Short term or long term effects from advertising?

We pride ourselves in learning something new every day. Often they are little things coming from our fanatical focus on the results we drive for clients. We are incredibly lucky - we have both a short term lens of daily results and a long term lens of ten years of longitudinal results data for clients. And that, together with our culture, enables us to deliver on our promise of creating growth for clients. But every so often one learns a big lesson. And thus it was last Wednesday. We tipped up at Bafta to participate in Thinkbox’s latest contribution to the insights we have on what makes advertising effective. It was a long morning - four hours of learning from 996 case studies with over 30 years of data - beautifully synthesised by Les Binet and Peter Field into clear and concise guidance for advertisers. In a nutshell: if you want income this month there are a set of clear behaviours to follow. BUT if you want more income over the next three years, then consider a different (but not exclusive) set of behaviours. Their work is worth more than two lines and I recommend you have a look here: http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.2211 We were flattered to be asked to validate their academic learning with our practitioner dataset. And we were equally surprised at how good a fit we found between theory and real world. It brought home a lesson that we all learned a long time ago, but don’t focus on enough. One can generate good and profitable short term response from promotional strategies. Enough focus on message and media and anyone can make the tills ring tomorrow. The trick is to generate short term response from a brand centric proposition. Then three things happen. The tills ring short term. BUT the campaign can also sustain investment in media vehicles that generate medium and long term response as well as immediate sales. AND, as a result, one starts to build long term brand equity. And that ensures a long term competitive advantage, especially via a sustained price premium. It’s a lesson we all learned a long time ago. It’s one we see illustrated every day in the best brands we work with. But it’s one that is easy to forget in the muck and bullets when the December sales target is just out of reach. But we have a very specific view of that lesson, and that’s this: Campaigns that are effective in the long term are ALWAYS effective in the short term as well. The foundations for long term growth are based on solid short term success. And that means we may sacrifice a little short term growth to ensure better, more sustainable long term growth, but it doesn’t provide an excuse for short term failure. Mike Colling, Managing Director

What's hot in digital?

Last Wednesday we held a joint seminar with our partners, Jack Media London, on the latest developments in the world of digital media. Hosted by our own Mike Colling, speakers included Ed French from GDM Media, Matt Bush from Google and Rupert Staines from Radium One covering a range of subject areas from the growth of RTB to the importance of video and mobile in your media mix to the prominence of sharing on the open web. Our colleague, Jon Morgan, at Jack Media has produced a great summary of the sessions and we can think of no better way of telling you about the event than by referring you to his blog! If you'd like further information about the day or any of the subject areas covered, please contact Ian Prager on 020-7307 6119 or at ian@mcand.co.uk

Insights and etiquette: making money from social media

Two incontrovertible facts in social media. Firstly there are enough eyeballs spending enough time on it that any other media owner would have monetized them. And secondly (as Facebook share price indicates) to date they haven’t been. To our minds it’s a matter of etiquette. Something, that really hasn’t been formalized as yet online, but is beginning to emerge. We think of Facebook as being your friendly local pub. You hang out with your mates and chat. And just as one wouldn’t want advertising over a pint with mates, one doesn’t want it in one’s virtual pub. But this being the data rich online world in which we live, we can take and use the insights that chat creates. We can take the subjects being chatted about, and the network of individuals chatting, and use that data to target them outside of the “pub”. Social media insights, applied to web wide display advertising. It’s a group you know are interested in your product or service, even if they haven’t been to your website yet. Proper behaviour from advertisers, but leveraging real consumer behaviour. And do we like the results! Mike Colling Managing Director

Giving to charity is down - it might be a good thing

Yesterday saw the publication of a survey from the Charities Aid Foundation into the state of charitable giving in the UK. Total giving is down by 20% year on year, or by circa £1.7 bn. CAF see this as “deeply worrying”. We are not sure we agree. We work with 20 of the brightest and best charities in the UK. Almost without exception results to donor recruitment and donor appeals are up year on year. So if some of the sector are stable or up, some must be down by way more than 20%. And that also seems to be true. In some of the cases we have seen coming to us results have been down by up to 50%. And it makes sense to us. Donors are consumers. And in the rest of their lives they are looking for better value. Why shouldn’t that be true of their charitable giving as well? In this year more than ever before consumers are prepared to switch brands in search of better value. That is obviously good news for any organization wanting to grow their donor base, and capable of expressing a coherent case for support. We would also argue that it’s good news for the sector as a whole. Flabby fundraisers who cannot demonstrate the value of their cause and the impact their fundraising generates damage the credibility of all. Not all organizations have a God given right to survive. So maybe, if your results aren’t up this year, instead of saying “that’s 20% ahead of the sector” maybe you should ask “where else have those donors I could have recruited gone?” Mike Colling Managing Director

One media owner or many?

