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11th May 2009
Sleight of Brand
Brands like 'McCurry' and 'Bibles R Us" are a form of slipstreaming that I call ‘sleight of brand’. They employ a variation of someone else’s brand to capture attention. Just as entertainers do clever impersonations of famous people, so brands sometimes do light hearted ‘impersonations’ of famous brands. People appreciate cleverness in art and they appreciate cleverness in branding. But how do you do this effectively and keep out of court?
This month in Australia, two companies called a truce in their legal skirmish over product copying. It began when cookie manufacturer, Arnott’s (owned by Campbell’s) objected to Krispy Kreme selling a doughnut called "Iced Dough-Vo” because it infringed on its own brand, the iconic Australian biscuit called ‘Iced Vo Vo’. Read more...
18th April 2009
Update on Effects From Fast Forwarded Ads.
Further to my column (Sept 07), a valuable study by Brasal and Gips in the Journal of Marketing (November 2008) sheds more light and adds a few more pieces to what we know about how FF commercials work. .
They found that fast-forwarding at 20x speed has a negative effect on advertising outcomes. No surprises there!... But check this out:
- To increase the effectiveness of fast-forwarded ads, put the branding information at the center of the screen.
Why?
- Fast forward viewers strongly focus their attention on a central area of the screen. (This central bias is also evident in normal speed viewing but it is stronger when fast forwarding.)
- FF viewers seem to almost completely ignore brand information that is outside that central area.
- Brand information located within the central area strongly predicts brand prompted ad recognition (i.e. claimed seen ad for that brand)
- Ads with heavy central branding can yield positive effect on attitude towards the brand, behavoral intent, and actual behavior.
- The findings call into question many current heavy branding executions that feature a brand banner near the top or the bottom of the screen.
The study is entitled "Breaking Through Fast-Forwarding: Brand Information and Visual Attention"
15th April, 2009
Emotion is a Pain in the Anterior Cingulate
An area of the brain that is activated by both pain and hurt feelings points a new direction for understanding links between emotion and pain. Emotional hurt may be a form of ‘pain’ signal from the anterior cingulate cortex.
If your feelings are hurt, would it help to take Tylenol?
Strange as it may seem, physical injuries and hurt feelings activate the same regions of the brain. #1 The pain from injuries and the pain from hurt feelings are highly related and analgesics (pain relievers like Tylenol) seem to give a temporary reduction in sensitivity to that pain.
Let me quickly warn that indiscriminate use of analgesics has negative side effects and it is far too early to be conclusive about this so, the first message is…do not try this at home.
However, a paper published recently in Psychological Inquiry got my attention.#2 It reports path-breaking research that could influence the consumption and role of pain relievers. That, in itself raises huge issues but the research also helps us, indirectly, to understand more about emotions and their evolutionary origin.
6th March, 2009
More, New Turn-off Tactics
A Special Issue of Journal of Consumer Research contains many new insights into turn-off tactics. Here’s my ‘Readers Digest’ version of those findings:
How to encourage hotel guests to re-use their towels. The familiar appeal to guests to help protect the environment by re-using their towels, definitely works. But it works even better when you also employ the bandwaggon effect i.e. informing them that “The majority of guests in this room reuse their towels.”
The first message makes salient the guest’s identity as an environmentalist and the second communicates the social norm (lets them know that they are in the majority). The result? Cooperation by guests increases by about 33% when both messages are employed. Read more
4th March, 2009
Pinpoint Ad Targeting - Cable TV
In New York and New Jersey, Cablevision is about to use its targeting technology to route ads to specific households based on data about income, ethnicity, gender or whether the homeowner has children or pets.
General Motors, as an example, could send an ad for a Cadillac Escalade to high-income houses, a Chevrolet to low-income houses, and one in Spanish to Hispanic consumers. During the same show, a 50-something male may see an ad for, say, high-end speakers from Best Buy, while his neighbors with children may see one for a Best Buy video game.
