From: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/the-value-of-efficient-reach-maximizing-campaign-audiences.html

The main factor in terms of a campaign’s reach efficiency is sites’ ability to serve and optimize ads effectively.

Reach have always been a critical goal for advertisers. Reach is how many unique persons are exposed to an ad. 

According to an analysis of Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings data in 2014, 59 percent of ad impressions served across all consumer segments reach their intended audience—down from 69 percent in 2013. Which correlates with a shift toward narrower, more focused campaign audiences from broader demographic segments, according to Nielsen. But this on-target delivery decrease is only part of the story. Let´s look at Nielsens evaluation of reach efficiency:

Reach efficiency refers to how efficiently a campaign and its individual media partners reach unique audiences within a specific demographic group given a set level of gross rating points (GRPs)

Despite having similar parameters and goals, campaigns can perform differently based on the sites they’re served on. The main factor in terms of a campaign’s reach efficiency is these sites’ ability to serve and optimize ads effectively. Keeping this idea in mind is critical for advertisers to understand whether Reach goals are met and which sites are contributing the most to this goal.

That´s right. Not Seth Rogen or Katy Perry. 

YouTube stars are more popular than mainstream celebrities among 13-18 US teens. 

These have close to zero exposure in the mainstream media. 

"Drilling deeper into the survey, Sehdev found that YouTube stars scored significantly higher than traditional celebrities across a range of characteristics considered to have the highest correlation to influencing purchases among teens. YouTubers were judged to be more engaging, extraordinary and relatable than mainstream stars, who were rated as being smarter and more reliable. In terms of sex appeal, the two types of celebs finished just about even.

Looking at survey comments and feedback, teens enjoy an intimate and authentic experience with YouTube celebrities, who aren’t subject to image strategies carefully orchestrated by PR pros. Teens also say they appreciate YouTube stars’ more candid sense of humor, lack of filter and risk-taking spirit, behaviors often curbed by Hollywood handlers."

The full story

"You have to follow the consumer, who has all the power," said P&G Global Brand Building Officer Marc Pritchard. "We're trying to make sure our content is really tailored toward the brand promise and the people find it interesting as opposed to creating the entertainment content we did in the past," he said.

Read more 

True - but you also need to lead. And that´s where most brands fail

Please read this article by CEO Tony Haile of Chartbeat, where this title is stolen from. It talks about the myths of the effect of focusing on clicks on the web: People don´t read what they click on. His out to sell but anyway here´s my comments:

Advertising on sites with content people visit but no one is reading is a waste of time and money. 

It´s all about quality, not "click tactics". The key for effect is having content that people spend time on consuming. Why? Let´s look at some of the results from the research.

1. The quality of the content on the site you´re having a banner is what it´s all about. Someone who is looking at the page for 20 seconds are 20-30% more likely to recall that ad afterwards. Throw in the fact that a user who spends more than 3 minutes is twice as likely to return vs 1 minute spent on the site – quality is key for a media site. 

2. Native Advertising, which I honestly do not think is that much different from Content marketing, is what media companies are turning to, to increase both quality of user experience and effect of brand advertising. But the research done by Tony implies that the quality and/or relevance of the advertisers content is not good enough. Exactly as with TV ads. If you don´t connect with the quality of the story, the effect will plummet.  

3. Social sharing is not the key metric for how engaging a piece of content is or in other words how much time people spend on the content. But the title, topic or domain itself might be looked upon as of social value – a social currency – that tells something important about, in the eyes of, the person sharing it. But the value of advertising on this particular content page is not as effective as on a page that people spend more time on – but share less. Would be interesting to find some research about effect vs investment based on these two page scenarios. 

"We looked at 10,000 socially-shared articles and found that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content."

It´s all about the quality of the storytelling to gain brand growth, assuming that the product/service itself delivers on its promise. And quality of the content on the sites where these brand stories are paid for penetration purposes. Its´about time media companies and advertisers on the web fully embraces this fact because this is the fundamental understanding required for increasing the quality of user experiences on the web that will make the world better not only for media companies and advertisers in the form of growth – but all of us.  

