The economy does not seem to affect pet food shoppers, who continue to migrate into the higher-preced pet specialty channel, according to U.S. Pet Market Outlook 2012-2013, a report from market research firm Packaged Facts. Although shoppers are value-oriented in buying other products, supermarkets and discount stores have seen their pet product shopper base decline. Similarly, while store brands overall are more important than ever across the consumer packaged-goods spectrum, pet food remains private-label resistant, an outpost of shopper loyalty to national brands. U.S. pet industry sales reached $56.67 billion in 2011, up from $54.56 billion in 2010. Although a modest 3.9% increase percentage-wise, the 2011 figure represents $2.1 billion in additional market value. Natural, organic, and eco-friendly products continue to advance, as do pet health products and services including medications, supplements, and insurance. Across all areas of the U.S. pet market, the net fallout from the recession has been greater market polarization, with healthy growth rates at the upper (pet specialty) and lower (strictly price-focused) ends of the market, and little growth in the middle, said David Lummis, senior pet market analyst at Packaged Facts. “Among super-premium pet products, natural (in its many expressions) remains the top selling point, while price plus a better selection of national brands has given price-focused channels like dollar stores and warehouse clubs a leg up,” Lummis tells Marketing Daily. “Meanwhile, retailers and marketers in core mass channels including supermarkets and discount stores have been struggling to sharpen their brand propositions in order to avoid coming across as ‘middle of the road.’” Packaged Facts’ March 2012 Pet Owner Survey indicates that nearly nine out of ten pet owners agree with the statement “I consider my pet(s) to be part of the family,” with 61% strongly agreeing and 28% somewhat agreeing, and that nearly two-thirds view their pet as their best friend, are spending more time with their pet, and enjoy purchasing products that pamper their pets. Pet owners therefore are highly receptive to products and services that replicate the ones they prize for themselves. Examples include veterinary procedures like chemotherapy, MRIs, and hip replacements; pet supplements featuring glucosamine or omega-3; human-grade pet foods containing superfruit or touted as gluten-free; designer pet supplies such as Burberry apparel and Simmons Beautyrest pet beds; and services including luxury boarding options and even a pet-specific airline, Pet Airways.
Kia Motors America doesn’t have a major vehicle launch this year, but in the world of auto marketing there is no such thing as coasting or taking a pit stop. So in a non-launch year, Kia is staying busy juggling a lot of digital programs as well as television advertising and partnerships to keep consumers’ eyes on the brand, and Millennials considering vehicles like Soul and Rio. The automaker will also be launching a raft of new ads for the Sorento SUV in coming weeks. The fact that Kia, which has been in the Super Bowl for three years, used the platform this time around to talk about the Kia Optima in ads that featured Motley Crue, a Victoria’s Secret supermodel and mixed martial arts kingpin Chuck Liddell says a lot about the brand’s overall creative tone and strategy. Michael Sprague, Kia Motors America VP of marketing, says that although the company wants to keep the brand top of mind among Millennials, the offbeat, humorous creative motif is less about reaching an age-defined group than positioning the brand favorably with people of all ages with an attitude that appreciates levity and a bit of fun. “Since we use TV to build awareness for the brand and drive consumers to Kia.com, our approach and our marketing communications are directed toward positioning ourselves as that cool, fun brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously,” he says. “The Optima is a beautiful vehicle, and we had fun with it. With that Super Bowl ad we saw buyers from 23 years old up to 80.” Even when the automaker does ads (via AOR DavidAndGoliath) featuring sports stars and Kia spokespeople LPGA star Michelle Wie and NBA All-Star Blake Griffin, there’s an offbeat humor involving weird juxtapositions: a new spot with Wie touting Soul has the golfer shooting skeet in Scotland with a driver and a golf ball instead of the traditional shotgun. Kia is “Official Vehicle of the Vans Warped Tour” for the fifth year in a partnership that puts its vehicles and the "Kia Soul Lounge" at each stop. Kia this year did a partnership with Fox Digital’s "Wolfpack of Reseda" that ran over eight weeks on MySpace with a new episode, ranging in length from 8 to 12 minutes, released each Thursday online. The company has also launched a partnership with Spotify, with the “Kia Rio Best Songs To Play With Your Windows Down” playlist where users can contribute a song to create a playlist via Spotify or the Rio Playlist tab on the Rio Facebook page. Sprague says despite all the digital activity, TV still plays a big part of the company’s strategy. “Consumers don’t buy vehicles on the spur of the moment. Most take six to nine months to start thinking about which vehicle they want. So TV is critical as an awareness-builder for us,” he says. “We are still only 4% of the [U.S. auto] market, and there are still a lot of people who don’t really know who we are or what we stand for.” Sprague says that TV is also a vehicle for driving more content-driven interactions online. “When we did the Super Bowl spot, we tracked by the minute what was happening on Kia.com. When a competitor’s ad came on, we saw a spike on our site. When our spot aired we saw a huge lift in traffic at Kia.com. And we were in [NBC’s] ‘The Voice’ later on that night, as we have a partnership with them and aired a 60-second spot, and we saw another huge spike.” He says the forthcoming Sorento campaign will be very product-focused. “We haven’t done much with Sorento since launching Optima over a year ago, and we feel we needed to bring Sorento back into the mix.” “So this is our brand-building year,” he says. “We will focus on our core models, continue to define what the brand stands for, and look at what went right and wrong over last three years in which we have launched nine new products. And we will focus on planning for 2013, which will be a very big year for us.”
