Happy Friday, Happy 4th

Henry Kissinger once said, “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”

But as it’s summer and Friday and the 4th of July coming up, the converse takes effect, I think. Work continues but at a slightly decelerated rate, readers think about taking off for early and longer weekends, holidays must be respected. So in recognition of all that, we’ve decided to go to a summer schedule for our blog.

Beginning next week we’ll be shifting to a Tuesday – Thursday schedule. Vacations used to be a luxury, however, in today's world, they have become a necessity.

So Happy 4th and see you next Thursday!

Feeling Jittery About Your Logo Or Tag Line?

A while ago we conducted a study having to do with logos and found that logos made different percents of contributions to loyalty and profitability and you actually had to measure that to know for sure how hard your logo was actually working for you. The same is true of taglines.

We thought about this as a comment was sent to us recently regarding the Dunkin’ Donuts “America Runs on Dunkin” tagline.

Over a 30-year period of time we have managed not to get into fights with creatives, and have done so by staying on our ‘side of the desk’ (strategy, brand, loyalty) and not sticking our noses into the creation or the creative that ultimately gets presented to the world. That’s their specialty. But creative and strategy that doesn’t work together to engage customer can give anyone the jitters!

So it’s nice to see strategy and creative working together so well. According to our Customer Loyalty Index, Dunkin’ Donuts have been moving up the loyalty scale faster than a heavy user after their 10 daily cups! Nice to see a campaign that melds customer values and behaviors with what the brand can believably stand for.

That’s a formula we’re always willing to drink to!

Unofficial Sponsor of the 2006 FIFA World Cup

It used to be that only top tier advertisers sponsored soccer. They were the only ones who had the financial wherewithal to throw money at something that only a small segment of the American population cared about. But the times, as the song goes, they are a changin’.

Americans have suddenly become engaged with the sport. Yes, it’s World Cup and everything is relative, of course, but more Americans are watching the event than ever before. Even in the face of Ghana eliminating the U.S. with a 2-1 win last Thursday. (See, a few years ago I couldn’t have told you that if my life depended upon it).

Anyway, more and more sponsors have been jumping on the FIFA World Cup bandwagon. Does it do them any good? Are consumers (other than the Latino market) more engaged with brands that sponsor the World Cup? More than sponsoring Major League Baseball?

Well, happily, loyalty and engagement metrics can provide answers to those questions. Predicatively. They can tell us whether our brand’s equity is being helped or hurt based upon the investment in something like World Cup.

But until we actually conduct the survey for ourselves, Brand Keys remains a proud, unofficial sponsor of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Would You Buy A New Car From This Man?

Ad Age reports that Chrysler is bringing back the Employee Discount. Faced with humongous inventory at dealerships, and a need to make way for new-models, they plan to launch the program in early July.

A Chrysler spokeswoman apparently declined to confirm any of the details surrounding the price cuts, saying only that "There are a lot of different elements, it's unique and for this company it's groundbreaking.” Massive discounting, “groundbreaking?” It’s certainly something that has eluded Toyota.

All this in spite of the fact that GM said that they would no longer do national, multi-brand incentive campaigns because (WAIT FOR IT) they resulted in big sales drops when they expired. Auto experts maintain those incentive programs hurt brand equity.

You think!?

The First Day of Summer

Welcome to a new season. Today is officially the 1st day of summer.

So we thought that it would be worth a brief reminder that changes in the seasons are always accompanied by changes in consumer behavior and attitudes.

It’s also worth remembering that loyalty and engagement never go out of season, so we were extraordinarily interested to read Keiko Morris’ Newsday article about how one purveyor of ice cream is leveraging their store experience to better engage customers.

http://www.brandkeys.com/news/

Yes, yes, we know. One swallow does not a summer make. But many licks of ice cream?

Now you’re talking!

Good Or Bad?

We are known for the rigor with which we assess loyalty and engagement. Both are sophisticated measures. But as Einstein once noted, things should be simple, but not too simple, so there is some degree of complexity to the process. There has to be, especially if you want real measures of loyalty and engagement and not just numbers that purport to be measures of loyalty and engagement.