Storytelling is key. 

What makes a brand grow.

Facebook vs Advertising

Tell your agency the following

"What are some digital opportunities for packaged food brands?"

"The first one is to really redefine marketing. What I think digital allows you to do is to go back to the original definition of marketing, which really wasn't just advertising. It was really about finding markets, defining them, developing a brand that could deliver something differential and superior for them."

Read the full interview here. 

There´s a lot of discussions and concerns being raised in the era of big data in regards to worries about increased short term activation.

It´s crucial for growth to balance short term activation and long term branding activities. What we also see is that there´s a need to better align short vs long when it comes to increasing both conversion and penetration. This is not only a strategy choice when it comes to balancing these but also a need to balance the choice of channels for the marketing activities. 

Short term shows best effect towards local customer base  - and this means it ignores penetration. Which is crucial for growth. Penetration results in bigger payback. It´s more important to increase penetration than to improve the efficiency of the marketing activities. Short term becomes much more efficient if the brand has strong long term branding activities. Due to priming. Thats what really increases efficiency. Emotional priming is key for growth!

When it comes to communication goals - mental availability is key to measure. Fame = becoming part of culture. (Social amplifications, herd effects etc) The bigger growth in this KPI - the bigger the return of the investment in the marketing activities. 

Long term branding done well increases most constructive performance metrics in the long run 6 months - 3 years. While Short therm activation marketing activities is focused on behavioral conversions and performs better in the... short term than long term branding activities when measured. But they MUST co-exisit in the right balance when it comes to investment in marketing for the brand to grow - from day one. 

Read more about it from P. Field and L. Binets excellent researched: http://www.ipa.co.uk/Framework/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=9225

"While health care marketers may have once relied upon placing a print ad in a magazine, playing a video about their practice on the television in their waiting room or having their savvy PR rep pitch a story about a new medical technology, landing them a sweet spot on page four of the local newspaper, those strategies by themselves were good until the digital revolution took full effect.

These days, earned media is a blog post from a New York Timesjournalist about a surprising medical breakthrough, and owned media is a Pinterest board using a series of photo essays to explain cosmetic medical procedures offered. Paid media is a sponsored tweet introducing a new treatment for arthritis.

Virgin Active has launched a multimillion ad campaign to drive membership sign-ups as it drives its plans to become the "most loved" health club in the UK.

Brian Waring, chief marketing officer of Virgin Active UK said: "We have a bold ambition and that’s to become the most-loved health club in the UK."

I don´t think this multimillion ad campaign will be as effective as it could be. Why?

1. Wrong focus. 

It should be: "We will become the health brand in the UK who loves our customers most."

2. Execution. 

The commercial neither awakes arousal or aspire people to be more active - the latter part which should be their marketing 101 guide to everything they do. Not in general and not at Virgin Active Health Club. It does not place the brand in the hearts of people. And by not getting the brand in early, make it visual frequently shown in the video and spoken at least once it will not influence future propensity to buy the brand. 

But perhaps the social media part of the campaign will do the investment justice... 

Before the answer is revealed let´s have a quick look at the insights from Gurdeep Puri - The Effectiveness Partnership,  and some thoughts based on other research and basis of the LIVE 365 Framework. 

Recently a book, that I highly recommend to marketers, was published: Viral Marketing – The Science of Sharing by Dr Karen Nielson-Field who used research from more than 2 years of work, 5 different data sets, 1000 videos, 9 individual studies and a large team of researchers from Ehrenberg – Bass Institute for Marketing Science. 

Teenagers wants fun. They want storytelling. It´s not happening on Facebook. And they are in an age where they absolutely are not craving that the whole wolrd knows what they do, who they are, and with whom they are playing with. 

They are moving to messaging services, which are becoming social networks on their own. 