Cotton Inc. is rolling out two new TV spots, the latest iteration of its “The Fabric of My Life” campaign, featuring actresses Emmy Rossum and Camilla Belle. The new effort is a tale of two cities, with Rossum, best known for her lead role in HBO’s “Shameless,” taking viewers on a ride through her native New York, from black-tie events to straphanging. And Belle’s spot tells a Los Angeles story, with the Brazilian actress tap dancing through the lobby of the Chandler Pavilion, and then shopping in a farmer’s market. The ads, created by DDB, are supported by such digital assets as a multimedia tour of Emmy Rossum’s closet, categorized by occasions, which allows users to share clothes through social media and buy similar looks for themselves, and a blog by Belle. There will also be audio and lyric downloads of the new cotton songs. Cotton Inc. says that The Fabric Of My Life campaign, now in its fourth year, has been backed by $65 million, and has generated a 50% recall score among the primary demographic (women 18-34), and 40% recall among the secondary demographic (women 35-54). It will reportedly spend $20 million on the Rossum and Belle effort. “Cotton is everyone’s hometown fabric,” says Glenn Sciachitano, Cotton Inc.’s advertising director, in its release, “and we are delighted to have two such beautiful and talented young women represent the distinctive styles of their hometowns, which influence fashion trends across the U.S. The range of cotton fashions in the commercials shows that whether you dress East Coast, West Coast or anything in between, cotton fits.” The new effort comes amid tumultuous times for the cotton business. Moody’s Investors Service recently raised its outlook for the U.S. apparel industry, saying that plummeting cotton prices, which have dropped 60% in the last year, should improve profits, and that the economy’s slow recovery should keep demand on an even keel.
General Mills has unseated Amazon as the company perceived as “most reputable” by U.S. consumers, according to the Reputation Institute’s 2012 U.S. RepTrak Pulse, which measures the country’s 150 largest public companies as perceived by consumers and other stakeholders. The Reputation Institute’s study is the basis of Forbes magazine’s annual “most reputable companies in America” rankings. General Mills earned the #1 spot with a Pulse score of 83 (within an index of 0-100). After just missing the top 10 in 2010 and 2011, the company saw a significant, 6-point improvement in its score this year. It scored strongest in three of the seven reputation-driving factors or dimensions employed in the study: products and services, governance and leadership. This year’s top 10 includes multiple food/beverages and CPG products companies. Kraft Foods ranks #2, with a score of 80 (down 1 point versus 2011); Johnson & Johnson is #3, at just shy of 80 (also down a point); Kellogg is #4 at 79.1 (down nearly 2 points); Coca-Cola Company is #7 at 78.1 (down 2 points); PepsiCo is #9 at 77.6 (up 2.5 points); and Procter & Gamble (which was #21 last year) is #10 at 77.3 (up nearly a point). The others in the top 10 are: Amazon.com, now #5 at 78.6, a decline of 4 points versus 2011; UPS at #6 (78.4, down 2 points); and Apple at #8 (77.7, up nearly 5 points). Five companies that did not make 2011’s top 10 are in 2012’s top 10: In addition to General Mills, these include Coca-Cola, Apple, PepsiCo and P&G. Companies that made last year’s top 10 but not this year’s include 3M, Sara Lee (now #11), Walt Disney Company, FedEx and Google. Corporate reputation scores were down overall in comparison with 2011. Nine in 10 companies (91%) saw their scores stay the same or drop. The biggest decliners were Time Warner (-10 points), Bank of America (-10), MR (-9), Altria (-9) and UAL. The strongest improvers, in addition to General Mills, included AIG (+16), ExxonMobil (+7) and Abbot Labs (+6). The companies seeing the largest gains were generally viewed by the public as turning in strong financial performances, while doubling down on successful citizenship efforts. The top individual companies in terms of specific reputation dimensions include Amazon.com, Apple and General Mills. Amazon.com wins in both products and services and governance (for the second year in a row). Apple places first in innovation (now three years running), leadership, performance, and workplace. Overall, #1 General Mills places first in citizenship and placed in the top 10 across all seven dimensions measured. The overall industries with the highest average scores are consumer products (74.52), food-manufacturing (73.52), industrial products (73.36), computer (73.2) and transport/logistics (71.9). Low-scoring industries include tobacco (44.6), financial/diversified (52.2), financial/bank (57.3), energy (58), telecommunications (60.7) and airlines and aerospace (61.4). Factors Driving Reputation and Consumer Behaviors The top three drivers of corporate reputation with the U.S. general public remain products and services (17.5%), governance (15.6%) and citizenship (14.2%). These drivers have remained consistent for the past five years. However, company or “enterprise” perceptions have a 60% influence on critical consumer