Effective marketing by alcoholic beverage makers and retailers demands a nuanced understanding of varied mindsets and behaviors within consumer demographic segments, as well as behavioral differences seen within beverage categories. A new Nielsen Category Fundamentals study offers insights on these dynamics. Differing by-category purchasing behaviors represent significant marketing tactic opportunities, according to the study. For example, while decisions to buy alcoholic beverages are planned in 69% of instances, “niche categories such as pre-mixed cocktails and flavored malt-based beverages reflect a pronounced shift to more impulse behavior,” reports Nielsen. That means that while pre-store marketing is still important for brand awareness, focused in-store efforts can be very effective in driving unplanned purchases. Other by-category insights: *Spirits purchases are generally planned, but consumers typically postpone those purchases until they are going out to make other purchases (spirits purchases themselves trigger only 39% of the trips). Takeaway: Combining alcohol marketing communications with consumer packaged goods is key in activating spirits purchases. *Traditional or mainstream domestic beer drinkers (who consume 78% of these purchases on the same day) exhibit high levels of purchase planning and habitual in-store behavior. Occasion marketing -- highlighting a variety of suggestions for settings in which to consume and share beers -- is an effective tactic for breaking through this habitual behavior. *Craft beer consumers are much more impulsive, frequently making purchases without having a specific occasion in mind. They are notably receptive to in-store marketing, including highlighting of specialty and seasonal beers. *Wine drinkers are explorers, and make their purchase decisions in-store. Compared to beer and spirits, a high level (37%) of wine purchase decisions are made in-store. Furthermore, 70% of specific wine-purchase decisions or selections are made at the shelf. However, wine drinkers explore, research and engage with the category between store trips, so word-of-mouth marketing and advertising that yields high recall -- as well as sampling and in-store marketing -- can significantly boost sales in this category. On the demographics front, Nielsen reports that in contrast to the “autopilot” alcoholic beverages purchasing behavior of Boomers, Millennials are experimental, and responsive to in-store displays, promotions and new-product launch marketing. Hispanic consumers are highly engaged with -- and influenced by -- pre-store marketing, including social media, particularly when messaging is tailored. And while differences are more nuanced within alcoholic beverage categories, in general, males not only purchase more of these beverages than females, but tend to be more influenced by current marketing/advertising efforts. Females are less engaged with both pre-store and in-store marketing, and more likely to purchase alcohol at the request of another person. "Couple Wine Shopping photo from Shutterstock"
Social media research firm newBrandAnalytics says surveys are defunct, since now companies can get all the data they want online. The firm says companies got a 25% increase in online customer reviews on their social sites. “Many of the more progressive brands have already decided to eliminate surveys and instead focus on social feedback as their primary source for customer experience information,” said the firm's CEO Kristin Muhlner. The firm also said companies will use consumers' online habits to find out how their competitors are doing by benchmarking competitors' social data. They will also use that competitive data for product creation. NewBrandAnalytics predicts that more than a third of businesses will products explicitly because of what their competition’s online customers are saying. Also, social intelligence will make real-time performance evaluation common, as companies figure out how to assess their performance from online chatter, and use comments -- from employees, customers, and consumers -- to help make hiring and firing decisions. What all of this suggests is that social media currents won't belong only to companies' marketing departments. The firm predicts that buzz content will work its way into the decision-making processes of operations, human resources, customer service, and product development. To the extent that such content is becoming richer and more sophisticated in terms of how it all gets parsed by analysis tools, companies' use of star ratings will become pretty much defunct, NewBrandAnalytics predicts. The firm says that marketers, rather, will look for themes in reviews to drive improvements. And brand level intelligence will also become more local. The consultancy suggests that focusing on general brand image will become less important than studying location-specific social reviews, alerts and trouble spots because that will let them do a better job of addressing issues at the source: stores, franchises, and local brand touchpoints and extensions of various kinds.