We are currently addressing a challenge for a new client, with an old problem:- How do they launch into the UK market with a limited budget and maximize both consumer impact and hard (sales) returns? 30 years ago the solution would have been buy media from one media owner, probably ITV. A single spot would have reached 50% of almost any target audience. Over the last 30 years, however, we have lived through the greatest proliferation and fragmentation of media opportunities in history. And media planning solutions have reflected this with schedules becoming more and more complex, adding more channels and media owners. The IPA effectiveness datamine casts an interesting insight here - the latest results show that the most effective campaigns are using 8 or more media channels. So I was fascinated to be part of the team that has created a different solution this week - focusing budget on a single media owner, rather than spreading expenditure across multiple opportunities. The client was initially sceptical, as was I! But this solution reached more of our audience, was more cost effective, and provided a more apposite environment for the messaging than a typical multichannel schedule. Now to be honest, this solution is only possible because of the changing nature of media owners. 30 years ago a media owner was defined by a single channel. ITV were TV broadcasters. The Sun was a daily newspaper. For the larger media owners today that is no longer the case. With one deal we can now encompass print, video, data, and multiple platforms from paper to PC. These single media owner deals have much to recommend them:- •they address what is actually a single community, united around content, that happens to be distributed across several platforms •they move what is otherwise a commodity media buy to an aligned media partnership, with both sides working together rather than in combat for share and rate •they reduce the clutter in the communication planners’ and clients’ minds, allowing focus of the most valuable resource of all - intellectual effort - and improving significantly the return on that investment. How the wheel turns! Mike Colling Managing Director

New media niches

I flew from Amsterdam to Pisa last Friday, on Transavia, the Dutch equivalent of Ryanair. Not remarkable in itself, but what was remarkable was the experiential media opportunity in flight. A cosmetics company had created a sampling opportunity, complete with data capture, using the in-flight service team to offer their wares. They had read their audience perfectly. The passengers were almost exclusively young mass-market families going to Italy for some cheap sun. The yummy mummies were in holiday mode, and ready for some pampering and prepared to spend. A brand making a fuss of them, in a time where their only alternative was to pay attention to the demands of their children was welcomed with open arms. It’s not often that I say “I wish I had done that” but in this case I did! A bright media planner somewhere had identified a niche where no other brand would impinge, and where their brand could really engage with its audience. If it’s your plan and you are reading this, then send in your CV. Mike Colling Managing Director

Selling on social media – right or just plain wrong?

A snippet of Facebook news caught my eye this morning. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a complete Facebook detractor. Anything that captures the attention of circa 40% of us for an hour a day (double the time we spend reading newspapers or magazines) has got to have value. But, please, not for shopping. ASOS is the mail order company for this generation. I started my direct marketing life working with catalogue companies like Grattan. Huge books that landed with a thud on the door mat! ASOS have brought their digital skills to this market, and to datem have stolen it with great success. But, as with all growth stories they have just reached their “bridge too far”. They have recently taken down their Facebook shop, and triggered debate as to whether this is the end of “F-commerce”. But there shouldn't be any debate, and there should be no “F-Commerce”. It’s an oxymoron. Facebook is Starbucks or your old man’s pub. It’s a place to hang and gossip. It’s not a place to be sold to in. Sure, add social commentary features and reviews to your Ecommerce site, so users can praise you. But please don’t invade personal space to sell. When will we ever develop a digital etiquette? Mike Colling Managing Director

The third place in media

Starbucks is often referred to as “the third place”- neither home nor work, but a neutral place in between. A place of utilitarian comfort, where urban consumers can both relax and connect. We have a growing sense of that third place arriving in the media landscape. For the last 50 years there have really only been two media strategies: service search or ambush. The former drove the establishment of classified sections, and with the advent of digital media the behemoth that is Google. As advertisers we serve consumers that self-identify by their immediate needs. The latter has been the mainstay of all other media revenues since advertising began. Whether it’s a carved graffiti directing sailors to the brothel in Ephesus, or 400 TVR on ITV, we use content to attract consumers to our “ambush” marketing messages. And consumers, with few exceptions, are happy with this Faustian bargain. But a third way is emerging within the emerging “media third place” and that is the App. Apps can have the content that entertains and engages as does mainstream media, but the functionality and detailed information that classified provides. Most of our clients have a continuity revenue model at the heart of their business. Whether its regular donation, sustained subscription or repeat purchase, each has a relationship with an organisation that goes beyond the merely transactional. And that third place, the App, seems to have a new role in serving that need and creating new growth. Mike Colling Managing Director

Paper or Pixels

Hot on the desk is the PADD (Print and digital data) survey from the NRS. Long discussed this is the first formal measurement by the NRS of readership across both paper and digital versions of their titles. To a very large degree a lot of the learning here has been presaged by Touchpoints, who have been measuring readership on and offline for several years. But it’s the first time our gold standard readership currency has published joint figures, so it’s worthy of note. The numbers on national press hold no surprises. Biggest gainers from adding digital are The Guardian - web adds another 65% to their daily readership, and 119% to their monthly reach. At the bottom of the newspaper pile we find The Daily Star, chalking up just 1.3% gains from their website. Much more interesting are the magazine results. Firstly we see a bigger impact across the board. Of the 110 odd tiles measured 2/3rds of them recorded net gains by adding web of more than 30%. And at the top end, really big gains - 984% being the record to date. And secondly, and I think more interesting - we see a marked difference between the business models off and online. BBC Easy Cook, who topped the rankings with a massive 984% gain, has bbcgoodfood.com as its web partner. Now to call bbcgoodfood.com a magazine is stretching definitions more than a little in one sense, but it does reflect the major reason why the magazine is purchased - for recipe ideas and support and services that the consumer needs in the most efficient way possible. The second major trend is the partnering between offline magazines and online ecommerce sites. In some cases the magazine came first (eg Boots Health and Beauty and Boots.com) but in others (eg Asos) the magazine is the “new” media channel. I rather suspect that we may see more of the latter as our pure play digerati learn the lessons that Google has learned and turn to old fashioned print for marketing. We think that this is an area worthy of more debate, and it will form part of our next seminar “The future of print: paper or pixels” on October 10th. If you would like to join us then call Cathy Lawler on 020-7307 6104 for a place on the guest list. Mike Colling, Managing Director

