In search of synergy

Editor’s note: Frank L. Findley is vice president of basic research at ARSgroup, an Evansville, Ind., research firm.

The media landscape is undergoing a continuous evolution that expands far beyond television, radio and print media. Today’s marketers are using multiple media executions delivered through touchpoints as diverse as the Internet, mobile personal devices, outdoor communications, public events and dynamic digital signage in such places as movie theaters, elevators, escalators and public restrooms. As Wal-Mart’s Chief Merchandising Officer John Fleming has said, even the retail environment has become a delivery vehicle for marketing messages: “Our primary focus is using the store as a media channel and figuring out ways to add to the customer experience but give them the information that they need to make good product decisions,” he said. Simply put, marketing has evolved from mass communications delivered to people gathered around their radios and televisions to targeted messages that quite literally surround consumers wherever they go.

This proliferation in the use of diverse touchpoints is driving a reprioritization by senior marketing executives. In the Association of National Advertisers’ 2007 survey, the issue of integrated marketing communications ranked as marketers’ No. 1 concern. Second in importance was accountability, which is where research and measurement enter. In a 2006 Wall Street Journal interview, Procter and Gamble’s Global Marketing Officer James Stengel summarized the dynamic tension between these two priorities: “As we get more diversified and creative in our marketing, how do we keep up with that in our measurement?...I don’t think the industry has been terribly advanced on that. What we try to do is push creativity and measurement at the same time. The best businesses do both.” Today’s marketers must have a way of evaluating how all their communications influence consumers, both as individual media experiences and as combined, holistic media campaigns.

In response to this challenge, our firm developed a holistic communications test that uses cross-media metrics to capture the impact of the campaign as a whole, the contribution of the individual executions in each touchpoint and the synergies between them. Based on our past communications research, these metrics were chosen because they capture the impact on the two key factors which drive sales: consumers’ relationships with a brand’s communications and their relationships with the brand itself. Over the past year, this system has been applied to campaigns in America and Europe for brands competing in a variety of categories. Testing encompassed campaigns with wide-ranging touchpoints and executions in various levels of production quality, from finished advertisements to early-development mock-ups. Because a consistent methodology has been applied, these cases provide an understanding of the strengths of integrated campaigns. Following are the seven key insights gleaned from this knowledgebase.

Insight #1: All touchpoints can be effective.

While television is often the strongest single element of a multimedia campaign, other touchpoints can be just as strong. ARSgroup recently tested a campaign consisting of two television ads and two print ads. Conventional wisdom would predict the two television ads to be the strongest individually as well as suggest that they would produce the most synergy when combined. However, one of the print ads performed on par with the better television ad and provided a stronger synergy with this television ad than did the second television ad. Each situation is unique; the mix with the greatest synergy may not be obvious.

Insight #2: The strongest synergies come from leveraging emotional and rational content across brand encounters.

Testing of individual executions has shown that ads which drive both emotional and rational consumer connections have double the success rate of those that don’t. Our research on campaigns has exhibited a similar yet unique pattern.

Campaigns give marketers the flexibility to use some brand encounters to drive emotional appeals and others to drive rational appeals. In fact, the largest synergistic gain observed to date was between one brand encounter which primarily drove positive feelings and another which primarily drove positive rational thoughts. Examples of this technique can be found among pharmaceutical campaigns. While the pharmaceutical companies are careful to provide sufficient product details in all media channels, they often use television ads to convey emotional benefits and print ads to convey in-depth clinical and usage information. This is good news to brands in other categories with advertising messages containing both emotional and rational components.

Insight #3: Campaigns often move communicated messages from “lower” to “higher” levels.

One of the more interesting findings across the cases is the difference in the message taken away from an individual ad versus an entire campaign. We have regularly observed that campaigns ratchet up the perceived messaging of the individual ads. Take, for example, a blinded three-ad corporate branding campaign geared toward educating consumers on different green initiatives the company has undertaken. Each ad focuses on a different initiative:

  • waste reduction program;
  • gains in manufacturing energy efficiency;
  • reductions in plant air emissions.

As shown in Table 1, consumers who see just one of the ads tend to take away only the message from that ad (e.g., “reduces/cuts down on plastic waste,” “conducts regular energy audits,” “plants trees to offset emissions”). However, as consumers see multiple ads they tend to take away the much broader message that it is a “sustainability-focused company.” The implication of this messaging synergy is that brands can achieve communication of difficult or vague concepts through a simpler advertising approach than previously thought.

