Content Tops Marketing Chiefs' Budget Plans

To keep up with leading marketers, plan to expand spending and refocus on content marketing, with an accent on social media. More than half of marketers not only plan to boost their budgets in the next few years, they will give content the biggest piece of the pie, according to a recent Advertising Age magazine report on a study by IBM and the CMO Club. The online survey of 100 chief marketing officers at b-to-b and b-to-c companies found that 57% plan to boost marketing budgets over the next two to three years. Content development will make up the largest portion of future marketing budgets (13.3%), followed by traditional advertising (11.5%), per the study. Other top areas of investment will be online advertising (11.1%), events (10.9%), website development (10.5%) and public relations (9.6%). Content leads marketing budgets explained Jay Henderson, director of strategy at IBM Commerce, to Ad Age because CMOs are focused on investing across the customer journey, and content requirements differ for the growing number of channels and devices at each stage, plus there is a demand for increased personalization at every stage. The survey divided the customer journey into six phases: discover (initial search), learn (research), try (testing and product comparisons), buy, use (requiring customer support) and advocate (recommending to others). The "discover" and "buy" phases currently receive the most marketer attention (20% and 21% of budget allocations, respectively), compared with the "learn" and "try" phases (16% each) and the "use" and "advocate" phases (13% and 14% respectively). But when it comes to prioritizing by channels, marketing attention is less evenly distributed, with social leading for all but the "buy" phase, when the website becomes the focus. See the full article at http://adage.com/article/btob/cmos-spending-content-buying-cycle/300181/

Embattled 2015 Ad Spending Still Seen Up by 5%

Welcome to 2015, marketers! Here's a bit of encouragement for those cautiously emerging from squeezed 2014 budgets: There's spending growth ahead, albeit tempered by continued financial pressures. The New York Times reports that senior ad agency executives are saying that, despite continued rough sailing for advertising budgets in 2015, they foresee steady growth in worldwide ad spending of 4.8% to 5% compared with 2014. The forecast came at the 42nd annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, with executives attributing improved spending to factors such as gains in digital ad sales, mobile ad spending, and improving economic conditions in markets like India and the United States. But ad executives certainly didn't paint a rosy scenario for those seeking marketing dollars from embattled corporate budgets. As Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world's largest agency holding group in revenue, summed up to the NYT, "The biggest challenge we face as an industry is convincing clients to focus on the top line rather than reducing costs," and to get them to realize that ad spending is "an investment, not a cost." For more ad executive comments, read http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/business/media/madison-avenue-sees-rough-times-ahead-tempered-by-growth.html

Celebrity Endorsements Don't Win Fans for Brands

Think a famous name touting your product or service will impress customers? Think again. Brand endorsements by celebrities and athletes are trusted less than all other methods of brand promotion, including digital ads, traditional ads and company-sponsored social media, according to a new global study by The Boston Consulting Group. Consumers put the most store in what family and friends say offline about a brand, followed by product reviews, expert opinions, and information from Google and other search engines. One reason trust matters: Brands that show their customers that they can be trusted are able to gather at least five to 10 times more information about customers to fill the Big Data marketing mill. Still, marketers must tread carefully because consumers are choosy about what info they entrust to companies, and financial and health data definitely rank higher on the privacy scale than brand preferences, age and gender. Millennials, despite a social sharing addiction, are about as concerned with data privacy as their elders. As a result, the data practices of financial institutions, social media, search-engine companies, and government arms garner more than twice the consumer concern than do branded manufacturers, airlines, hotels, cable providers or retailers offering loyalty cards. For more, see MediaPost's Marketing Daily story at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/212917/endorsements-dont-earn-trust-for-marketers.html

Film Marketing Gets Low Ratings in Study

Movie studios got poor ratings for their target marketing efficiency in a recent study by marketing professors at the University of Utah, University of Chicago and University of North Carolina. Looking at the performance of films from 2004 in 208 U.S. markets, the study looked at pre- and post-release blog impacts and advertising spends by studios. Despite spending for nationwide blanket marketing, the movie studios only released movies in 53% of the markets most responsive to advertising and 44% of the markets most responsive to blogs and social media. And the type of marketing was also inefficiently matched to likely market response. The larger markets as well as younger consumers, Asians and Hispanics responded more to blogs and social media than advertising efforts, for example. Paid advertising worked better with older Caucasians. The study did not look at more recent films to see if movie marketing or response had shifted, however. For more details on the study, go to http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/200002/film-marketing-fairly-inefficient.html#axzz2TsDrRchr