Read more here:

http://aresonance.posthaven.com/facebook-vs-advertising

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

99% of brands have an anti-social offering on Facebook - a social platform. 

Promoted posts: Users are looking for user based content and interactions - not a brand post = negative views of the brand. And the image ad units - not much room for storytelling. 

What can be done to improve? Understand that storytelling is not about capturing likes but to influence and create advocates who use your story to tell something important about themselves. That´s how you become part of the stories between people. 

The problem is that 99% of brands are not doing storytelling. They are talking about their attributes. Not very social...

According to Kris Hoet a MCKINSEY Study show that 

It´s like saying you´re going to make a viral video. Forget about tactics. It´s more important to first of all do the right things rather than doing the things right.  

To achieve marketshare growth it´s important to place the brand in the hearts and minds of as many people as possible.  Here´s a few cents on how to do it: 

1. Know who you as brand are and what you stand for. This answer  - one sentence -  should act as your Marketing 101 for everything you do. I.e Pedigree who´s not in this world to feed dogs. But to aspire to loving dogs. That´s their 101 that guides all their marketing initiative decisions. 

2. Observe culture/the brands target group 365 days a year - their interests,what people do - and identify how the brand can lead and add value. I.e Red Bull with everything they do (Helping people to be passionate about their interest for high energy lifestyle activities through content/events etc), Home Depot with their different marketing initiatives(Helping people to create homes), Intel IQ (Helping nerds to show of and facilitating a forum for exchanging ideas, NIKE Fuelband (Helping people succeed in sports - or as a minimum helping people pretending they take care of their health and are suitable mating prospect,  a signal shown by wearing the band on their wrists) 

3. Set goals and main objectives. Collecting data to get more data is useless. Set goals. THEN start collecting the data you need to understand more. 365 days a year. 

4. Create magic. Discovering potential for enhancing the storytelling of the brand that can increase marketshare by observing/analyzing data without acting upon it is useless. Create one or more stories which are always aligned with what the brand stands for. The marketing 101 used as guideline for decisions 365 days a year. 

5. Publish and start develop these stories where people are. Transmedia planning. (The model of a media neutral planning with one idea being executed differently throughout various channels is dead…) Focus on something people can bring to their networks or enhance the possibility of them contributing to it, by creating something of shared interest. Use whatever works best for your story:  Ads on TV, Apps, Sponsoring, Social ads, Mobile, Sites, Social moderation and activation, Events, Print etc.  

You co-create a story with the market. 365 days a year. I.e Mondelez who gathers data(mPulse lab), creates and publish(done by professional storytellers/creatives) stuff 365 days a year (Planning it for all their 65 brands - 10-20 is up and running already. I.e Oreo)  Here´s where most brands fail however. And the reason for it is, beyond that they focus mostly on tactics, is that they do not have professionals who proactive develops and enhance the brands crafted initial storytelling.  Many are good at customer service but the same people seems to be behind really bad attempts at storytelling that worst case can ruin a brand. Especially when it comes to content and real-time marketing. Brands can create their own TV commercial, but understand the importance of letting professional creative storytellers develop and produce it. This understanding is not present when it comes to storytelling in social media. 

It´s important to plan and activate people so that they continue to influence their networks both on- and offline. So that we can operate more meaningful than our competitors in the marketplace.  Which implies that the quality of the STORYTELLING is the most important factor for success. To become part of the stories between people. To resonate emotionally and rationally. The right story. Only then you can start with tactics. Do things right. Also when responding to something unexpected on paid, owned or social media - in real-time. 

People act like a herd. Similar people attract each other online. And they behave much the same way there. So the key in marketing is what kind of social currency your are creating. And its not the ego centric individual  that´s the aim - it´s group dynamics. Focus on communities of people. Interests. And be the space in between them by adding something of value. Something they will experience as a social value. 

"We find the correlation of anger among users is significantly higher than that of joy, which indicates that angry emotion could spread more quickly and broadly in the network. "

Anger spreads faster than joy: Read more here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.2402

For most brands - create joy...

