Will These New Technologies Simplify Measuring Marketing Effectiveness?

 

 

A couple of new balloons being floated by marketing research firms tout technologies to satisfy the yearning for accurate views into marketing effectiveness. But will they really fulfill their promise?

VNU, parent company of ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research, has partnered with Arbitron Inc. on joint-testing of a marketing research tool code-named "Project Apollo." A portable people meter (PPM), developed by Arbitron and worn like a mobile phone, will use radio waves to capture and record embedded signals in the broadcast marketing messages wearers are exposed to. As with other Nielsen projects, this will rely on a consumer panel. When members of the panel return from shopping trips, they will scan their purchases with a barcode reader, and database technology will match the messages they received to actual purchases.

This new joint venture aims to get 70,000 people wearing the pager-sized device in their waking hours. The meters automatically will pick up on codes in audio messages delivered through television, cable, and radio ads; recorded in-store announcements; and marketing on rented or purchased DVDs. It even intends to cover on-screen ads shown while moviegoers await the feature presentation.

In Project Apollo, messages can be coded at the broadcast level by a network interested in proving its value to advertisers. At the program level, coding will help networks price ads around and during popular shows. And at the commercial level, manufacturer-embedded codes will deliver feedback about the effectiveness of various message/media/daypart combinations.

 

VNU and Arbitron plan to create a syndicated service, so paying clients will get results specific to their brands. Procter & Gamble has said it intends to become the first customer of the service if the two researchers draw enough interest to make a go of it. In the exploratory phase, P&G is ensuring that VNU and Arbitron understand the needs and wants of the marketers they hope to call customers.

While the service initially will target CPGs, Arbitron and VNU seek automotive, retail, financial services, telecommunications, and consumer durables marketers as clients, too. The concept is in tests in Houston and Philadelphia now, but the goal of 30,000 households in the next year encompasses the entire country.

What's Happening Now
If Stop & Shop suppliers had it our way, CPGs wouldn't have to wait for Arbitron and VNU.

The East Coast grocer is testing shopping carts that give consumers Internet accessibility at their fingertips, call up their homemade shopping lists (e-mailed into the store and correlated to the shopper through her loyalty card number), and allow item scanning when products are placed in the cart.

Loyalty cards scanned in the cart draw upon purchase histories, so that as the consumer tools around the supermarket, she'll see special offers on her favorite products pop up on the on-board IBM computer.

Of course in-store marketing displays, signage, and audio messages can be related to new purchases because the whole rig is wireless. This information isn't dissimilar to that VNU and Arbitron will be collecting except that it will draw from a smaller environment — in-store only — and more media — not only those with audio.

While the "Cart Companion" test isn't as comprehensive as the VNU/Arbitron joint venture, it could be used to test the effectiveness of in-store advertising, end-cap and other retail displays, SKU-specific promotions, and special pricing. Brand marketers could get their feet wet and begin experimenting with their trade dollars and measuring effectiveness with decisive results. Either they hit their ROI thresholds, or they need to tweak their marketing, if not develop a new strategy altogether.

Stop & Shop won't be matching purchases to marketing messages, however. It hasn't done as much with the data it has collected through everyday use of its loyalty card in-store. It just wants to ensure that its card-carrying shoppers come back again and again, not stray to the supermarket down the street.

Get Smart
Project Apollo and its PPM seem to provide a reasonable advance of the science of stimulus and response. The wearable technology removes a lot of the bias present in familiar media tracking such as Nielsen diaries. (Nielsen Media Research monitors the TV viewing of consumers through inexpensive diaries in which people record the programs they watch. This approach has shown significant flaws as millions of young men have disappeared from the panel over the past two years.)

 

The Apollo PPM probably won't go mainstream, though. The technology is still a bit clunky. Not that it's too big to wear, but consumers need to remember to charge the device, turn it on, and carry it with them. And in an age where the Blackberry is already fighting for share of belt with the mobile phone, getting another device clipped on seems an uphill battle. For the mass market, a wristwatch with the same kind of decoder would be ideal. Or maybe build the Apollo receiver into an iPod. Or researchers could get consumers set up with multiple decoders by handing out free device-encompassing satellite radios, alarm clocks, universal TV remotes, even costume jewelry.

Will Apollo Break Marketing Measurement Barriers?
It's a pretty far-out project, but if VNU and Arbitron can get some earthling advertisers and broadcast companies to agree to have commercials encoded, they aim to reveal which spots perform best in stimulating consumer behavior change and which media channels advertisers should buy to generate the biggest ROI. They also hope to be able to evolve the tool to be an accurate simulator of potential behavior changes once enough data has been aggregated.

To supplement the electronic meter readings, VNU and Arbitron plan to overlay more traditional research methods such as phone, paper, and online surveys to determine consumers' preferences, lifestyles, demographics, and purchase behaviors.

And the more overlay the better. Because even if Apollo works, encoding and decoding messages, it won't account for the effectiveness of a particular marketing message; it will only register the delivery of the message. Marketers will still need to run multiple message formats simultaneously against different test groups to measure relative copy strength or to gauge relative effectiveness of an impression. Or they'll need to pretest message copy and execution (see 3 Ways to Accelerate Your Learning Process).

We've been down this road before, plugging cool technology into complex problems and hoping that the outcome is a comprehensive solution. Not so fast. Call us cautiously optimistic.