behaviors including purchase consideration, loyalty and recommendation behaviors, whereas product perceptions account for just 40% of these behaviors. The Reputation Institute points out that since 2009, U.S. companies have been competing in a new “Reputation Economy” in which “who they are” matters even more than what they produce. Companies that excel at both, and convey “a differentiated, enterprise-wide story that translates into employee ambassadorship and earns marketplace support from external audiences” are the emerging leaders in this Reputation Economy, stresses Anthony Johndrow, managing partner of the institute. Direct experience with a company remains the strongest influencer of consumer perceptions. Regardless of a company’s reputation score, consumers who had a direct experience with a company or heard from the company rated that company higher than those with which they had no direct experience. What a company says or does -– including its marketing, advertising, public relations and “social responsibility” –- is the second-largest influencer of perceptions. What others say about a company (traditional/social/online media, friends/family, top experts, leaders) is third most influential. Within the “what others say” category, however, social media are most influential. Online-only media and mainstream media are second- and third-most influential, respectively. Corporate Reputation Strategies The Reputation Institute also interviewed “chief reputation officers” (CEO, CMO or chief communications officer) from the 150 companies about their reputation strategies. Some of the findings:
Is all apple juice created equal? Tree Top, a 52-year-old apple juice brand that has not run TV advertising for 30 years, is ready to make a point that Tree Top stands above the rest. Today, the brand begins running a TV spot -- first in West Coast markets -- that will spotlight Selah, Wash., where it sources its apples. The effort is designed to give Tree Top cachet as a locally grown and pressed juice and build loyalty in a market that has largely become commoditized and driven by prices, partly because of large numbers of apples imported from China. The campaign does not get into specifics such as the fact that Tree Top is an apple grower's co-op, but the message is that the region's growers care about their product -- thus Tree Top’s brand tagline, “Real Fruit From Real People.” The effort, via Seattle-based independent Cole & Weber and filmmaking team Everynone, launches with a TV spot called “Cool,” where kids react with simple wonder to things like hearing the ocean in an abalone shell, chasing a train, catching a bullfrog, making a bicycle roll by itself and other Tom Sawyer-esque exploits. The creative is juxtaposed with shots of Tree Top’s juice making, and the theme line “Made with a sense of wonder.” Michael Doherty, president of Cole & Weber, says while the effort begins in San Diego, Denver, Portland, Ore.,and Washington State, which serve as test markets, the campaign will roll out nationwide. "It will appear all over the U.S." He points out that distribution of Tree Top just got a big boost from a deal with Starbucks that puts the brand's juice boxes in all of the coffee seller's locations nationwide. John Maxham, executive CD, says the campaign and its timing reflect some fairly recent changes that have commoditized the apple juice category and made it more driven by price and deals. "There has been an onslaught of imported apples from China, and there has been kind of a race to the bottom in terms of promotion in the category. So Tree Top, being a Washington State apple grower, wanted to give the idea of the sense of 'place'; that they are domestic and come from a small town and from family farmers who care about the land and what they do." He adds that the brand wanted to spotlight the regionally of Tree Top's production by focusing on the values and lifestyle of the region. "Also, people are more and more interested in where their food comes from, and who makes it and produces it." Maxham adds that the there will be a large digital component to the campaign, including video assets. "We are going to be building on the Web site, and there are other pieces in the works. We would like to give people a chance to meet the folks in Selah and give them an up-close experience." He says there will also be out-of-home and point-of-sale elements. "One of the things that inspired the team was that we have taken frequent trips out there and one thing we noticed is that people love their jobs and approach it with a childlike sense of wonder. Given the fact that a major target is moms with children, we thought there was a tie to the way kids view the world with a sense of wonder and the way farmers and growers approach making the juice." The ads will run mostly on spot and cable in the western states, and then go national, where Tree Top is in retailers. And later, there will be a consumer content/social media component, per Maxham. He says that will involve soliciting people to contribute content about things their kids are amazed by or find inspiring. "We want to start that conversation; we'd love to hear from people about what they find to be amazing."