TV’s may be staying dumb and not getting much smarter

Last week’s global conference on the future of “integrated TV” in Amsterdam saw an interesting reversal of one stream of conventional wisdom on the future of television
Manufacturers in particular have long believed that it is the destiny of the television set to become “smarter”, with full super-fast broadband access, and with a range of accompanying “apps” that enable deep exploration of fab facts associated with the broadcast stream. They also see the main television screen as the focal point for “social TV”, ie real time messaging with your friends and family via Facebook or IM.

Three things are conspiring to frustrate this vision of the future.
Firstly, the refusal of “live TV” to go away. The number of minutes we spend watching TV is still rising (up to 242 minutes per day) , 85% of which is live TV. This is a figure that has remained stubbornly the same for the last 5 years, despite the fact that 50% of us now own DVR’s. We want to watch TV live and now, and not have the effort of controlling it.

The second reason the TV is for TV and not other things is that it’s often not just our choice. More than 50% of viewing is still “shared” viewing with others in the room. If our wives want to watch Eastenders what chance do we have to play with the Top Gear app?

And the final reason for the likely failure of the smart “big screen” is the rapid advance of the smart “medium” screen.

11% of us now own tablets, up from 2% a year ago. And 17% of us say we will buy one in the next 12 months. Zero to 30% penetration in two years is good going.
The big surprise on tablet usage is the amount that is in the home (87%) and when watching TV (68%).

All of a sudden there is a personal, alternative screen sitting on our audience’s laps that they can turn to in order to explore, respond, or just chat.

And that’s just what they are doing. Our betting - learn about tablets rather than smart TV’s, that’s where the testing efforts should go.

Mike Colling, Managing Director

Media inflation - dead or alive?

For the majority of my media career both advertisers and agencies accepted that the price of media rose inexorably each year, sometimes at the inflation rate of a small South American country.

But since the twin influences of rampant increase in supply with digitalisation of media and the slowdown in total ad spend, growth since the credit crunch has seen effective deflation in media prices for the last few years. To paraphrase “you have never had it so cheap” … or at least not for more than a decade.

But there is one notable exception to this - and that’s the price of search. Here inflation is not only alive and well, but running at rates seen in the Weimar Republic.

Why do we, collectively as an industry, allow ourselves to pay more and more for what is essentially a coupon?

Search facilitates, it adds no value. It owns no content, it creates no reach of its own, it merely facilitates a journey that is started with engagement with a “proper” media channel. It also creates little long-term value for marketers - just look at the loyalty of customers who come to you via search vs those from other channels.
Yet we divert more and more money from channels our customers spend hours with rather than seconds with. Why?

The advertising and marketing community has the creative talents that can match those showcased in the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. Surely we can harness some of that creativity to find ways to better value each stage in the journey, and invest appropriately?

Mike Colling, Managing Director

Olympic results - a game of two halves

Avid readers of this blog (all of you!) will know that I have been a little obsessed with warning that immediate response to media activity would be severely depressed by the Olympics.

“The world will be out to party” was how I referred to it back in May!
Well, with the typical smugness that accompanies “I told you so”, “I told you so”!
The majority of clients still using mass media to recruit mass audience customers have seen a fall in response of between 30% and 50% over the last week.
Hooray! We can still predict accurately.

What’s really interesting though is that this is a game of two halves. Olympic fever is much more pronounced in London and the South East than in the North and Scotland.
And the impact is seen much more on offline than online media. So much so that we are seeing search results improve (albeit marginally) week on week in the North and Scotland whilst declining by 20%+ in London

Even with TV audiences in the 20 million bracket this is clearly not an evenly distributed madness. It appears that London is the kitchen of this particular party!

Mike Colling
Managing Director

Back to the 70’s for TV viewing

This weekend’s TV viewing figures are really quite remarkable. Friday night’s BBC1 peak audience to the Danny Boyle show of 26.9 million viewers has been well documented, as has the 82% share of audience.

These figures are comparable to Sunday night at the London Palladium figures back in the day, when a single show could capture the attention of a nation.
Friday shows that with enough creativity that feat can still be replicated. Interesting food for thought for an investment case for content?
What is possibly more interesting is that BBC1 sustained an Olympic audience across the weekend. Not at an 80% share, but across Saturday and Sunday evenings approaching a 40% share, more than double their previous week’s total audience share of 19%.

Total viewing is up a little, but not a lot; most of these viewers have been stolen from other channels, not other places. And most of the theft seems to have been from other “terrestrial” channels not from the long, long tail of multichannel TV.
That tells us one of two things. Either that the satellite audience is so engaged with its 115th repeat of Friends that they refuse to give it up, even for Rebecca Adlington, or that they are so non-engaged with their televisions that it matters not what channel they are tuned to.

Given the response rates we see from our long tail I wonder which of these scenarios might be true?

Mike Colling
Managing Director

We don't talk any more

we see this “voice avoidance” as a trend that will only continue to rise. The Last week saw the launch of the Ofcom communications market report. This annual piece of bespoke research always brings new insights into changing consumer behaviour, and this year is no exception.