Steve Jobs, interviewed on stage alongside Tim Cook (current CEO). He was asked if Apple’s goal was to win back dominant share of the PC market

“I’ll tell you what our goal is…to make the best personal computers in the world and products we are proud to sell and would recommend to our family and friends. And we want to do that [raises voice] at the lowest prices we can, but I have to tell you there is some stuff out there in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship, that we wouldn’t be proud to recommend to our family and friends…and we just can’t do it, we can’t ship junk”.

Sir John Hagerty: "We do not create and broadcast commercials anymore for our clients - we create and broadcast events on TV to start up conversations. If you are a marketeer - this is what you want! This is what results in sales."

Brands, especially big brands, need to broadcast to kickstart, maintain and fuel the possibility for being perceived as more relevant than your competitors. To keep and create the mental availability of the product/service on peoples mind = brand growth. 

Forget about awareness. Forget about TV, Digital or mobile. Forget about creating a TV commercial. 

Focus on the ideal of the brand, create and execute awesome ideas that builds the story of the brand and it´s customers.  Focus on interest. Focus on telling the story/ies 24/7/365 using whatever tool or media that works to tell it to, together with and for people so that the brand becomes part of the stories between people. 

It´s not about a "consumer" and the deep psychology of his/hers innermost thoughts. To achieve success with marketing, to gain "fame" and change behavior, you need to focus on people and how the are connected and connect with others. 

That´s why it´s so important that a Brand has a clear stated purpose or ideal if you like. The Brands answer to questions like: "What are we fore?" or "Why are we in the market?"

This is even more important now that brands realize the importance and potential of Real Time Marketing, Branded Content, Performance Marketing, Big Data etc  - which are just buzz words on new possibilities to achieve what has always been important within marketing to ensure growth: being perceived as more prominent and relevant than your competitors. But new technology has enabled marketeers to do this more efficient and at a faster scale. When a brand create content or do something that becomes content that people choose to communicate to each other on Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn o.s  - that´s when you have succeeded in resonating with the market. With culture.  

Cases and white papers shows that people who are exposed to content via social (i.e clicking on a friend´s FB post link) deliver high scores on different communication KPI´s and tactical KPI´s.  These cases however are about brands that do NOT focus on talking about themselves and their product features. But creates and/or do stuff that focus on pursuing the brands purpose that it shares with culture. A good example is Apple´s "Think Different" TV spot. Not a word about the functionalities and did not even show the computer. But it resonated and if it was 2013 it would - in addition to IRL WOM - be shared, liked, favorited, retweeted, remixed, pinned, starred etc massively by people and thus Apple would become part of the stories between people.  Which would then again make people interested to learn more about the product and it´s features. Aspire first - then attributes.

"We´re good at the consideration phase. When it comes to evaluation:

Even if I have fantastic advertising… if 50% of my consumers come online and they don't find anything to evaluate me on, they'll probably go to the competitive products. It doesn't matter how much I've spent on consideration."  

- Marc Speichert, L'Oréal USA CMO.

Take a look at these two photos. The first thing that comes to mind is that is must have been much better to feel alive in the 90s. 

It´s not that simple. My view is that both being able to share and show live + being there enhances the experience. The enhanced ability to after rationalize, both during the event and after, makes it a bigger moment.The value increases. 

And hey, being at a concert with Sonic Youth or Prodigy in the 90s was much more of a "hands in the air" moment than being at a Taylor Swift concert anyway...

The IPA’s analysis (257 IPA Effectiveness cases studies) reveals that that non-awarded campaigns, on average generate 0.5 points of share growth per 10 points of ESOV. Which is obviously very much in line with the findings from Nielsen’s analysis.

In sharp contrast, creatively-awarded campaigns generate on average 5.7 points of share growth per 10 points of ESOV.

In other words creatively-awarded campaigns generate around 11 times  (that’s right, 11 times) more share growth per 10 points of ESOV than creatively-non-awarded campaigns.