Marketing That Finds the Pain Will Find Sales, Too

A direct mail or print/digital ad message that finds and presses prospects' pain points can drive sales. It's certainly not a new idea, yet it is not as commonly seen in direct marketing as you'd expect. A recent blog post by Chris Lakin found that, in his quick review of ads and direct mail pieces, only one in 35 appealed to a pain point -- even though fear-based and pain-based marketing is a proven tactic; in fact, research shows people move away from pain faster than they move toward pleasure, he notes. To help you become the one in 35 who offers a cure for prospects' fears, headaches and expenses, and so wins more sales for your company, Chris provides a few useful tips and examples, including words to use in headlines and messaging. So feel the pain at your next brainstorming session with some help from his blog post at http://blog.mailprint.com/index.php/3405/how-to-use-the-pain-funnel-to-drive-greater-direct-mail-response-2/

For Ad Success, Let Your Heart Rule Your Head

For advertising success, marketers may need to go with their hearts not their heads. Orlando Wood, who serves as managing director of BrainJuicer Labs, argues, "We’ve found that emotional response [to an ad] was a better indicator of the business effects than any of the traditional advertising measures, such as message understood, clarity of branding or persuasion." And that translates into higher ROI. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has done work showing that emotional advertising is more profitable than rationally conceived marketing, Wood points out. BrainJuicer Labs' own research shows that consumers who respond well emotionally to ads are more likely to provide brand share gain and less likely to be price sensitive. Positive emotional response also helps ads go viral, with higher pass-along in social media. Lesson? Most people would rather go with their guts than strain their brains. And it's not just a b-to-c success strategy. It can work for b-to-b and nonprofit campaigns. However, cause-related pitches have more leeway to use negative emotions to generate pass-along, Wood adds, a theory likely to be applied this election season. See the chiefmarketer.com story at http://chiefmarketer.com/social-marketing/marketers-should-let-their-emotions-get-better-them

New Paper Will Be Clickable by Smartphones

Now even paper is clickable! Ricoh Production Print Solutions unveiled a new planned service called "Clickable Paper" at the drupa 2012 trade show, an international event for print media. The new paper will allow smartphone users -- both iPhone and Android fans -- to point at newspapers, magazines, direct mail and other printed products to be directed to related content. For more, see the btoboline.com story at  http://www.btobonline.com/article/20120503/ADVERTISING12/305039995/ricoh-to-roll-out-clickable-paper

Reports Show Print Marketing Drives Digital Sales

Here's more proof that traditional print channels, such as catalogs and magazine ads, inspire mobile and online sales. According to J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, the company’s print and digital campaigns are now so tightly intertwined that much of J. Crew’s business moves specifically from catalog to online. The J. Crew catalog goes to 40 million customers a year, and roughly 30% of the 300-store retailer's revenue comes from catalog and online sales. Meanwhile, Google and Ipsos recently released results of a new study showing that nearly half (48%) of smartphone users are performing mobile queries based on ads they see in magazines. And then they buy. Among smartphone users surveyed, 35% made a purchase on their smartphone. For more, see the story at http://socialmediatoday.com/colleenpetitt/560046/reality-check-traditional-print-media-inspires-mobile-purchases

If Your Ad Gets Laughs, It's Likely to Get Buyers

The best way to win buyers is to win laughs, according to a new study from Nielsen. Humorous campaigns do better than price- and promotion-centered ads regardless of the economy, Nielsen reports. Its study looked at 4,000 packaged-goods commercials from 2006 through 2011, evaluating the effectiveness of various creative approaches before, during and after the recent recession. "Effectiveness" reflects measures such as appeal and likability, ad recall and purchase intent. But if you're not confident of your ability to tickle consumers with humor, you might try another creative tactic that outperforms price and promotion: value. Value-centric ads go beyond price to communicate benefits such as convenience and affordability. Ads about value saw a significant lift in effectiveness and outperformed price and promotion pitches during recession, noted the study. For more, see the Advertising Age story at http://adage.com/article/news/study-ads-prices-work-recession/235526/