The first gem that caught my eye really resonated with behaviours we are seeing across our client base.

Ofcom asked a representative sample of the UK population “How do you prefer to communicate with friends and family?”

Back came the politically correct answer: 67% of us claim we prefer to meet face to face. Phone calls and text messages are said to be poor relations at 10% and 5% respectively.

They then asked an actual behavioural question: “what do you actually use on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family?” Face to face falls to second place, at just 49%, and the winner is, wait for it … text messaging, 9 points clear at 58%!

If we split this latter question by age the difference is even more severe - with 90%of 16-24 year olds using text to communicate with friends and family on a daily basis.

This really chimes with both what we see in the pub and in our daily results from ART™.

In the pub we see social groups interacting less physically and more virtually. They may be present together but they are “talking” (texting) with a virtual group of friends. And in our response results for clients we see the inexorable rise of text as a response channel. For many clients more than a third of all response is now initiated by an inbound text.

Given the ubiquity of the mobile phone, and the invasion of face to face marketing good news is that it brings opportunities as well as threats. But more anon.

Mike Colling
Managing Director

Commercial radio joins forces to support WaterAid’s Big Dig Appeal

More than 30 radio stations from across the UK are coming together to support international charity WaterAid in helping to bring clean, safe water and adequate sanitation to communities in rural Malawi.

The Big Dig Appeal launches on Monday 18 June, with DJs encouraging their listeners to donate by sponsoring them to take on fun and varied challenges, including recording a special version of ‘Fever’ and presenting an all-day show without drinking anything.

With the support of First Radio and Real Radio stations as well as Bauer’s Kerrang! Radio, talkSPORT and Jazz FM, the appeal will be heard by more than 11 million people. The campaign will also be supported by other fundraising work with existing WaterAid supporters.

There is also a whole host of celebrities voicing their support for the public to dig deep for Malawi, including Rachel Stevens, Denise Van Outen, Cyrille Regis, Joe Calzaghe, and Camilla Dallerup and husband Kevin Sacre.

All money donated by the public will be matched pound for pound by the UK Government from the aid budget, helping reach twice as many people. Overall, WaterAid hopes to raise £1.2m to bring safe water and sanitation to more than 134,000 people in Malawi.

In Malawi, 20% of the population has no clean water supply, while 44% of people have nowhere safe to go to the toilet. Radio listeners will hear interviews with people living in the communities that will benefit from The Big Dig Appeal, getting an insight into the impact a lack of clean water and adequate toilets has on everyday life.

WaterAid is also inviting the public to follow the journey of two of communities, Bokola and Kaniche, as they gain access to these vital services. The Big Dig Blog (www.thebigdig.org) will give supporters the chance to meet community members and see how WaterAid is transforming lives, culminating in the live drilling of a borehole in September.

Radio advertising specialist RadioWorks and media agency MC&C were instrumental in setting up this unique appeal.

Stan Park, Chairman of RadioWorks, said: “We’re proud to have helped make this exciting partnership possible and look forward to a successful appeal that will help change thousands of lives for the better.

“It’s easy for us to take clean water for granted when it comes at the turn of a tap, but it’s a different story in Malawi. Gaining access to this basic necessity opens the door to improved health, education and economic prosperity.”

Mike Colling, MD of MC&C, said: “The appeal marks the culmination of six months of hard work, transforming the concept of a joint radio industry campaign to reality. A significant proportion of the UK commercial radio industry has come together to support WaterAid’s Big Dig Appeal and reach as many people as possible with clean water and safe toilets.”

Claire Wright, Strategy Consultant at the Radio Advertising Bureau, added: “This is a great example of the UK commercial radio industry working together and capitalising on the emotional relationship that listeners have with their DJs to benefit a fantastic charity such as WaterAid.”

Barbara Frost, Chief Executive of WaterAid, said: “It can cost as little as £15 to provide one person in rural Malawi with safe water, improved hygiene and sanitation, which means the money raised will make a real difference to people’s lives. With the UK Government matching every pound, the public’s donations will go twice as far.

“We’d like to thank everyone at the different radio stations for their support for The Big Dig Appeal, and wish the DJs the best of luck for their different challenges!”

Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said: "Donations to WaterAid’s Big Dig Appeal will help communities in Malawi living without clean, safe water or proper latrines to get access to these vital resources that we in the West take for granted.

"To support this life-saving work, and in recognition of the generosity of the British public even in times of austerity, I am pleased to announce that the British government will help WaterAid transform the lives of twice as many people by matching pound for pound all public donations to the appeal."

To find out more about WaterAid’s Big Dig Appeal, go to www.thebigdig.org or call 020 7793 4594.

Support the appeal by texting DIG to 70500 to donate £5 to WaterAid.

Technology changes, but behaviours lag

Historically the perceived wisdom has been that outdoor media have had little to to offer for clients seeking immediate response. (The exception has been the role of uplifting or predisposing response via other channels.)

The value of this wisdom started to erode some five years ago, with the advent of near 100% adoption of mobile phones, and in particular the use of text as a response channel. The growth of smart phone penetration to above 50% has accelerated a rethink of outdoor media as immediate response generators.

One indication of this change in behaviour can be seen in the proliferation of direct response advertising in commuter trains. Advertising from subscribers, charities, financial services and travel companies abound. All with calls to action: text, web and even phone.