Creating a retail empire off an electronics brand worked for Apple. Perhaps it can do the same for Polaroid. This year, Polaroid will launch at least 10 experimental retail locations that will give people the chance to take images from their digital devices and turn them into keepsakes. The first of these stores, dubbed Polaroid Fotobar, will open in February in Delray Beach, Fla. “I recognized the human and societal obsession with taking pictures, but [then] people weren’t taking the pictures off their camera phones,” Warren Struhl, founder and CEO of Fotobar, tells Marketing Daily. “Our answer to the meteoric rise of picture-taking and the [improved] quality of picture taking is to establish a retail concept where you can see a product and make it into something special.” The stores are intended to capitalize on the growing number of pictures taken via camera phones, which are often shared digitally through social networks, but rarely printed or displayed in the real world, Struhl says. Working with Polaroid gives the concept a link for consumers to instant photography, within a fun, experiential environment, he says. “The Polaroid brand worldwide is powerful and highly recognized, particularly among people of a certain age,” Struhl says. “It means quality, it means innovation, it means instant, and it means pictures.” In addition to the Delray Beach location, the company plans to open other Polaroid Fotobar stores in New York, Las Vegas and Boston, Struhl says. It is looking at different “paradigms” for its retail stores, including shopping malls and airports as it experiments with the concept, he adds. Each store will include a patent-pending proprietary technology that allows customers to wirelessly transmit photos on their phone to one of the store’s bar-top workstations. At the stations, people can edit and enhance the photos before choosing materials, substrates (including canvas, metal, acrylic, wood and bamboo) and framing options for their photos. Most of the final pieces will be created and shipped to the consumer within 72 hours. Staffed by photography enthusiasts (the company is calling them “Phototenders”), the stores may also host photo classes and private parties and have a studio location to create portraits. “That is a magnet, we believe, and the beginning of experiential opportunities in the store,” Struhl says. “We also believe the simple visit to the store and making something is something that could be a lot of fun for people.”
American International Group features its employees in a campaign that thanks America for its support during the global financial crisis. The effort also highlights AIG’s recovery, commitment to the communities it serves, and the full repayment of U.S. government support, plus a combined positive return of over $22 billion. Creative and media are handled by PARTNERS+simons agency in Boston. The spots were produced by Directorz and directed by Jeff Bednarz. The campaign, which debuted Jan. 1 and will run for two weeks, shows how AIG helps American communities rebuild by acting as the lead insurer at the new World Trade Center, helping Joplin, Mo. come back from a tornado in 2011, and assisting the East Coast as it recovers from Hurricane Sandy. The effort includes broadcast, online and print. Television ads will run on sporting events, including NCAA Football Bowl Championship Series games and NFL playoff games; national morning shows including “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America,” and prime-time television, including “The Golden Globes,” “60 Minutes” and “Dateline.” Print ads will appear in upcoming issues of major publications, including The Economist, The Financial Times, The Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USAToday, The Wall Street Journal and major trade journals. Online ads buys include a masthead and mobile roadblock on YouTube, and home page takeovers of nytimes.com, MSN.com, WSJ.com and Yahoo. The campaign will also be promoted on social media and can be seen on AIG’s YouTube channel. Visitors to the channel are encouraged to subscribe so they can follow AIG’s story and learn how the company helps customers around the world.
December gave automakers the gift of a strong finish to the year. Now, with a last-minute deal to avoid the cliff, the market gets another gift for 2013: continued recovery. Southfield, Mich.-based market auto analysis firm Polk sees a 6.6% rise in sales versus 2012. Auto research and shopping site Edmunds.com, which came out with its own prediction in December when things were looking dour for a deal, sees the market essentially flat for 2013. Also helping things this year is a huge increase in new-vehicle introductions -- 43 planned for 2013 -- a 50% increase over last year, not to mention the introduction of 60 vehicles that have been redesigned or refreshed, notes Polk. Anthony Pratt, director of forecasting for the Americas at the firm, said in a release that while the improving automotive picture won't reach the Everest-level pre-recession numbers of 17 million, it will help the entire economy. Polk says the mid-size sedan segment, now at 18.5% of the U.S. market, will continue to lead the industry. “Recent redesigns of nearly every vehicle in the mid-size segment are forcing more competition and continued growth,” said Tom Libby, lead analyst for North America at Polk. “The current array of options for consumers in the market for a new mid-sized vehicle makes it a great time to buy a new car.” Luxury will get a leg up because automakers are trying to “one-down" each other in compact vehicles that offer entrance to luxury brands: Audi A3 sedan (and electric), a coupe version of Cadillac's new ATS small car, Mercedes-Benz CLA, a new version of Buick's Verano, and a revision of Acura's troubled ILX are all examples. As gasoline prices drop, small luxury crossover business will increase as well, tracking the non-luxury compact crossover sector, which has grown 50% in five years, notes Polk.
