Recession Marketing #2: We hunger for marketing and measurement innovation

We are all looking for more efficient marketing solutions. In previous recessions we often dialed back on marketing budgets solely because they were the easiest budgets to cut rather than any knowledge of how that might impact the business. One truth of a recession seems to be that it sparks innovation. I actually think that is true.

Look in Sunday's Washington Post business section covering the book, Buyology from Martin Lindstrom  and you see a scientific detection of one of the extra values that Coke drinkers supposedly get. Using brain mapping technlogy, these marketers see different activity in the brains of subjects when shown materials from Coke versus Pepsi. The additonal brain activity in Coke drinkers they attribute to the 'warm and fuzzy' feeling subjects have internalized over the brand from years of marketing messages like my generation's "I want to buy the world a Coke..." This scientific approach is indicative of a hunger for more meaningful and absolute measures of marketing effectiveness. That extra feeling one may get from a Coke is one way to deliver extra value. In essence, this is what brand value has always been - an inferred value from the brand beyond its simple product performance.

Monitoring our brains is one new direction to go. It will take time and lots of experiementation to refine that into a viable everyday way to gauge impact. We need many new innovations to find a practical few.

For years, we have been planning marketing and communications programs based upon some standard research that tells us how many times we need to see a message before it becomes memorable in some way. Reach and frequency or Gross Ratings Points are based upon this and much of our TV spend is still governed by this model.

Meanwhile, in the online world, measurement seems so much more absolute in the land of Google Analytics and click-to-action. Too often, the promise of the measureable Web devolves into a sea of KPIs that don't seem to really tell a story.

For us, the next innovation in marketing and measurement is in word of mouth marketing (WOMM). This is the year that WOMM will demonstrate how efficient it truly is. Really interesting models of measurement were unvelied and discussed at this year's WOMMA Summit and Research Symposium. You can find chairman, Walter Carl's presentation which summarized four top approaches at Slideshare.

Next Innovation

What if you could tell not only reach and action of a WOMM program - the best of mass media and online metrics - but you could also report preference and intent to purchase? Word of mouth carries a lot of trust - much more than advertising or traditional earned media. That is even truer today when many NA consumers have lost even more faith in corporations and institutions. this new WOMM measurement model will help marketers understand and gauge the value of their programs on terms that are potentially more valuable than how traditional medi is measured.

That's how we are innovating in a recession. What are you up to? 

Comments

[Denis]

So true...

KPI have become the silver bullet of online marketing... for the marketeers. Too often agencies and clients rely on those number, risking of loosing a real contact with their customers

[Scott Moroney]

Do you see any key milestones in pushing this development? I am captivated by the idea and wonder how much trust will be required to have consumers take action.

Web 1.0 had some elements of sharing for sure. Web 2.0 has revitalized this early trust and is taking it to the original vision for the web, possibly?

Thanks for the discussion.