Insight #4: Interactions vary among respondent groups, and these differences must be taken into account in test design.

This insight is not really new; it has been observed in traditional copy tests for decades. What is new is the proliferation of media types and how respondent groups are defined.

When evaluating multiple media touchpoints, the respondent group must be defined not only by appropriate demographics but also by media consumption patterns. For example, if you plan on advertising via a special podcast, your insights should come from consumers with access to and usage of iPods and other personal media players. While this may seem obvious, it is a design consideration which has been overlooked by some when conducting non-traditional touchpoint research.

Insight #5: Negative interactions sometimes occur and can result from executional issues.    

Almost all campaigns make at least small synergistic gains by using multiple pieces of copy, but in a few cases negative interactions have been observed (i.e., adding additional pieces of copy actually decreased the effectiveness of the campaign). In these cases, the negative interactions corresponded to an unexpected effect of an executional detail such as wording or graphics that detract from the intended message.

A quintessential example is a print advertisement for a digital camera which intended to communicate the camera’s ease of use. At the heart of the ad is a zoomed-in image of the user and the camera, with the camera in sharp focus amidst a blurry background. The unintended, net takeaway by prospective purchasers was that the camera was of low quality and produced blurry images.   This resulted in a drop in effectiveness for the entire campaign. In fact, if the print ad would have gone forward without improvement much of the gains driven by the campaign’s more expensive television copy would have been lost. The lesson to be learned is that holistic communication evaluation must look at each individual piece of copy to guard against negative interactions.

Insight #6: Both single and multiple messages can create effective campaigns.

In the marketing industry there are different schools of thought when it comes to varying a brand’s message within a campaign. Some advocate using a single message which gets reinforced with every exposure. Other marketers advocate using multiple messages to broaden the appeal of the brand. Examination of tested campaigns has shown no clear winner in this debate; both approaches have been successful.

This suggests that the real question at hand is: “When should a brand use a multiple-message approach and when should it use a single-message approach?” An examination of ARSgroup strategy test results sheds some light on this issue. Brands that have identified a straightforward brand-differentiating message that appeals to a broad consumer segment may best be served by focusing on it in their campaigns. In this way, they will “own” this space in the minds of consumers. Brands that cannot communicate their differentiation with a single straightforward message may best be served by including multiple messages in their campaigns.

Insight #7: Synergies within a campaign can have a substantial impact on the bottom line.

While it is currently not easy to manage media allocation across touchpoints because there is no cross-touchpoint measure of media weight exposure, a number of industry efforts are striving to provide this capability. Until this has been achieved, campaign test results can only be used to accurately allocate media between executions within a touchpoint.

Typically, today’s processes call for testing a few ads within a touchpoint and choosing the one with the strongest individual score. The media spend for the touchpoint is then placed behind this “winning” ad. However, experience with television advertising shows that sizable sales gains can be realized by allocating media dollars across multiple ads based on their respective contributions to the campaign. That is, optimizing dollar allocation within touchpoint increases ROI.

This may require a process change for many marketers and their media agencies, but this change has great potential to increase marketing return. And because of the sizable potential for additional ROI increases by optimizing media expenditures across touchpoints, corresponding changes in media allocation practices will follow once the industry has equated its media weight systems.

Key first step

With the ever-changing marketing and media landscape, building strong, holistic campaign communications is more important now than ever. Understanding how ads in different touchpoints work together is the key first step. At the 2006 annual Association of National Advertisers conference, Burger King’s Russ Klein, president of global marketing, strategy and innovation, cautioned: “New media is not some bleeding-edge risky move. We are all collectively in an all-out gallop to catch up with our consumer. The eyeballs have moved.” At the same conference, Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley pointed out the need for measurement of media, both traditional and new: “We can’t obviously think of any medium or touchpoint in isolation. ... We must be able to measure the response we get to the stimulus - the effectiveness and the efficiency of every medium ... the whole media mix and communication plan.” 

By consistently applying consumer-centered measurement systems to holistic campaigns, we will generate the knowledge needed to successfully navigate the rapidly changing media landscape.