• by Staff Writers , September 1, 2006

The mind of the consumer -- who knows what really happens there? This year's finalists leveraged new tools and tactics to peek inside, gaining valuable insights in the process.

Maxus

Church & Dwight/Trojan

Carla Loffredo, Jane Barasch, Al Benoit, Frank Amorese, and Brett Lunde, Strategic Planning; Kelly Foster, Lukeisha Paul, and Meredith Gerard, Print; Jeff Ratner, Jeff Liang, and Shauna Lotz, Online; Jill Goldmann and Jennifer Maisel, Radio; Lisa Antonucci, Diane Denesowicz, Debbie Solomen, and Lisa Strassberg, Research

Competition had heated up for Trojan. The preeminent condom brand needed to find out when and why people buy condoms and make its move.

Maxus surveyed Lightspeed.com, an online panel of about 400,000 people, and found that consumers buy condoms when they're feeling most amorous -- in the evenings of the second half of the week. That inspired Trojan to move to a Thursday-through-Sunday schedule. The target's love for online media led Trojan to cut some TV advertising and move those dollars to the Web.

The research also noted things the target is passionate about (besides -- well, you know), so Trojan aimed for gaming and card sites, car shows, date and entertainment sites, and music publications, both online and off.

All the studying paid off: Trojan saw record-breaking numbers in the first half of 2006, and more than doubled its historic growth rates.

Mindshare

BP

Debbie Solomon, Group Research Director; Lisa Weinstein, Strategic Planning Director; Sara Brandt, Group Planning Director; Sarah Hunt, Regional Director, ATG EMEA; Vickie Cook, Insights Evaluation; Sheila Byfield, Managing Partner; Zoe Richards, Senior Projects Manager

Before BP launched its new premium fuel, Amoco Ultimate at BP, it took time to study how two groups of customers react to various levels of advertising in specific channels.

MindShare distributed PDAS to about 200 drivers, half of them premium fuel users and half potential premium users. The customers used the PDAS to answer a short questionnaire every hour for two days, noting location, mood, and communication channel exposure. Focus groups provided insight into respondents' interaction with different communication channels.

The study found that committed users need to be reminded of the brand through traditional media channels, while potential users need to be convinced of the benefits through both traditional and nontraditional channels.

BP culled information about the most effective media channels, specific day parts and segments, the amount of advertising that would be most effective, and levels of sustainability, and plans to tweak its market-launch strategy accordingly.

Click here to see the original entry.

OMD

OMD

Sandra Eubank, U.S. Director, Research and Consumer Insights; Mike Hess, Global Director, Research and Consumer Insights; Irena Fadeyeva, Senior Research Analyst

Everyone knows engagement makes for better advertising, right? OMD decided to investigate how -- and if -- that could be measured.

OMD kept in mind that consumers multitask, which can significantly affect levels of engagement. It asked 2,000 respondents to rate 17 television programs, 13 magazines, and eight Web sites on eight measures, more than 600,000 ratings in all. The robust data set allowed OMD to explore the nature of media engagement.

The study confirmed that more engaged consumers pay more attention to advertising, as expected. But it also found high correlations among some common measures of engagement, such as relevance and loyalty. OMD determined that this puts an end to the question of which measure is best and allows the industry to move on to higher issues of engagement.

The results also showed that planners can use the same measures to assess engagement across all media, which may spark the development of currency measures for channel planning.

Click here to see the original entry.

For more information about the Creative Media Awards ceremony go here.