How Super Will The Super Bowl Be?

Not all programs are right for all brands — even if your program happens to be the Super Bowl. Our 6^th annual Super Bowl Engagement Survey reports when it comes to the actual return advertisers will get on their sizable investments, upsets are not limited to the playing field.

Our predictive Brand-to-Media Engagement measures quantify the level of real emotional engagement created between a brand and a media environment, in this case, the Super Bowl XLII and the advertised brands. The assessments correlate with attention paid to the brand’s message, increases to a brand’s equity, and sales, so smart marketers can determine whether this is a media arena they should be playing in.

This isn’t Monday-morning, creative quarterbacking, or counting the audience. Eyeballs are one thing, real engagement another. Ultimately all TV spots - no matter how creative – should be judged by how well they drive sales and build the brand. Really successful brands are not just noticed, they’re chosen by consumers, and in this instance, 7+ points in brand equity guarantees you’re “chosen.”

This year’s results are:

Budweiser +10

Bud light +8

Audi -3

Bridgestone Firestone +5

Cars.com +8

Chevrolet +2

Coke +9

Disney +2

Doritos +15

Fedex +3

Ford -2

Go Daddy.com +8

Hershey’s +7

Hyundai -5

Planters Peanuts +8

Paramount Studios +4

Pepsi +11

Sales Genie.com +7

Sony Studios +4

Sprint +4

Tide-to-Go +7

Toyota +9

Unilever +8

Universal Pictures +4

Victoria’s Secret -4

White House Office of

National Drug Control Policy -5

In the spirit of the upcoming game we note that while the old sports saying goes, “There is no ‘I’ in “team,” there is one in “Return-On-Investment.”

Enjoy the game. Go team!

More importantly, go brands!

Sweetening Your Share Price

Krispy Kreme, who traded away their “hot and fresh” brand equity for a “cold and congealed” distribution scheme, lost 72% of its trading value last year. That didn’t surprise us. They’ve been dead last in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index for the past 4 years.

They’ve opted to replace the CEO with the company’s chairman who will be in the spot for the “foreseeable future.” Shares rose the most in almost a month on the news, but we don’t expect to see that reflected in this year’s ratings.

They had to do something, of course, but it’s worth remembering that in the business world a CEO, knows something about everything, the marketing team knows everything about something – but, ultimately, it’s the consumer who knows everything and decides your fate.

The Luckiest Category on the Face of the Earth

Loyalty is a behavior that’s most obvious in the sports arena. Fans stand on line, sometimes sleep on line, to buy tickets. They paint their bodies team colors. They brave heat and cold just to attend a game. They know the names, they know the stats, they know the game. Try finding that kind of behavior in the cola category.

Sports, just like any other product or service, has its category drivers: Pure Entertainment (where the win-loss ratio resides), Authenticity (unadulterated skill), Fan Bonding (players you really love), and History & Tradition (just that). Some drivers are more important than others. And if you want more engagement and loyalty you have to make sure that your team does something to increase their potency on one driver or another.

The easiest way to do that in sports is to win. The conference. The playoffs. The series. Do that and nothing else and you’ll see about a 20% lift in fan loyalty. From a business perspective loyalty translates into more than just ticket sales. Fan loyalty levels correlate to TV viewership and purchase of licensed merchandise, and that’s where the big bucks are!

If you wanted to see the actual, behavioral effects for yourself, you needed to be at a sporting goods retailer a few days after the Giant’s win last Sunday. Retailers likened the rush of merchandise as “better than Christmas” with fans in a “bigger frenzy than Black Friday.” So far sales of t-shirts, caps, and mementos are up about 13%, with fans willing to part with $75 for a jersey.

Merchants expect the boom to remain strong through the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. Which from a loyalty standpoint is a fairy (re)tail ending for everyone.

Sex and the Single Brand

The American Apparel brand, a $250 million a year rising star in the branded rag trade firmament, has 53 retail outlets in five countries that sell t-shirts, swimsuits, and underwear. All of it is made in America, and all of it stands for “sex”. The stores’ walls are covered “candid” photos of young people in various states of undress, just so shoppers don’t miss the message.