This thought occurred to us when we read a report last week that indicated that the US consumer confidence index had declined. The findings, which came from the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, indicated that the index now stands at 103.2, and then reported that consumers claiming conditions are "good" declined to 28.0% from 29.7%, while those claiming conditions are "bad" edged up to 15.4% from 15.1%.

And we always thought that econometrics was a complex and confusing process, but there it is. Are things ‘good’ or are they ‘bad’? Add’em up, divide, and index.

Would that all things were so simple.

By The Time A Man Realizes That Maybe His Father Was Right, He Usually Has A Son Who Thinks He's Wrong.

Father’s Day represents an enormous retailing opportunity for brands. Seventy-five percent of consumers will be celebrating the holiday one way or another, and that they’ll be spending an average of $115.00. Where will all of that money be going? And our survey said:



Clothing - 28%
Gift cards - 21%
Tools - 11%
Wine/Alcohol - 9%
CDs - 9%
Books - 7%
Electronics - 7%
Phones - 5%
Computers - 3%

Eighty percent will be sending a card and half of the consumers will be celebrating at a brunch, lunch, or dinner. Who will be the beneficiaries of consumers’ largesse?

Department Stores - 29%
Discount Stores - 28%
Specialty Outlets - 27%
Online - 16%

For those of you who like your holiday market data via TV, I’ll be discussing brand and engagement opportunities that Father’s Day presents for marketers on NY-1 today and tomorrow.

Ogden Nash wrote “Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for!"

But not on Fathers Day!

When You're Having More Than Two

George Bernard Shaw said that “Alcohol is a very necessary article. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.” It does not, however, guarantee engagement, whether it is the product or the marketing for the product that is being consumed

“Engagement” is more than “just being there.” Getting consumers to notice you or even visit a website isn’t real engagement. Yes, yes, you have to have some presence. And consumers must be provided with the prospect of actually being engaged.

But measuring attention and/or visitation is not a true measure of engagement, not if you expect that engagement will lead to increased positive behavior toward your brand or – even better – increased sales. Anyway, there’s a blog site at http://www.betterthanbeer.com that was designed to engage new consumers for Bacardi.

Engaged or disengaged? Only your liquor store owner will know for sure.

Yes, Sir, That's My Baby

We have often pointed out how quickly consumer and category values shift, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find that our Brand Keys Commodity-to-Human Brand Continuum needs some updating.

For those of you unfamiliar with this model, it locates – on the basis of real and perceived values and meaning – where a brand stands in the minds of consumers. The more meaning, the greater aspect of “brandness” about the product or service. The less meaning, the more the product or service is perceived to be commodity-like. (In fact, some products and services lost so much meaning that we had to create a new category – closer to the commodities – called “Category Placeholders.”) If you’d like a closer look at the continuum it can be found here:

http://www.brandkeys.com/download/continuum.cfm

Anyway, there’s a sub-set classification having to do with imbuing the products and services with borrowed value using “Celebrities.” Use of name, use of visage, use of voice. And that’s where we stopped. Except now, we have to add a new box to the Continuum labeled “Progeny.”

In a move that should make Donald Trump jealous, Britney Spears has trademarked her son, Sean Preston, for use in the following categories: Clothing, shirts, T-shirts, under shirts, night shirts, rugby shirts, polo shirts, cardigans, jerseys, uniforms, scrubs, smocks, dress shirts, pants, trousers, slacks, jeans, culottes, cargo pants, stretch pants, denim jeans, overalls, coveralls, jumpers, jump suits, shorts, boxer shorts. . . well, you get the point.

There’s an old joke, that as a father I can appreciate, that goes “insanity is hereditary – you get it from your children.” Perhaps now we need to update the thought to include “residuals and contractual minimums” as well!

Truth or Consequences

We have often said that continuity and visits gained via “loyalty” programs and promotions do not necessarily represent true loyalty.