Viewers will probably not realize they are seeing ads different from a neighbor’s. Will subscribers be informed? What knowledge will they have of what is happening? More at NY Times
25th February, 2009
Update on Behavioral Targeting
In Chapter 11 (3rd edition of my book) or see "Behavioral Targeting: Consumers in the Cross-Hairs"), information on our search queries and websites visited recently is increasingly used to in target online ads. I have argued that it is worrying, not so much that this practice of behavioral targeting is happening as that it is happening silently and in a near-vacuum of regulation.
There is a recent suggestion that transparency rather than privacy is what is really needed i.e. why not tell users what element of a person’s profile triggered the placement of the ad?
The N.Y. Times 17Feb09 reports Yahoo experimenting on ebay with a notice attached to some online ads. Click on the word “about” over the ad and it reveals a ‘disclosure’ with an option for the reader to disable future targeting. However, the disclosure does not reveal what element of the reader’s profile triggered the ad
The argument is that if we did so: “This would go a long way toward eliminating the feeling that we’re being ’spied on’ because it would eliminate any sense of secrecy about what is learned in the course of the behavioral monitoring”.
Really?
Just imagine this scenario. An ad is displayed (for condoms or for Victoria's Secret) and the reader clicks for disclosure revealing that the ad is displayed because this computer has visited a number of sex sites and singles dating sites recently. As I said before when Joe Public and Jane Citizen become aware of this practice, stand by for an outraged response and a heated societal debate .If invasion of privacy hasn't already scared the horses, transparency almost certainly will.
Postscript 12th March 2009.: Google has begun using behavioral targeting. Google won’t notify people you it is showing you ads based on your behavior but clicking on the link 'Ads by Google' will take you to a page where you can see and edit the information that Google has compiled about your interests. Notably Google says it does not plan to include your search data in the behavioural targeting. It collects information from visits to YouTube and visits to the sites in its AdSense network — those on which it sells both text and display ads. When you see an ad on one of those sites, Google’s computers will read the page you are on and try to figure out what it is about so it can associate you with one or more target categories on its list.
Separately, Google is “retargeting” . i.e. Google will record when you visit the sites of certain advertisers, and for the next week, you will be shown ads for that company on the pages of other sites that display ads sold by Google. More at NY Times.
10 October, 2008
Subliminal...naughty, naughty!
This week the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that during the 2007 Australian music industry awards (ARIAS), Channel 10 breached the commercial television code of practice by screening 'subliminal' flashes for sponsors . Naughty, naughty! But as the Melbourne Age reports in its editorial today, "Ten has got off scott free, without severe censure or a large fine" but the network has undertaken not to use subliminal ads in this year's ARIA awards.
The flashes included logos for Toyota, KFC and Chupa Chups. Watch them here. As I said inthat post at the time, subliminal ads like Energizer bunny, just keep going and going.
23 September 2008
Temptation Turn-off Tactics:
Lead Me Not Into Temptation
Don’t shop when you’re preoccupied…or when you’re hungry. Do good deeds after, but not before, shopping. And shop well in advance. Research reveals psychological tips to help control impulses and resist temptation. Read more..
27 August, 2008
McCain Foods Slipstreams McCain The Presidential Candidate
When your brand name is the same as a candidate for president, can you resist hitching on to it? If you fear alienating committed voters on the other side perhaps, but this has not deterred McCain Foods taking advantage of John McCain's run for the whitehouse. Since McCain doesn't use trans-fatty oils, a sample slogan is "McCain goes to war over oil." Full story at Ad Age
15th August, 2008
Swear**g Ads: Reader Contributions
Further to my August 2008 column on The Swearing Effect in Advertising, Professor John Rossiter of Wollongong University reminded me of "Where the bloody hell are you" campaign that failed disastrously for Tourism Australia. He says: "My bet, however, is that these ads are risky and will turn off more people than they will turn on as "clever (see the fifth principle in my Remote Conveyor Model: Absence of conflicting associations - which also rules out most puns, as alleged in the Percy and Rossiter 1980 book)."