This positioning is apparently not just reserved for the stores and the ads. It turns out that founder, Dov Charney, is being sued for sexual harassment by some of his employees. The trial starts this week, but it raises more than legal issues.

In a category where a good deal of engagement and loyalty is driven by brand reputation, how will this play out in the court of public opinion?

John Barrymore, known more for his acting rather than his marketing acumen, may have had the best insight about sex – for men and brands: “Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sex. He will go to any length for it - risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.”

News to Phone Home About!

It’s official: Samsung surpassed struggling Motorola in 2007 to become the world’s second-biggest handset maker after Nokia.

Samsung’s global market share is up 3% and they set sales records every quarter. They sold 115 million phones in the first three-quarters of the year versus 114 million sold the entire year prior. In fact, expectations are that they’ll sell 200 million phones this year. That’s a growth rate about double the rest of the industry! And while all this is all buoyant news for Samsung, it’s not surprising news to Brand Keys.

See, we measure the wireless handset category in our annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index and Samsung is one of the brands we track. Last year it was rated #1. In fact, it’s been #1 for a number of years now, and as these assessments always correlate with positive consumer behavior, you can see how this news isn’t all that astounding to us. Expected, yes. Astounding, no. (2008 results will be out in a couple of weeks, so we’ll actually know what the next 12 months will look like.)

So while we take pride in our leading-indicator assessments, we’d like to remind those brands that don’t have loyalty and engagement measures that while awards and kudos are awfully nice, it’s better to have measures that are predictive and tell you what consumers are going to do 12-to-18 months down the road. And that’s what engagement and loyalty metrics do; they let you accurately predict where customer values are going to be, not where they’ve been.

And you really, really want to be able to do that. Because if you don’t, consumers may not answer when your brand comes calling!

Who's #2?

Cutting off the competition at the turn, Toyota overtook Ford to become the number two automaker in 2007.

Analysts were quoted as saying that the use of a consistent and differentiating strategy, combined with engaging new products, managed to break Ford’s 75-year hold on the position.

Interestingly, the 2007 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement index (2008 results will be out in three weeks) provides predictive, leading indicator measures of engagement and loyalty, and Toyota ranked #1 on our list:

Ford ranked 9^th.

And the tie to positive consumer behavior and profits? Toyota sold 48,228 more vehicles than Ford. Toyota’s sales were up 3% and Ford’s fell 12%.

Gotta love those predictive metrics!

How To Be Great At Basketball

To paraphrase the great Yogi, “basketball is 80% physical, the other half are your shoes.”

OK, not strictly speaking, but when you’re the shoe that changed the face of athletic shoe marketing, it’s a reasonable inference. Even more so when you realize that the brand is the “Air Jordan” and that Nike is releasing the 23^rd version of the shoe this month.

Every basketball star wannabe knows that “XX3” is Michael Jordan’s jersey number and the logo is bound to make this version as venerated and sought after as its predecessors. Which is probably why it’s being released in a limited edition to only 23 retailers with a price tag of $230.00!

The “23” theme notwithstanding, we can’t comment about the price-value equation. But we can tell you that “Air Jordan” was the only sub-brand to make the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index in the Athletic Shoe category. Aptly, it’s also Nike’s first basketball shoe to be released under its new, carbon footprint which aims to use environmentally friendly materials and reduce waste.

There were rumors that Nike was going to retire the 23^rd iteration of the shoe because of the jersey number and all that, but neither Nike nor Michael will comment. But to stick with this particular blog’s sports theme, “winners never quit. . .”

Especially when you’re a bestselling shoe with an incredibly loyal following.

You Want A Latte With That?

McDonald’s – who took some coffee ground away from Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts last year – announced that they’ll install coffee bars with Starbucks-like baristas in 14,000 U.S. locations this year.