Several of our clients have been amongst them. And with some success. We have seen profitable response generated but it hasn’t come via the channels we might have expected in this brave new connected world. Much of it has come via web, at times of the day outside of the normal commute.

Quantitative consumer research has just given us some insight as to why - with commuters claiming yes, they do respond, but later, at leisure at home via the web. Another reminder that, just because technology now allows “always-on” connections between companies and consumers, consumers may not choose to change their established behaviours to use them.

Does the Jubilee presage a summer of poor results?

Two months ago our newsletter highlighted the potential risk to response from a summer of partying. We warned that the Jubilee, Euros and Olympics could prove significantly more interesting for UK consumers than the allure of many marketing messages.

As I write this on the Thursday after the Jubilee it seems we were right. We have taken a selection of results, across a range of sectors, from retail to media owners, from travel to charities.
Three big learning’s emerge.

Firstly- the scale was about what we expected. It varied by client, but ranged from 30% to 50% decline in response across the weekend.

Secondly- the impact was very short lived. The down turn didn’t really happen until Monday. Saturday and Sunday saw some short fall, but very limited compared with Monday & Tuesday when the whole world seemed to be out to lunch. Wednesday we saw evidence of hangovers, but no mass absenteeism as results climbed back to approach normal. On Thursday morning all the evidence is of a return to near normality.

Finally- the impact vary significantly by channel (and thus by inference by audience) Phone response saw the largest falls- up to 85% down on comparable periods, with mobile, web and retail sales seeing the smallest impact.

Our conclusions- we are actually taking heart from this data set. Our view is that with careful channel management and very careful timing the impact of response downturns this summer can be managed. Coupled with selection of media for value there should be opportunities for very specific investments that may yield additional growth at the expense of competitors. Do call if you want to discuss further.

Mike Colling, Managing Director

Free media may be free for a reason

I spent Sunday in the sun at Trent bridge, watching England demolish the Windies over a glorious 7 ½ hours. Whilst I was there I admired not just the cricket, but the carefully integrated campaigns from various sponsors. One in particular caught my attention - for an upmarket mail order wine company. They are the official wine partners of English cricket.

As a media man my first thoughts were great targeting - mostly upmarket middle aged men, with a penchant for more than the odd case or two; good presence throughout the ground, with different placements to keep my interest; right programme - big digital screens and perimeter boards.

But one placement really struck me as dissonant. They had taken (I assume as part of a total package) ads above the urinals. Trent Bridge is not the most modern of grounds, and the men’s toilets at major sporting events, especially on a hot day, are not the most salubrious of places.

Yes I saw the ad, and yes I recalled it, but with a question mark over their attention to detail, which has implications for the rest of their competence. As a media man I can hear the justification “but it’s free” coming with the placement, but this might be one of those occasions where “free” brings liabilities.

Why did Facebook go public ... because they couldn’t work out how to use their privacy settings either

So it’s finally happened Facebook has floated their shares on the stock market. While many people will be keen to see how this develops others will roll their eyes at the phone number figures and the circus surrounding it.

Meanwhile, back in the real world what could this mean for advertisers? These huge figures will create significant financial pressure on Facebook to live up to the floatation hype and start to provide its manifold shareholders with some returns and quickly, but how can they make this happen? One school of thought is that with so many users (over 900 million worldwide) Facebook only needs to make pennies from each one to be profitable, but will the process of extracting these pennies make the site experience unusable, unbearable and most importantly unpopular? Simply put, to make more profit Facebook will need to sell and create more ad space which means more on site ads which is something users will find hard to swallow. One element in its favour is that the rapidly looming cookie laws should have little impact on their business due to its opt in model. This might mean that a large number of advertisers migrate to this cookie equivalent of Switzerland to enable them to attract precious users as the rest of the internet becomes some kind of no man’s land, in the short term at least.

However, the waters around Facebook seem to be getting muddier by the day; on one hand we have reports that General Motors is to cease their significant ad spend (est. $10 million) on the network due to the advertising being ineffective, saying it "had little impact on consumers' car purchases,". This is in stark contrast to the Ford Motor Company who has stated that they have had success integrating paid advertising and content together on Facebook and that "It's all about the execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content & innovation."

So how do we, the Facebook advertiser, see the wood for the socially interactive trees? Ignoring the recent spat between the two car giants a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll showed that more than half of all Facebook users never click on sponsored ads and only 12 percent said they felt comfortable buying anything over Facebook. Critics have also shown that metrics such as click-through rate are not where they need to be to make the advertising work. A recent Webtrends report puts Facebook CTR’s at 0.05%, which is lower than an averagely performing advertising network (CTR -c. 0.07%)and a league away from one of their main competitors Google at 0.4% on like for like display advertising. These figures are even more alarming given the platform’s market dominance and raise serious advertiser concerns as clicks are currency.

Whilst it’s clear that Facebook is here to stay I feel its very much a medium suited to relatively few advertisers and these few are fully committed to the medium, not to mention fully committed to the budget required to ensure success. Advertisers cannot just jump on board for some short term profit, they have to be prepared to test and refine just as you would with your search marketing. Not all campaign elements will work first time, but if you have something interesting to say, an interesting way of saying it and you can offer something to the user, be it content or other benefit, the chances of Facebook working for you are much improved. Even if the campaign is not a complete success a well constructed campaign with a clear objective will generate a multitude of usable learnings to ensure your next Facebook campaign’s success. On the other hand if your motivation for getting involved is that ‘everyone else is doing it why don’t we’ then chances are you could end up a social outcast!

