Nilewide Marketing Review articles from June 2004

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from June 2004

We knew it didn't always work, so why...?
June 6, 2004... The effectiveness of TV advertising for packaged goods, in particular, mature brands or those in stable markets, has been questioned in a number of studies by both academics and research firms over the last 20 years. Most notably, the US How...

The choice of metrics.
June 6, 2004... It is generally agreed that marketing needs to measure its performance, but the theory is far simpler than the practice. Although more companies are using marketing metrics, there has been no attempt to focus on categories of marketing metrics...

Reading, righting and rhythm.
June 6, 2004... It may be forgotten but marketers are writers. In fact the way they write, and what they write, is so important that it is surprising that more articles are not written about writing for marketers. Certainly many of the usual writing rules may...

Why crowds are smart.
June 6, 2004... When a difficult decision needs to be made, it is often assumed that an expert should make it. This might be the CEO, a futurist, or a well-known commentator. However, a recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds, suggests that the best decisions and...

Why CRM doesn't work.
June 6, 2004... The high failure rate for CRM programs - anything from 75-90% - is often blamed on the organisation failing to properly articulate its CRM goals or to change its culture. Many managers have also blamed the consultants for software that is...

IT and the business model.(Information Technology)
June 6, 2004... There is still continuing fallout from Nicholas Carr's contention that IT does not matter because it is essentially a commodity. Yet it is impossible to separate IT from the business model. It is precisely the ubiquity of IT that offers the...

Shifts in online ad strategy.
June 6, 2004... There has been a dramatic change in the roles of different types of online ads over the past few years. In the USA the banner ad's share of online ad spend has shrunk from 46.8% in 2000 to 29.4% in 2002 while paid keyword search spend has risen...

From blogs to wikis.(Brief Article)
June 6, 2004... While new technologies often have strange names, they can offer new ways of collaborating more easily without any technical knowledge. One is the wiki, after the Hawaiian name, "wiki-wiki", meaning "quick". The purpose of a wiki is to provide a...

Just another research tool?(Brief Article)
June 6, 2004... Many claims have been made for the Internet as a market research tool and there is no doubt that it can offer breadth, speed and value. Even so, most studies concentrate on the efficacy of Internet research methods, such as email, surveys,...

Will iPod rewrite history?(Brief Article)
June 6, 2004... The iPod is undoubtedly the cool tech product of the moment, but its creator, Apple, has been in this position in the past, and then dramatically fallen from its pinnacle. In 1980 it dominated the PC market with a 16% share, but that has fallen...

Imitation and brand flattery.
June 13, 2004... Imitation is fundamental to human nature and a better understanding of it may shed light on how trends develop and how to harness its apparently chaotic consequences. The most important point about imitation is that, as information becomes more...

Big challenger strategies?(managing the challenger brands)
June 13, 2004... Since Adam Morgan's book on challenger brands (Eating the big fish) first appeared, it has been well recognised that successful second-tier brands, or challengers, need to change the rules of the game if they are to grow. This view has been...

The brand must be relevant.
June 13, 2004... Sometimes, even a brand that seems to meet all the criteria for success - customer satisfaction, innovation, trustworthiness - can still fail. The missing attribute may well be relevance. As the market moves so quickly, not even having a...

Customise and isolate?(customization fears)
June 13, 2004... Customisation is on the increase, spurred by technologies, such as the Internet, iPod and TiVo. More than ever, customers can choose exactly what they want, and eliminate anything that does not suit their tastes. The positive side of this is...

Loyalty of the individual.
June 13, 2004... Most loyalty research looks at aggregate data to draw conclusions about individual loyalty. This is helpful for identifying macro trends, but tends to obscure the nature and complexity of individual loyalty. Unfortunately, individual loyalty...

The mobile is it.(usage of mobile telephony)
June 13, 2004... The figures on mobile phone penetration easily lead to the conclusion that the mobile phone is our most important communication tool. In 2003 mobile phone penetration exceeded that of fixed lines. Globally there are now more mobile phones than...