Along with drip coffee, McDonald’s will be serving lattes, cappuccinos, and frappes. Following the successful introduction of their premium drip coffee, and this would seem to be a natural, next-step line extension, especially with so many locations to offer up product throughout the United States. Some market analysts have suggested that convenience, via “Convenient Locations,” has become the dominant driver in the industry, but that’s not strictly true.

According to the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, convenience has become table-stakes when it comes to coffee beverages. Consumers are driven more by actual brand loyalty than just convenience. Instead of taking the most expedient, beeline to work, commuters actually go out of their way to visit one coffee provider versus another. In fact, the Department of Transportation noted that the increase in these commuter trips has thwarted attempts to forecast travel patterns that had traditionally been based on models that relied on the predictability of the morning commute. So, will having lots of coffee beverages, at lots of locations, do it for McDonald’s?

Not according to our Loyalty Engagement Index. Starbucks lost a lot of ground last year walking away from the critical coffee experience – found in the category driver, “Service and Surroundings” – they had imported from Italy and popularized for the U.S. food-service industry. To no surprise it was announced that Howard Schultz is returning to the helm at Starbucks.

That said, McDonald’s is apparently borrowing heavily from the Starbucks brand experience and Dunkin’ service standard; they’ll be calling the crew members “baristas,” and will be displaying the equipment in the front of their stores instead of hiding it in the back along with the fry-o-lators. But it’s also been reported that the McDonald’s process will use a single machine that automatically steams the milk and combines it with the espresso, which cuts down on some of the drama and ceremony that comes with the preparation of a really well prepared espresso.

Selection is important too. Sure, everyone laughed when Steve Martin ordered a “half-double-decaffeinated-half-caf with a twist of lemon” in the movie LA Story, but now it’s the price-of-entry that coffee purveyors actually provide such variations, and while “Quality and Taste” also drive engagement, consumption, and loyalty, Consumer Reports rated McDonald’s drip coffee better-tasting than Starbucks.

Of course, saying it and doing it, and doing it believably, are three entirely different things. McDonald’s tried to introduce a coffee distribution outlet called “the McCafé” nearly a decade ago. They set up some comfy chairs and a counter that offered cappuccinos and cookies, but a corner of a typical McDonald’s didn’t actually provide an acceptable milieu that lent itself to a cappuccino-sipping experience. Servers kept asking, “You want fries with that?” No, only kidding, but you get the point. McDonald’s certainly had the real estate and the financial and production wherewithal to offer up the product, what they didn’t have was a believable environment.

But with the success of its premium drip coffee as a foundation, a recent physical plant re-fit, and cheaper products than Starbucks, McDonald’s feels that introducing coffee bars will help solidify customer loyalty and will be able to address the upturn in consumption of coffee-based beverages and the downturn in carbonated soft drinks.

Opinions regarding flavored coffee beverages may vary, but one thing everyone can agree on is that more loyal customers are a good thing. Having a truly engaged and loyal customer base is not only profitable, but sometimes it can be as stimulating as a really good cup of coffee. With or without foam!

New Year's Resolutions

Oscar Wilde wisely noted that, “good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.” Of course, Mr. Wilde didn’t have access to the kinds of marketing and consumer insights we have today.

Resolutions dealing with dieting, finances, more exercise, less smoking, more time with family have become natural constituents of the New Year’s time-space continuum. They’ve been “resolved” before, and will again. Knowing what one should do, and doing it, have always been two dramatically different things. So as a service to our loyal readers, here’s a resolution that’s always prompted when one returns to work after the holidays: getting your desk organized. (OK, it’s not as bad as the photo, but it feels that way!)

We can’t actually help you with your filing or sorting or tossing, but we can help you to better understand the five stages – and the related emotions – you’ll go through to reach your goal. In this instance we’ve assumed that “Denial” is no longer an option.

Stage 1: Papers cover every surface (You feel bad)

Stage 2: You put the papers in piles (You feel good)

Stage 3: The piles just sit there (You feel bad)

Stage 3a: The piles continue to sit there (You feel worse)

Stage 4: The piles become one with your office (You no longer notice)

Stage 5: The piles get placed in recycling (You feel good again)

Welcome back to work! All good things for 2008.