I leave you with this helpful koan to see you right - If a tree falls in the forest and it's not on Facebook, does it make a sound?

Bodhi Morrison
Head of Digital

Newspapers in the news: for better or worse?

The last 48 hours have seen two major pieces of coverage on the newspaper advertising marketplace.

The first, an article in this week’s Sunday Times business section, chimed with all our prejudices and data sets at MC&C. “Advertising spend on press has halved from £8billion to £4 billion in just 5 years”. This piece reflected the well-worn wisdom of advertising money chasing the classified efficiency of the internet, and following the eyeballs as they desert press for other media. A cursory glance at the new Touchpoints data reinforces this view - all adults now spend less than 4% of their day reading, down to 2% for the under 35’s.

But the second piece took a contrarian view - suggesting that total time spent reading newspapers had actually increased over the last two years, by about six minutes per day. Not surprisingly, this news came from what was the Newspaper marketing agency, now launched as Newsbrands, claiming that a physical presence is no longer a pre-requisite of a “paper” as an effective advertising medium. Fewer people may read a paper, but more gaze at their pixels, and total reach of online and offline is up by 1.8 million to 24.4 million readers.

Our view? Their stats are right, but there is as yet no proof of their underlying premise. Newspapers have found very few ways to monetise their online readers, for the simple reason, that unlike their offline counterparts, they don’t respond. Or at least not at the same levels, and directly to transact. If Newsbrands can help solve this gap then they will add real value, both to their publisher masters, and to the industry at large. But we see it as rather telling that they are (allegedly) being sent out to do this job, on what is a larger audience base, with a smaller budget than the NMA had to cover just the papers!

Mike Colling
Managing Director

Many happy returns!

Arguably the three most important letters in business are ROI. Up to relatively recently, this acronym was applied to the key metric of calculating the benefit (return) of an investment. But in communication planning, return nowadays has a much wider bearing on measuring media effectiveness.

We think there are another four “returns” that contribute to return on investment.

1. From a purist media planning point of view return on attention assesses the means to seize attention, hold it and then measure the activities that are created. In old fashioned money this is share of voice or share of mind.

2. The second return is that of engagement – the duration of time spent participating either through conversations or the creation of social collateral such as user generated content. This return has significant ramifications relating to media value. With skip-able ads becoming the norm the belief that all of a 30” commercial is watched can no longer be relied upon.

3. Not only do we need to calculate the duration of conversations but also their intensity. A metric is needed to measure the value of the time spent participating in social conversations and how many touch-points are interacted with.

4. And lastly, return on trust as a way of measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, the state of trust earned mainly in social media and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts on future business.


Measuring the returns in social media and to some extent the wider digital world is tricky but certainly achievable, however calculating them in relation to off line is far more challenging and needs an econometric modelling approach.

Ian Prager
Planning Director

Anti-Competitive or Competitive Advantage?

It used to be the view that brands should never mention competitors in their adverts. The reasoning was that why would you want to give them any exposure? You’re basically giving them free publicity, especially if we’re following the wisdom, ‘all publicity, is good publicity’. There are also various legal battles that one could face through mentioning that your brand is better/cheaper than another brand, although the rules have been relaxed since 2008.

In the battle of the supermarket supremacy this age-old wisdom has been replaced with what seems like a surge in comparative advertising. Take for example the Tesco versus ASDA price comparison war. We’ve even had the more upmarket supermarkets such as Waitrose creating adverts to say they’re as cheap as Tesco on a range of branded products, in a bid to keep their shoppers in times when people are tightening up the purse strings. But since every supermarket seems to be claiming they’re the overall cheapest it’s left us wondering; can they all really be the cheapest? And doesn’t it eventually become a bit like political parties – who do you trust?

However, there may be smarter ways to beat the competitor, and the recent campaign by Newcastle Brown Ale shows how well parody advertisement can work in the right environment. The creative is based around the heavyweight advertising Stella Artois campaign, with the tag line ‘It’s a Chalice, not a glass’ trying to give the brand a slightly more glamorous edge. Newkie Brown took this and turned it on its head, ‘Who uses the word “Chalice”?’ implying that Stella Artois are trying to make their drink seem fancy when it really isn’t. Whereas Newkie Brown are far more down to earth, and with a ‘no bollocks’ attitude – and note they didn’t have to mention Stella for this campaign to work.

In the fundraising world creating a unique place in the hearts of potential donors is vital. You’re certainly not going to see charities comparing themselves to other charities, as it’s not going to win the hearts of their potential donors. Or are you? We all know money is really tight at the moment with donors rationalising the causes they’re going to support so maybe there is a place for some healthy knocking copy…

Felicity Bramald, Media Planner Buyer

The Peter Pan Generation

Better known as the “millennials” this generation is also sometimes referred to as the Boomerang Generation or Peter Pan Generation, because of the members' perceived penchant for delaying some rites of passage into adulthood, longer periods than most generations before them. These labels were also a reference to a trend toward members living with their parents for longer periods than previous generations.

What makes them interesting to marketers and media planners is that having been born somewhere typically between the late 1980’s and 2000, they are the last of the children of the 20th Century and therefore know nothing else other than digital communication and being part of online communities across a diverse number of platforms primarily mobile. Those in the workplace like structure and working in a team and because of their digital literacy are able to multitask like crazy.