In Metrics Insider, Performance Insider, and other digital marketing media, I'm reading a lot about the measurement debate: people talk about attribution, engagement, impressions, even ancient concepts like OTS, CPM, even GRP. More than a few years ago (1994) Giep Franzen wrote a book called Advertising Effectiveness. His analyses of TV commercials and print ads led me to wonder whether there’s a parallel between his last-millennium media research and the issues facing digital advertisers today. (And yes, you can try these at home!) Franzen analyzed full-page, full-color ads appearing in women’s magazines. He combined the results of several research methods: eye-tracking, surveys, and “through-the-book” tests like Starch. Are you sitting comfortably, magazine in hand? Counting down from 100%:
Digital advertising growth continues to defy the economy as social media, paid search, and video ads command an ever-greater share of marketing spend. This appears to be a logical shift to a more measurable marketing channel -- however, a deeper look shows these digital shifts fundamentally changing the way companies manage branding and advertising. These shifts serve both as additional wake-up call to the traditional industry and a rallying cry for marketing opportunists everywhere. Shift 1 – Brand building will never be the same again. Advertising has traditionally been the temple of fixed, static, perfected messages that are blasted out a one-way tube following the mantra “bigger is always better.” This has always been the art of covering your audience with consistent talking points and imagery until the needles move on the “awareness” and “consideration” charts. This activity is no longer relevant to how brands are built. The marketing department of the future will spend less time managing the big ad than it does managing social media engagements and inbound conversations. Long gone is the back-office call center for customer questions and complaints. With everything publicly viewed on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels, activist customers have the biggest stage to date, and brand metrics will move as a result of how well those engagements are managed. As real-time, two-way dialogues between advertisers and customers become the norm, the concept of static messages will simply evaporate. Shift 2 – You can’t control the message (in ways you may not even realize). Yes, most advertisers now know that in two-way dialogues, they can’t control the message. Or more accurately, they can’t control the reaction and chain reaction customers have to their messages. However, customers are only part of the story; what about employees? Tradition states that only the marketing department does marketing, but with 140 characters to the world, isn’t every employee now engaged in “marketing”? Talk about losing control. The phrase “brand police” is notorious for the simple reason that companies feel it necessary to monitor, edit and in many cases stop the messages their employees want to push out the door. Does this concept even hold up any more? In a blogging, tweeting, “liking” employee base, it is impossible to police -- better yet monitor -- everything leaving the corporate walls. Brand police will be replaced by corporate values, approval processes will be replaced by guiding principles, and the companies that emerge successful will freely enable all employees to engage in “marketing.” Shift 3 – What exactly is digital media? The current state of digital media is a mess. Just when you’ve mastered the concept of “paid, owned and earned,” the ground shifts again. Facebook, the social media giant, now wants to be the king of paid. Google, the definitive paid channel, has gone social. In the middle is every publisher, portal, and video site trying new approaches to make a digital buck -- meaning that it’s impossible to compare apples to apples. This leaves advertisers not knowing what they get for a dollar invested. Enter digital attribution, a form of media mix modeling that helps marketers answer media investment questions holistically. This is high-end statistics at their best, using modeling techniques to optimize overall marketing investments. Sidebar for CMOs, start hiring more statisticians NOW. Shift 4 – Your canvas is shrinking - FAST. The biggest shift of all? Big marketing has gone tiny, literally, via the smartphone. Over 2 million new smartphones are activated every single day, making this the fastest-growing media channel on the planet. What purpose will billboards, TV commercials, and print advertising have when all we ever do is stare at a two-inch screen in our pocket? Indeed, the canvas is shrinking to tiny proportions and our messages need to shrink with it. Design, content, copy, responsiveness, and perhaps the toughest bar of all -- relevance -- all have new hurdles to climb when the world goes micro. When the imagery shrinks to the point of almost being irrelevant, marketing will become even more obsessed with relevant mobile experiences, which will be a win for customers everywhere. Taking into account these shifts feels like a bad movie moment where I ask marketers everywhere: “Scared yet? Because you will be!” These shifts are dramatic -- and while it’s true that branding and advertising will never be the same again, there is no group more creative than marketers to make the new era even more rewarding than the last one (the alterative, well, is not something we should be focusing on!).