors had created a skeptical, even jaundiced "audience." For these prospects, extensive company resources weren't enough, nor were low prices. Rather, these prospects first needed to become confident about the dependability and reliability of the service offering.
Without this linkage analysis, the company might well have made the wrong advertising decision. Audiences had clearly heard the promises that the company was making. But they didn't respond, because the company had failed to address their prospects' primary concerns. They hadn't made a motivating promise.
Messages sent versus messages received
This particular case is not unusual, and an additional case
highlights this fact. A few years ago, an auto manufacturer
initiated a brand advertising survey to monitor consumer response
to its U.S. TV advertising. The resultant consumer response data
provided Gallup researchers and consultants with another
opportunity to demonstrate the importance of linkages -- and to
provide the company with essential feedback to evaluate its current
efforts and guide its future message development.
This auto manufacturer had been rotating three TV commercials equally within a total brand campaign. Its purpose was to establish strong levels of purchase consideration for one particular vehicle. Each of these commercial messages was intended to register and reinforce the company's key promise to consumers: Our cars provide the power you need to take you wherever you want to go.
Initial linkage analysis focused on the connection between TV commercial awareness and vehicle brand perceptions. Two of the commercials strongly and significantly registered several of the intended "power" attributes. The third, however, did not. Awareness of the third commercial was actually quite high, but this awareness was not significantly related to higher ratings of the intended power attributes. The message, in the case of this one execution, was simply not getting through.
The second important component of this linkage analysis focused on the apparent relationship between brand attributes and strong purchase consideration. The results again shed new light on the relationship -- and identified a missed opportunity. The linkage analysis revealed that power attribute ratings clearly related to brand purchase consideration. Another attribute, however, was linked even more strongly -- in fact, almost twice as strongly -- to the campaign's ultimate objective: purchase consideration. This key motivating attribute reflected consumer beliefs that this particular vehicle brand would be fun to own and fun to drive.
Where does "fun" enter into the expenditure of $30-40,000? As we've seen in any number of cases, consumer decisions -- whether between alternative cars or alternative banks -- are never made on a purely rational basis. Target prospects in this case wanted an emotional thrill from ownership and from the joy of driving -- but none of the three commercials had successfully registered this motivating message. Thus, the linkage analysis identified an important missed opportunity. The company's next campaign was developed to leverage the "power" perceptions, but with an overlay of clear (and important) enjoyment.
The missing link
A great many companies regularly monitor the responses of consumers
they seek to influence. They may not, however, take full advantage
of the learning that can come from the data they've collected,
learning that relates to the most important challenge for any
communication effort: Registering brand promises with impact;
promises that matter.
Registering a compelling and brand-differentiating promise is absolutely essential. An enduring brand relationship, however, will only come from keeping that powerful promise.
Whether the promise is "a different kind of car company" or "the ultimate driving machine" -- or even "we love to see you smile" -- it must be kept. It must be kept at each and every touchpoint, and in each and every encounter. After all, the real goal is never a date. It's a marriage.