See Tuesday's Blog

Engagement is turning into a 24/7 issue. For those of you who have often remarked that you “would be better off if I were paid by the meeting,” you will have some idea about what Advertising Week 2006 has been like.

Substantive conversations ongoing. More details next Tuesday!

Engagement Engagements

It’s a busy week for Advertising Week 2006, and Brand Keys will be sharing some insights at two critical conferences.

The first, on Wednesday, is the Forecast Conference, addressing the rapid re-acceleration of Internet advertising and marketing. For sure, emerging new distribution models are transforming the pace of all media. That’s bound to alter the relationships consumers have with media and advertising, and it’s causing industry players to shift from long-term strategic planning to a "blink" management style. It is our hope that Brand Keys’ Brand-to-Media-Engagement model will be of some assistance.

The second, presented on Thursday by the Advertising Research Foundation and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, is the Consumer Engagement Conference: How to Turn On a Mind, and will unveil up-to-the-minute insights on consumer engagement, involvement and emotional response to advertising. We’ll be presenting on Day One some proven engagement methodologies.

Engagement is not something imaginary or descriptive, but something real, and when done properly, can be very profitable, and we hope to see you at one (or both), but if you’d like a preview of some of these insights, just go to the following link:
http://consumerengagement.blogspot.com/2006/09/engagement-video-series-dr-robert.html

Some Words of Wisdom About Why It's Time to Buy a Book

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce,
For wisdom, profit, engagement, or use.
- Anon.

A single book at the right time can change our views dramatically, give a quantum boost to our knowledge, and help us construct a whole new outlook on the world.
- Steve Leveen

Books can be uniquely portable magic.
- Steven King

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, offer your own version in return.
- Salman Rushdie

predicting Market Success: New Ways to Measure Customer Loyalty and Engage Consumers with Your Brand by Robert Passikoff has its official publication date on September 22, 2006.
- John Wiley

Read a compelling excerpt today: http://www.brandkeys.com/book/
- Brand Keys

Publication Date Countdown

There’s only four more days till the official publication date of my book. There’s been some industry chatter, but in case you haven’t heard, the title is predicting MARKET SUCCESS: New Ways to Measure Customer Loyalty and Engage Consumers with Your Brand. It’s from John Wiley & Sons.

Peter Drucker observed that, "there is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." Unfortunately, these days a lot of research resembles that remark, so my goal was to teach 20/20 foresight rather than 20/20 hindsight, with metrics that correlate to sales and profits.

About the book, Joe Jaffe said, “loyalty is not about being complacent with the past; it’s about being proactive and predictive about the future. This book shows the way forward.”

Marc Babej, the President of Reason, Inc., noted, “Predicting Market Success delivers the key ingredients for breakthrough marketing strategies; a clear-headed understanding of brands, and a predictive approach to measuring them.”

Someone else once pointed out that you can tell the values of a nation by its advertisements. It’s our hope that Predicting Market Success will help tell marketers the value of their advertisements!

Judge for yourself and read an excerpt. You can get there via the following link: http://www.brandkeys.com/book/

Enjoy!

Guaranteeing 21st Century Marketing Success

I wrote a book. It’s been coming for some time now. The title is predicting MARKET SUCCESS: New Ways to Measure Customer Loyalty and Engage Consumers with Your Brand. John Wiley & Sons are the publishers and it will be available on Friday, September 22nd.

My goal in writing the book was to teach 20/20 foresight rather than 20/20 hindsight, with metrics that correlate to sales and profits.

Here’s what some industry luminaries had to say about it:

Joe Plummer, Chief Research Officer, Advertising Research Foundation

Predicting Market Success has come at the right time for major companies. The value of understanding the dimensions of your brand's unique appeal and strength of preference (or as the book so well describes - loyalty) is indispensable for brand strategy today. Brand Keys is one of the innovators in brand research and this book will be worth your time.

Barry Sheehy, Founder, EPC Econometrics

Loyalty is the key determinant of profitability – nothing else even comes close. Yet for something so important, surprisingly few do it well. The techniques and approaches in this book represent the leading edge of customer loyalty and engagement measurement – making this a must read.

John Gaffney, Executive Editor, Peppers & Rogers Group

If you want a business book that will make you feel justified, complimented and comfortable, don’t read this. If you want a book to challenge your beliefs about brand marketing right down to the core, you can’t afford not to.

Gotta love that Gaffney!

At Least They're Consistent

Brand Keys conducts a Super Bowl Media Engagement Survey created to tease out viewer’s true behaviors. It delivers results that correlate highly with consumers’ true behaviors and is a reliable predictor of future brand purchases. But, virtually two-thirds of the companies that consistently advertise on that holy-of-holies medium – professionally strategized and produced – do not receive any meaningful contribution to engagement or profitability for their efforts.

Anyway, why raise this now, half a year away from the event? Well, it turns out that Chevrolet, a company that has followed the path of consumer generated media with some consistency, has launched a contest for college students to create an ad for the company, get it produced and have it aired during the Super Bowl in 2007.

We are all in favor of including consumers in the planning process. You have to. You can’t avoid doing that anymore. But consistently relying upon consumer generated messaging provides no guarantee that strategy and creativity will flow as easily as trends, values, and expectations.

Advertise on the Super Bowl if you must, but Chevrolet (and others) would do well by remembering that consistency is often the last refuge of the unimaginative. And all you may end up with are commercials for the unengaged.

Net Numbers Not Nice

The visitor counts to Web sites provided by comScore Media Metrix where altered recently. The company indicated that they were making changes in how it estimates Internet users on a global basis. They’ve decided not to count people younger than 15 and those who share computers in places like universities and cafes.

The changes apparently had a big impact on the numbers, with some reductions being a large as 50% and with some clients extraordinarily stunned at the severity of the effects.

As researchers who have to provide data that is generalizable at some reasonable degree of confidence, we are surprised that A) clients were surprised that their numbers went down when large segments were eliminated from the count, and B) that marketers are actually willing to accept numbers that are so. . . variable.

Aristotle said, “Seek not exactness where only an approximation is possible.” But he didn’t have to provide ROI numbers to the clients!

The Back-To-School 3 R's: Retailer, Rates, and Requirements

Five hundred and fifty dollars ($550) is the average spend consumers are going to make for back-to-school clothes and supplies according to our 2006 survey. It looks like it’s going to be a $17+ billion dollar back-to-school season this year.

Unlike other major purchase events like Mother’s Day, there’s an uneven distribution in terms of which retailers will be the beneficiaries of consumers shopping this season. For the consumer the traditional 3 R’s are now ‘retailer,’ ‘rates,’ and ‘requirements’: Which retailer is offering the best prices for the things they need most?

So retailers who want to capitalize on this year’s additional buying and who want to engage customers ought to keep that in mind because experience is a hard teacher. Unlike school, she gives the test first and the lessons afterwards!