Thanks also to Neil Francis (Catalyst2Action) for the reminder of the very successful campaign for 'Fourex' (an Australian beer) using the clever line: "Australians wouldn’t give a XXXX for anything else." He also contributed these two slogans:
- Dell: Easy as Dell
- Ikea (Norway): Screw yourself
And here's another contribution. Thanks to an anonymous reader for this 2002 billboard ad publicising cheap prices on Australian airline Virgin Blue:
11 August, 2008
The Swear**g Effect in Advertising.
This month’s column is prompted by an ad I saw at Brisbane airport recently urging us to fly Air Asia to Phuket, Thailand. It reminded me of another ad for Sofa King furniture in USA. It claimed “Our prices are Sofa King low”. This month's column analyzes the effects of these and other ads that slipstream swearing for attention and impact. Read more..
15th July 2008
Acceleration of Communication. Destination Competitive Advantage
To circumvent biologically enforced, perceptual speed limits, exploit the subtle dimension of time by ‘compressing’ communications into a template. Just as you can build a mind template for your brand, so too can you do the same thing with your ads. Accelerated communications let you cruise along at unrestricted speed enjoying a significant communication advantage over competitors. Read more...
7th May 2008
Mind Bridges.jpg)
When changing messages, construct a mind bridge between the old ad campaign and the new one so that consumers can use it to ‘cross over’ - from one to the other.
When an existing attribute (e.g. ‘the great taste of Pepsi’) is well established in mind, any change of message can face resistance and take considerable time to ‘wear-in’. That’s because the new one has to displace the old.1
However if you use a mind bridge, this doesn’t have to happen. Read more...
11th April 2008
Guidelines for Behavioral Targeting
Further to my column "Behavioral Targeting: Consumers in the Cross-Hairs", a group called theNetwork Advertising Initiative, a trade association of companies, like AOL’s Advertising.com and Google’s Doubleclick. have now released their guidelines for Behavioural Targeting.
The NY Times says that iff you’ve got AIDS, cancer or erectile dysfunction, this group of big advertising networks "are going to promise not to remember that you read sites about those topics and remind you (or others using your computer) of your condition with ads for related drugs as you surf the net. But if you have Parkinson’s disease, congestive heart failure or warts, the ad companies have decided it may well be acceptable to keep track of your interest in medical subjects and fill your browser with ads for helpful products from pharmaceutical companies." more at NY Times...
9th November, 2007
'Behavioral Targeting' : Consumers in the Cross-hairs
Search-engine queries and visits to websites generate a potential goldmine of market research information. It is used to aim ads at us with increasing pinpoint precision. Few people have any idea that they are being tracked, profiled and targeted in this way. The worry is not so much that it is happening as that it is happening in a near-vacuum of regulation. ...more
'Subliminal' ads for Toyota, Chupa Chups, KFC & Others.
I said in my May column that subliminal ads, like Energizer bunny, just keep going and showed links to a couple of on-air examples. This month during the television presentation of the Australian music industry awards (ARIAS), 'subliminal' flashes for the sponsors including Toyota, KFC and Chupa Chups occurred. Watch them here and check out the 'answers' given to the ABC program Media Watch when it investigated. (These were guaranteed to stir controversy and 'get attention'. Was that the real objective? What else could these people have been thinking?)
In a follow up interview, the Channel Ten Network denies that 1-4 frames per second is subliminal and used the defence that it was part of a method called "rapid cuts" commonly used in music presentations. Note that KFC 'has form' with using this sort of controversial advertising. Last year they told USA consumers that there was a hidden password in one of their TV ads. Discover the password and you win a free KFC sandwich. More KFC examples in the earlier column.
29th September, 2007
Curious But Real: Effects From Fast Forwarded Ads.
Latest evidence confirms that fast-forwarded TV ads are undervalued. They have some very curious…but real effects.
30th August, 2007
Social Contagion: “I’ll Have What She’s Having”
Buying, laughing, yawning and graffiti are all socially contagious. Now research says obesity is too. This has nothing to do with the power of suggestion or keeping up with the Joneses. To be influenced by others is genetically programmed in us and is an evolutionary hangover. more...