Everyone uses Nike+ as an example on marketing excellence. I am no exception. 

The problem arises when Nike+ is being used as an argument for, both from clients and agencies, to do the "same" kind of solution for any brand. They emulate the solution but fail. Why?

Brands are driven by growth. Growth comes when marketing succeeds to make the brand...

1. ...increase relevancy and creates ongoing positive memories.
2. ...become part of the stories between people – as often as possible.
3. ...an enabler for people to tell something important about themselves to the world which makes the brand part of the stories between people which increases relevance etc...

... that is more than a fad.

Content is more than just words, pictures or video. Games, apps, events, APIs and so on deliver rich content experiences too.

Content reinforces a brand’s credibility and authenticity in what it stands for, believes in and cares about. For modern marketers, content is a vital expression of the brand. 

A cute manifesto: http://econsultancy.com/no/blog/62574-introducing-the-modern-marketing-manifesto?utm_campaign=momama&utm_medium=email&utm_source=announcement

Research from IPA databank shows some interesting findings and Peter Field/Les Binets will publish a new report about this shortly focusing on long term branding vs short term activation. 

One of their worries is that Big Data can have a negative impact on business results due to brands focusing and allocating more of their marketing budget to short term activation. 

“Big data in marketing, whether it admits it or not, is inevitably heavily focussed on short-term metrics - one of its boasts is about the speed of decision making. This is very dangerous for brands, unless balanced with long-term metrics linked to long-term performance measured over years” - Peter Fields.

The studies show that Long term branding in the form of advertising designed to evoke only an emotional response is twice as likely to produce large profit effects over a three year time frame as any other form of advertising.

A budget split in the area of 40% Short term activation and 60% Long term activation seems to be the optimal spilt for best effect and growth. 

The study also shows that Short term activation effects get an uplift when a brand starts doing both. But stays stabile in effect over the years while Long term branding initiative effect grows over the years. 

>>> Here´s my comment:

1. Short term activation (or sales conversion activities which I bluntly call them - as I see activation as a term being about activating the market so that the brand will become part of the stories between people) must ecco the story/stories of the brand. 

2. Long term branding must continuously create positive memories - as well as the big story occasionally shown on TV as a TV spot. Same with Short term activation. 

3. Big Data and Real Time Marketing - in addition and as a vital, perhaps central, part of the brands storytelling -  will be the driver for growth but must be measured and focused with affecting BOTH long term and short term KPI´s in mind. 

A brand is a living entity and is enriched cumulatively over time. The product of many big and small gestures.  This understanding as a fundament for marketing decisions is crucial for growth. So we need to move out, once and for all, from the traditional short vs long term focus activities and start working 24/7/365 to be perceived as relevant and gaining ESOV - which ensures growth in market share. 

"We consume much more than we create, we read much more than we think, and it should be the other way around. We have to make sure we consume the things that truly matter to us, but only so that we have time to create something that matters to someone else." - https://twitter.com/restreitinho

Eric Schmidt, Coca-Cola's senior manager of marketing strategy and insights: 

"We didn't see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales." 

The article continues:  But Coca-Cola's newly published research could renew the debate over just how effective social initiatives are. After all, if the world's largest brand says that social buzz had a measly 0.01% impact on its sales, why would any other business, large or small, expect more from the medium?

Then in the comments Sylvain Querné, Head of Digital Marketing at Nokia comments: 

"Isn't coca cola losing sales on soda drinks in the US? At this point no impact is better than negative impact..."

Read all: http://econsultancy.com/no/blog/62383-coca-cola-the-s-in-social-media-doesn-t-stand-for-sales?utm_medium=email&utm_source=daily_pulse

UPDATE:

Oh and today COCA-COLA followed up Erick Schmidt´s poor analysis with a statement: 

http://marketingland.com/coca-cola-clarifies-social-media-is-crucial-driving-in-store-sales-36829?utm_campaign=tweet&utm_source=socialflow&utm_medium=twitter