While we all know what Freud would say about America’s passion for big cars, TVs, and houses, it turns out that the relationship between size and status is a little more complex. New research from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management reveals that consumers view even a simple choice among small, medium and large as a way to inject a little more power into their lives. Marketing Daily asked Derek Rucker, associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, to explain the findings. Q: So consumers think bigger is better. Why is this surprising?A: To us, the news was that bigger is only better when it confers status, and that the size message is much more malleable than I would have thought. In general, bigger things cost more. So it makes sense that to consumers, they confer more status. But what really struck us was that size becomes much more important when it’s a question of power, even with very mundane objects. We tend to think of status purchases as expensive, like cars or jewelry, but a large cup of coffee says a lot about a person. Q: How so?A: People like to have power and control over their environment, and don’t like to lose it -- that’s true no matter how much money you make. When a car cuts us off or someone turns a fan on us in an airplane, we feel powerless and we don’t like it. We tested this giving away different sizes of bagel pieces. In one experiment, a banner proclaimed: “We all feel powerless in the morning. Treat yourself to free bagels!” Another said: “We all feel powerful in the morning. Treat yourself to free bagels!” And a third said, “It’s morning. Treat yourself to free bagels!” After controlling for whether or not people had eaten breakfast, people who felt powerless tended to take the larger bagel pieces over the small ones. In general, larger items are associated with higher status -- that seems to be the default. Q: But not always?A: No! In fact, we were surprised by how easy it is to reverse that. In another experiment, we offered four sizes of hor d’oeuvres. In some cases, we told people the largest ones had recently been served at a White House event, and in other cases, that the smaller ones had. People chose the size associated with the White House -- they were looking for status, not more food. Cell phones are another good example of this. If people believe smaller phones are better and more expensive, they’ll want them. Q: So we have to ask: Size matters more to men, right?A: No -- at least not in our data: Both genders seem equally susceptible to this state of powerlessness, and when offered three size options, are likely to choose the largest. Interestingly, we tested this with free coffee -- the will choose the largest, even when they’re not paying. Q: What’s the big takeaway for marketers? A: That advertising really matters. In our bagel experiment, the banner put people in a certain mindset of feeling powerful, or feeling powerless. Advertisers have more control over the implications about status than they realize.
Pinterest has been getting a lot of buzz as one of the hottest new sites of the year. The site is so well loved by fans and marketers alike that the recent redesign -- which did not affect the overall functionality of the site -- was a major topic of debate. Why is Pinterest useful for local online marketing? The site is driving a lot of traffic to business Web sites. A Shareaholic study showed that Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic in January, driving more traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. In fact, if your business features images on your blog, Web site, or Web store, you may already be getting traffic via Pinterest if your customers or fans have “pinned” your images using the site. When an image is pinned using the Pinterest shortcut, it links back to the referring source, creating links to your original content. If a Pinterest user finds something they are interested in, they can like it, pin it to their own board, and visit the site directly.Start by building your business presence You’ll need to request an invite directly from the site, or ask someone you know who is using Pinterest to invite you. Once you get your invite, put your business name in the “first name” field in the sign up form so that it is displayed properly on your account. Select your preferred social media user name for the “user name” field, because this will be the short link to your account. Discover Pinterest as a consumer If you’re not already using Pinterest personally, send an invite to yourself at another email account so you can create a personal profile too. This will allow you to experience Pinterest as a user so you can understand the site’s addictive appeal to consumers. This can also inspire you with ideas you can apply to your business account.Create interesting boards and share great content When you’re ready to start actively using Pinterest for your business, start by creating 10-15 interesting boards for your brand. Don’t just rely on the standard board names. Think of your customers when building your Pinterest approach. What types of content, topics, and interests do they enjoy? What would you as a user find interesting? Don’t limit what you post to just information about your products and services. It’s important to share content that other users will love sharing -- including content from other brands and users. For example, a local bakery could create boards for cupcake recipes, frosting tips, taste combinations, decorating ideas, party ideas, personal favorites, cake disasters, and wedding planning. To find interesting content for your boards when you start, explore hashtags or use the search function to find content already on Pinterest, and install the “Pin It” browser button to easily add new content to Pinterest from other Web sites and blogs.Build your network of customers, fans, employees, and like-minded businesses Once you have created and built your boards, start following other users. The users you follow will be notified of your account, and following users will fill your stream with content that you can share. Search the site for topics you’d like to share and follow individuals and businesses with common interests. Tell fans and followers on other social sites that your business is on Pinterest, too! Make your content "pinnable” In your content strategy, think about how to harness the Pinterest interest graph. Sharing photography, images, and infographics related your business can help you build awareness and traffic. Create content that users will pin and re-pin. You can pin your own images to appropriate categories to let followers know what new content you have posted so they can share it. If you’re creating content with Pinterest in mind, you should also put a “Pin It” site button on your blog or Website, so your readers can easily pin your content directly from your site. These are just a few tips for getting started on Pinterest as a local business. Are you using the site personally or for business? What are your thoughts? Feel free to share you tips, tricks and ideas in a comment!