26th June 2007
Conformity as a Turn-off Tactic: Reducing Energy Consumption.
Turn-off tactics used in anti-smoking and road safety campaigns are being co-opted to get people to reduce their consumption of oil, energy, gasoline, water etc. Based on the latest research, here is a very simple turn-off tactic that might help address the energy binge. Read more...
Subliminal Advertising, Like Energizer Bunny, Keeps Going… and Going.
Do subliminal ads really work? Like the Energizer bunny, the brouhaha surrounding subliminal advertising just keeps going… and going. In the last few years, heavyweights such as McDonalds and KFC have been accused of using ‘subliminal advertising’. As has George W. Bush. Why? What's behind all this?
On cable TV during an episode of Iron Chef America on the Food Network, a frame of the McDonalds golden arches was discovered in the program. And when George W. Bush was running for President against Al Gore, the Republicans were also under fire, accused of using subliminals in their ads. View these ads and the full story on subliminal advertising... here.
A Real Ad...What Were These People Thinking?
Can you believe that this is a real ad for a fast food chicken outlet?
Well it is real! In my years of tracking many hundreds of ad campaigns throughout the world, I have never seen anything like this. About 50% of the ads that I tracked, didn't work and some even had a negative effect. You can bet this is one of those that sends sales down. If the the communication target, the brand user, is mothers, then they are being asked to identify with this image of an on-screen user who is a table-top dancer! That should enhance their self-image and their image with the family. Unbelievable!!
Acknowledging a Wart - Profiting from Honest Advertising
Sometimes a politician emerges who resonates with voters because he or she is disarmingly frank and doesn’t couch every answer in political-speak. In marketing too, ads that are disarmingly honest can make a brand resonate with potential buyers. New evidence indicates you can profit from honest ads that ‘acknowledge a wart’.
When we first landed on the moon, Volkswagen ran a brilliant ad depicting the moon-lander with the headline: “It’s ugly, but it gets you there. VW”.
Two things made this such a great ad. First, it gains huge attention by slipstreaming a high-profile event – indeed, the most watched event in history. Second, it also stands outbecause it is disarmingly honest. It earns points for honesty and gains credibility for VW because it articulates what many people were actually thinking at the time; Volkswagens were ugly.
In other words, it ‘acknowledges a wart’. Read more...
21st March, 2007
Neuromarketing: What's it all about?
In opening up a whole new world of understanding of the mind, neuroscience will deliver increasingly powerful, marketing insights. Its immediate application to marketing requires businesses to tread carefully and disentangle the scientific substance from the promotional hype. Businesses prepared to exercise this caution and engage with it now, have an opportunity for early-mover advantage - before neuromarketing gets regulated. Read more.
28th January, 2007
New Twist in Turn-off Tactics
Here's a new twist. Nicoderm is promoting its skin patch by positioning quitting smoking as a beauty aid. (Original at adrants.)
Check out more examples of turn-off tactics here.
4th January, 2007
Symposium on Neuromarketing - Australia
On 16th February 2007, the Brain Sciences Institute ( Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne Australia) will hold its 1st Annual Symposium on Neuromarketing - The Neuroscience of Consumer Choice. Click here to download the program details.
Back in Feb, 2001, I first wrote about the SSPT brain wave measurement technology developed by Professor Richard Silberstein and his team at the Brain Science Institute. That column, New Hi-tech Ad Testing Method, can be accessed here.
What is neuromarketing? Find out here.
3rd January 2007
Mind on High, Thoughts on Fast Forward and Brands on Speed. 
Ever had difficulty going to sleep because your thoughts are racing and you feel you are on a mild high? Speeding up mental processing generates some weird effects - even for ads and brands – and this has implications for fast-cut commercials.
We are often oblivious to the way our mind works because of the speed at which it operates - i.e. faster than our speed of introspection. We make sense of what we see too quickly to be conscious of the underlying processes involved, yet speeding these up can have profound effects. As brands gets recognized more rapidly, some curious things happen. ....Read more