Some really interesting research carried out by Nicola Payne working for Eloqua Limited shows that the millennials are mad about Facebook. They can’t get enough of it. According to Quantcast, 76% of Facebook users visit the site at least 30 times per month. If my children are anything to go by its more like 100 plus! Twitter has a rate of 57% and sites like Linkedin and Foursquare less than 1%. When advertising to the millenials the same rules apply as when talking to most groups, especially in social media circles. Be transparent – engender trust. Be interactive – they liked to be entertained. Be generous – they like a deal as much as anybody else.

So media selection seems pretty straightforward but engaging with them is something else. The Peter Pans can become the Lost Boys if you get it wrong.

Ian Prager, Planning Director

Charity Begins Out of Home!

It’s broadly agreed that the past few years have seen a downturn in revenue for most media channels but one medium that seems to be bucking the trend is outdoor. In the words of Mike Baker, the CEO of Outdoor Media Centre, “Despite the economic gloom, we have ended the year with some momentum, and seven out of the last eight quarters have shown growth, this past quarter is very close to being the biggest outdoor quarter ever.” And outdoor advertising opportunities will continue to increase as the digital avenues continue to grow.

The increase in outdoor advertising has meant extensive opportunities for some or our clients. Charities are a case in point. Outdoor advertising can be really successful for fundraising organisations because, as a text advert, it at allows the main point to get across easily and effectively. Furthermore, the adverts are contextual and can reach the target audience successfully.

Waitrose provide one such example with advertising positions located outside their stores in various sizes throughout the UK. The Waitrose audience is an upmarket and affluent group with an AB Index of 203 along with an Index Family Income £50k+ of 220. Waitrose customers are also 21% more likely to be motivated by advertising to donate to charity in comparison with other supermarket shoppers. Charities that have used positions at Waitrose include our own client Oxfam and Poppy Appeal.


*Source: TGI









If you’d like further information on how outdoor advertising migt help your business, why not give us a call on 020-7307 6100.

Liam Sharkey
Media Planner Buyer

The Sun on Sunday

Last Sunday, February 26th, saw the launch of News International’s widely anticipated replacement for the News of the World – The Sun on Sunday. Whilst the launch has been predicted for some time, staff at NI had originally been told to expect a first issue at the end of March, so even they were caught on the hop when Rupert Murdoch himself arrived at their Wapping offices a couple of weeks ago and made the announcement he was bringing it forward. Given this short notice and to ease pressure on the sales team, advertisers were asked to commit to booking three out of four weeks. Seemingly, this did little to deter major brands, with space in the paper selling out by last Thursday. Among those who appeared in the first issue were British Gas, Morrisons, Three and Halifax.

We were told to expect editorial that was family and female focussed, with the paper’s style to be similar to the regular Sun’s but “crisper and cleaner” (and, like the Saturday version, without a page 3 girl). To target male readers, the sports section will be extensive, which means the demands on the sports editorial team, who already produce a huge football section on Mondays, will be substantial.
An aggressive TV campaign, starting with 10” spots during the BRIT Awards on ITV and ramping up to 60” spots by Saturday triggered a response from rival papers the Sunday Mirror and Daily Star Sunday, who went to air with TV ads of their own. The Daily Star Sunday even cheekily claimed to deliver “the news of your world”. These two papers also reduced their cover price to 50p to match the Sun on Sunday’s, as they battled to hold on to the c.1 million rise in circulation they have gained since the News of the World’s demise.

The first issue has been met with mixed reactions from those within the industry, with some describing it as a damp squib, lacking the NOTW’s clout and investigative journalism. The decision to run with the story of Amanda Holden’s recent difficult birth to her baby daughter has formed part of that criticism, with many viewing it as a rather soft front page for a launch issue. However, if the Sun on Sunday is set to target a family, female readership, then it has to be said the choice does seem a good fit. With Murdoch claiming the first issue sold 3.26 million copies, more than the 2.7 million its predecessor was managing and well up on the 2 million he claimed he would be happy with, the launch appears to have been successful.

It will be very interesting to keep track of what the circulation settles down to over the coming weeks and months, with the first ABC figures due in April. Even more interesting is the potential impact on the Sunday market as a whole, with the Sunday Mirror alone rumoured to have lost a massive 450,000 from its circulation last weekend. As ever, we’ll keep you abreast of all the changes, so stay tuned.

Kyle Seeley
Senior Planner Buyer

‘Why i? - It’s all in the ABCs’

The latest paper circulation figures for January have been released in the last few days. As we all know the national press has had a turbulent time over the past year and in particular with the News of The World closing there was much speculation as to where all that paper’s readers would go.

At least for now it seems the dust is starting to settle with the Sunday Mirror absorbing a large number of those left seeking an alternative to their Sunday spread. Figures show the Sunday Mirror has enjoyed an almost 36% year on year increase in circulation of approximately 700,000.

A big question is where have all the others readers gone? The News of The World closed with 2.6million loyal followers, which means that there should be a huge opportunity for the Sundays. However, even the Sunday Express only managed to take over a small proportion of this with a 100,000 increase in sales which seems to indicate there are a lot of people who simply don’t want to buy and read a Sunday paper anymore.