The anxious consumer.
June 13, 2004... Recent statistics claim that 10% of people in the UK and USA suffer from severe anxiety disorders and clinical depression. In the US, 55% of people feel they personally will be a victim of a terrorist act. Their main responses to this anxiety...

An umbrella too far.(using the brands)
June 13, 2004... One of the difficulties of making acquisitions to grow a business is that the company takes on a portfolio of disparate brands. It must then find a way to manage the brand portfolio, or to coherently group them so that they make sense to...

Google or blogs?(tapping the local advertising markets)(Google Inc.,)(Brief Article)
June 13, 2004... Google's local targeting technology appears set to take ad dollars away from local newspapers, at least in the short-term in the USA. The technology suits small businesses whose potential customers seek information on their offerings, which...

Are heavy buyers more loyal?(customer loyalty)(Brief Article)
June 13, 2004... It has been widely reported that customer loyalty is highest among low volume purchasers in the category. In other words, people who buy infrequently tend to buy the same brand and those who buy more heavily, buy from larger portfolios of...

Where marketing begins, choice explodes.
June 20, 2004... Analysis Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action? Arthur Miller Since the post-war days of rationing, the number and variety of goods and services has...

To ignore or not to ignore.(low involvement processing )
June 27, 2004... When Robert Heath introduced the idea of low involvement processing (LIP), it was a threat to established ways of thinking about the conscious effects of advertising. Now it appears that LIP is being embraced because, in a world of advertising...

Waves of consumption.
June 27, 2004... The social aspect of much consumption is well recognised, but the social interactions around consumption may also be responsible for the dynamic and variable sales of some brands. Most modelling of social interaction is based on equilibria but,...

Careful who you reward.
June 27, 2004... Grocery retailing is highly competitive with net margins of little more than 1-2% and minimal room for any true differentiation. It was this environment that encouraged the rise of frequent shopper/reward programs, however the strategy was...

Advertising ROI and short-term focus.(return on investments)
June 27, 2004... The publication of data from Deutsche Bank on the lack of ROI from TV advertising for mature brands has created heated debate, as expected, even though the data supported earlier academic studies. Major challenges to the study come from two...

Vanilla ads?
June 27, 2004... The intense competition between market research firms, particularly in testing advertising, has resulted in commonly used measures being tested in different ways and a lack of comparisons between the systems. Unilever has begun to address these...

Feed the computer.
June 27, 2004... While the Net is supposed to make information freely available, the practical problems of accessing wanted and usable information have often been glossed over. Many people have to bookmark the sites or data sources that they are interested in...

Unpopular pop-ups.(Brief Article)
June 27, 2004... Many believe the serving of pop-up ads that are relevant and timely for the recipient is the saviour of online advertising, especially as they still generate a 3% average clickthrough rate. Yet opponents of the adware, or spyware, software are...

A private line?(Brief Article)
June 27, 2004... In most countries, when a fixed telephone line is connected, the user's name, number and address are automatically included in the telephone directory (unless you are willing to pay not to be listed). However, with the exception of some...

McBrand journalism.(Brief Article)
June 27, 2004... In 2003 Coca-Cola made the seminal announcement that it would be moving from traditional advertising into entertainment. Now McDonald's is moving away from mass media to a new, multilayered, multimedia approach, dubbed " brand journalism". The...

Rebranding music.(Brief Article)
June 27, 2004... When Napster was sued, it was not the end of illegal downloads, but the beginning of a new way of buying and selling music. As companies like Starbucks create their own labels, and McDonald's sell big Macs with vouchers that are redeemable for...

Fame wearout.(celebrities advertising )(Brief Article)
June 27, 2004... The public's appetite for celebrities seems inexhaustible, as magazines, TV programs and events continue to profit from celebrity coverage. A recent book by Hamish Pringle, Celebrity Sells, highlights how the Jamie Oliver campaign helped boost...