Yes, yes, there was likely a time when the expectation of points or rewards or money off brought customers back again and again, but those stopped being effective engagement approaches a long time ago. Truth be known, what was “delight” became “expectation” and now everyone has one program or another, one reward or cash-back offer.

The secret behind true loyalty and engagement is having predictive customer insights – truths about your customer that will allow you to craft programs that increase a brand’s equity. Do that and consumers (and customers, they’re not the same, you know) will see you as better able to meet or exceed their expectations.

And if you don’t do it right, you won’t have to worry about rewards or punishments. You’ll have to worry about consequences.

Facil Cosa E Farsi Universale

The headline above is a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks. It translates to “it is easy to make oneself universal,” and it came to me when I heard that Wendy Clark, VP of advertising for the new AT&T, thought that their new ad campaign was “the most ambitious and aggressive brand campaign we've undertaken in more than 120 years." The key, apparently, to the campaign’s success was research, which is something we’d normally be thrilled to hear, since it’s what we do best.

Assisted by an enormous branding company, intensive research was conducted with over 15,000 consumers. The insight that ensued? The AT&T logo was easily identified but perceived as a bit dated.

No really, that was it! “A bit obvious,” you say. “Did they really have to do research to know that?” I hear you ask. “How did they know it was a success?”

Well, the issue of whether they actually needed to do a massive research study to determine that an old brand that was dated years ago needed to be updated today notwithstanding, the campaign success is being based on the fact that awareness is at 80%! No, really.

Someone ought to explain to Ms. Clark that awareness really isn’t a leading indicator you’d want to bet the farm on. It’s wonderful that they’ve updated the “look” and are working on trying to make the brand mean something, but high awareness as a measure of success? That’s not campaign success, that’s just ad tonnage.

It’s not just us that feel that way. The Advertising Research Foundation jettisoned awareness and the Hierarchy of Effects model too. Before you boast about how “successful” your campaign is, you ought to be able to answer the following questions:

* Did sales increase?
* Did AT&T’s brand equity (its ability to meet or exceed customer expectations) increase?
* Were more consumers engaged by the campaign?
* Are customers more loyal?
* Is the customer base growing because of it?

80% awareness for a 120-year old brand? One would have actually thought it should be higher.

Hmmm. Maybe the campaign isn’t working as well as they think!

VOD TV Upfronts?

This year's TV upfronts are only recently over, so it’s likely too early to see whether changes in the media ecology generally and the TV mediascape, have dramatically affected the traditional revenue expectations.

In the face of an environment changed dramatically by the explosion of digital video distribution and creation/availability of alternative platforms, the major TV networks have launched their own large-scale online-video-distribution operations in various formats and to various degrees.

But it has been suggested that more and more an immediate need to engage consumers may have also altered the psychology of upfront buyers in a way that could affect the amount of upfront money spent this year.

The realities and absolute effects of digital-video distribution have yet to be assessed, but clearly the traditional phrase, “tune in at 11 to get the latest update,” seems to have lost the currency it once had.

The Show Is Familiar, I Just Don't Remember The Network

A recent media study found that only one in four 12 to 34-year-olds can name all four major broadcast networks. (For those 12 to 34 years olds reading this blog, the answer is ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX.)

And while I guess these findings might upset me if I were the President of one of those networks, I think that I would have raised some other questions and not just let the numbers wash over me and into the press.

TV networks seem to drive most of their branding efforts to specific programming. Cable stations brand themselves. Certainly better than the TV networks. So I wonder if the 75% of the 12 to 34-year-olds who couldn’t name the networks could have grouped actual shows together, like NCIS and The Unit (CBS) or House and The Simpsons (FOX), or Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) or ER and The Office (NBC). Or if they could have told you which number you need to turn to on the cable box or satellite system to find a show (CBS = 2, NBC = 4, FOX = 5, ABC = 7).

Maybe the 12 to 34 year-olds are just using a different paradigm for “understanding” the networks and the shows. It is the 21st Century, after all.