This raises some other questions. With the scandal at The Sun on-going, will people start to turn their backs on brands they’ve remained loyal to years? Will they choose a different medium to absorb the daily headlines or are people simply not that interested in the world around them anymore?

The January circulation figures show that there is only one daily paper to see a marked increase - the i. The i being the sister paper of the Independent, aimed at readers and lapsed readers of all ages, and commuters with limited time, launched on 26th October 2010. This is another strong month for the i backed by a considerable spend on TV which has resulted in a 40% year on year increase and improvements in circulation every month. The i sells for only 20 pence, 30% cheaper than The Sun and 80% cheaper than The Times. Therefore it appears the formula is right, a quick, quality read at an affordable price.

What will be interesting is how other titles react? There are rumours circulating that The Sun may launch a new Sunday alternative and will some of the other Daily papers follow the same route of producing a low cost alternative like the I? It remains to be seen…

*ABC- Audit Bureau of Circulations

ROI Under the Spotlight

Social media seems to have become a buzzword. Most modern marketers would find the question “Do I need a social media strategy?” a no-brainer – as much as the noughties equivalent: “Does my company need a website?”

But what place does such a qualitative, PR-based medium have in the world of Direct Marketing? Any company writing about their latest social media success tends to talk about it in terms of top-line figures: numbers of followers, re-tweets, the number of fans accumulated within X number of hours etc. The success of social media campaigns tends to be measured from the outside, the end result. But why? Because it’s just so difficult to justify how you got there!

However, despite the fact that few marketers seem to be brave enough to utter the terms “ROI” and “social media” in the same sentence, there are platforms emerging which allow the creation and strategic tracking of social network campaigns. One such platform has been developed by the Oxford-based company EngageSciences. The software was developed from two simple premises: the first, based on market research by IBM and Experian Hitwise, is that those who ‘Like’ fan pages on social networks are most likely to do so if they know they’re getting something in return; and secondly, that successful harnessing of social media is achieved by identifying the greatest influencers amongst existing fans. A good campaign will therefore identify and maximise individual channels of potential.

In return for offers and vouchers, the individual is invited to 'Like' a Facebook page, by their friends or by the company, which then subsequently allows the EngageSciences software to track their level of interaction with the fan page and the extent to which they share this activity with their friends. Both of which, of course, vary hugely from user to user, meaning that the most ‘generous’ fans may then be segmented for targeted messaging and offers.

It does seem then that marketers are beginning to harness social media by understanding consumer motivation and embracing the mechanism upon which social networks thrive.

So, are there any other learnings to be taken from this? The day appears to have arrived where a direct marketer is forced to acknowledge the value of earning attention from its customers. ROI is increasingly becoming a reflexive concept: it is no longer the concern solely of the marketer, as customers have a greater range of brands than ever to choose from, each with a similar offering.

From here on there are two routes: the first is increasingly targeted marketing; the product of more and more sophisticated insight. And the second? Attention earned through knowing exactly what your customers will listen to. In an increasingly cluttered marketplace, it’s worth learning a thing or two about the latter.

Sarah Greaney
Analyst

It’s not austerity, it’s intolerance

We live, allegedly, in a world of austerity. It is accepted wisdom that all consumers are wearing hair shirts, spending no money and are as miserable as sin.
No marketing activity can overcome this. Especially on Blue Monday

From where we sit that’s patently not true. Reviewing client results this morning we see clients with 60%, 15% and 30% growth year on year. Consumers will spend, and spend on high ticket products or services. Absolute cost isn’t an issue. Perceived value is.

There isn’t universal austerity, but there is universal intolerance of poor value. And that covers relative value for prices that can be easily bench-marked, or perceived value of less easily bench-marked services.

There are obvious messaging implications of this consumer behaviour, but there are also media implications. Once again this stresses the need for an integrated media campaign to demonstrate value. Broadcast media have a role to engage consumers emotionally and break inertia; print and digital media provide rational support to the value message; and social media provide a comfort blanket of the “wisdom of crowds” reinforcing that buying decision.

That implies higher risks and bigger capital investments. But the rewards are there, even on Blue Monday!

Mike Colling
Managing Director

MC&C 2012 Predictions

Bearing in mind prediction is very difficult, especially about the future; who could have foreseen the demise of the News of the World in such torrid circumstances, it’s still worth a crack.

So here are a few pretty safe 2012 predictions - famous last words! Not surprisingly, it’s going to be a big year for TV. London 2012 Olympics, Paralympics, Euro 2012, and the digital switch over are going to make 2012 a particularly interesting year. Adam Crozier is talking down the revenue uplift but I’d have thought that they will add significantly to ITV’s coffers to enable him to make new investments in programme production. Radio and outdoor will do okay again through the Olympics’ effect although community radio will have a devil of a time surviving, however, press will continue to fall as retail continues to feel the strain. Only the Metro is in for an Olympics windfall possibly in the region of £5m.

One thing that won’t be difficult to predict is that there will a lot of happy people at Facebook. The likely $100bn internet public offering will make 1,000 people into millionaires. Thinking about social media, multi social media networks will become more popular. The improved quality of cameras in mobile phones will make the video and visual communication more compelling than just 140 characters. More significantly there will be greater convergence between social media activity and mobile devices and the need for clients’ web sites to be mobile friendly will move from a ‘nice to have’ to an absolute necessity.

Have a great 2012!

Ian Prager, Planning Director