As a marketer you know that there is no singular silver bullet that will suddenly elevate your communications to a point where everyone runs out to buy your product. That's why it is important to understand the importance of an integrated approach for your communications strategies and learn how to monitor them. Read this study to learn how major brands address the issue and coordinate their Advertising and PR efforts.
White Paper
Just Married:
Advertising & PR - Together Forever,
Thanks to Measurement
The Leader in Integrated Media Intelligence SolutionsJust Married:
Advertising & PR - Together Forever,
Thanks to Measurement
By:Gary GettoVice President Integrated Media IntelligenceVMS
There is so much discussion about the perceived need to shift communication spending from traditional advertising to online advertising and social media. Many so-called experts would have us believe that Web 2.0 is the new silver bullet . the be-all and end-all of marketing. But rather than replacing one tool with another, the real opportunity is integration. Not PR or advertising, social media or traditional media, but rather PR and advertising, traditional and social media. You get the point.
Our stakeholders aren't sure where the conversation is coming from. Ask consumer researchers and they'll confirm that consumers don't differentiate between sources of brand messages. We bring all the messages in, let them rattle around our brain for a while, and then we conjure up a brand image from all the pieces to which we've been exposed.
No silver bullet will suddenly elevate our communications to a point where everyone runs out to buy our product. But, we're learning that consistent messaging for all our communications . whether traditional or social media . news or advertising . integrates into a unique brand image. So if there are disharmonious notes, the desired targeted message will not resonate with our audience. And yet, we generally operate in silos which make consistent messaging a real challenge . and we have virtually no business solution tools to make sure all our messages are in-synch.
As we measure and evaluate communications programs, we almost always observe that integrating PR and advertising provides a much stronger correlation against business outcomes than either PR or advertising alone (thereby improving ROI). Think about the recent marketing efforts from Denny's. The restaurant chain became a first-time advertiser on the Super Bowl. Two days after the Super Bowl, Denny's gave away two million free Grand SlamŽ breakfasts. The result.higher same-store-sales in a market where virtually all of their competitors are struggling. So the advertising folks patted themselves on the back for choosing a great venue to re-vitalize America's favorite family restaurant. At the same time, the PR folks patted themselves on the back for the big PR campaign that reintroduced millions of customers to America's best known breakfast.
Of course, the real take-away lesson here is that it wasn't advertising or PR, but AND. The advertising generated great awareness and the free breakfast generated 10s of millions of dollars of positive publicity for Denny's. Competitors have tried the same free give-away idea, but failed because it was not integrated with a strong activation element.the Super Bowl ads.
The Leader in Integrated Media Intelligence SolutionsNot only is it critical to evaluate what we are doing in an integrated fashion, but new research shows that it is much more than just combining tactics to achieve synergy.
For years we have evaluated paid advertising based on the reach and frequency we achieve with our ad investment versus how much incremental revenue we generate. Two programs that reached the same target audience were hypothesized to be likely to achieve similar outcomes. The qualitative element . the advertising creative execution . while accepted as important (creative is King) is virtually ignored. So our models suggest that if Coke and Pepsi both spend a million dollars and reach the same audience, they should achieve similar results, even if one ad delights us and makes us want to run out and buy the product and the other ad annoys us.
As we research advertising creative, we find a wide range in the ability of advertising to communicate in a way that drives results. Testing each creative element against competitive creative, and using the results as weighting against spend, will overcome this shortsighted measurement view and improve projections and forecasting exponentially.
The importance of creative, even if it is not sufficiently built into our modeling, is not a new concept. But integrated research is now show... [download for more]
