Today’s post is an approved reprint of Debbie Laskey’s recent post on the topic above. Debbie has two decades of marketing experience and an MBA Degree. She developed her marketing expertise while working in the high-tech industry, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, the nonprofit arena, and the insurance industry.
Her expertise includes brand marketing, social media, employee engagement, leadership development, and customer experience marketing. Since 2002, Debbie has served as a judge for the Web Marketing Association’s annual web award competition. Her Blog has been recognized as one of the “Best 21st Century Leadership Blogs” and also as a “Top 100 Socially-Shared Leadership Blog.” In addition, she is a regular contributor to several national blogs that provide insights about marketing and leadership. An active member of the Twitterverse, Debbie has been recognized as one of the “Top 50 Branding Experts” to follow on Twitter @DebbieLaskeyMBA. Visit online portfolio at www.BrandingAndMore.net.
Over the last 13 years, thanks to social media, I have had the privilege to meet a variety of amazing marketing, leadership, and customer experience experts. One of these experts is Angela Jeffrey. Angela read my post following last year’s Super Bowl and contacted me. We recently discussed marketing and advertising, and Angie’s bio is highlighted below.
Angela Jeffrey has been an internationally known speaker and national award-winning veteran of public relations, advertising, and marketing. She has been a leader in the use of metrics to measure communications impact for over 20 years, especially at the intersection of PR and Advertising. She is responsible for brand management at ABX Advertising Benchmark Index, a data science company focused on driving ROI through creative excellence in advertising and marketing through the measurement of more than 365,000+ ads across all media, demographics and social sensitivity.
Prior to joining ABX, Angela was Strategy Director at Salience Insight (now CARMA), a global provider of PR effectiveness measurement. Previously, she was a Vice President at Surveillance Data, Inc., an international analytics powerhouse specializing in predictive modeling. She continued as a leader upon the sale of her division to a broadcast monitoring firm in New York, and worked with Gary Getto, current president of ABX, to develop “Vantage,” the first platform measuring the combined impact of PR and Advertising. Connect with Angela Jeffrey on LinkedIn and visit ABX’s website.
QUESTION: In February 2021, I wrote a Blog post about the Super Bowl ads and referenced one of your company’s posts (that you wrote) from 2020. (Links are included below.) What is it about Super Bowl advertising that attracts so much attention from the media, football fans, and people around the world?
Angela: As Michael Wolfe, CEO of Bottom-Line Analytics, wrote in a 2020 blog post: “the attraction and value of Super-Bowl advertising has always been its huge audience and high ratings. But with the cost of a Super Bowl ad in 2020 reaching $58,000 per million impressions, coupled with a declining audience, one wonders if it’s worth it.”
In 2020, Wolfe found that the “good will” and PR hoopla that surrounds each Super Bowl isn’t limited to the impact the ad has just during the game, but actually spikes ad effectiveness for the brand well beyond in some kind of halo benefit. However, in analyzing the ad effectiveness results of the 2022 Super Bowl, Wolfe reverses his stance, especially with the event’s further price increases and shrinking. (See “Super Bowl 2022 Advertising Effectiveness … and Not so Much” by Michael Wolfe).
Judging the creative effectiveness of Super Bowl ads has become a national sport, especially with major and social media. Super Bowl is likely the only time of year ads are viewed with eagerness and judgement. It’s a game unto itself.
Finally, one more reason why brands buy into the Super Bowl is to showcase how much they support women. Female presence in Super Bowl ads has risen enormously over the past five years. (See “Poor 2019 Super Bowl Advertising for Female Gender Equality” for more.)
QUESTION: What brands do you think are doing a good job with their advertising and/or marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic? Please share examples.
Angela: Our company measured thousands of television and video ads since Covid began in the spring of 2020. In April 2020, ABX found that ads with COVID-related content performed better than non-COVID-related ads by a full +175%. Gratitude for first responders played well at the beginning of the crisis and continues to this day. Consumers would be wise to seek out brands that have made commitments to protecting them through cleanliness, social distancing, and wearing masks.
McDonald’s achieved the highest ABX Index of any Covid-related ads starting in the Spring of 2020 and continuing through the present. It’s a simple ad showing a McDonald’s worker changing signage text to convey the message that “Through May 5, we’ll be feeding First Responders and Healthcare Workers Thank You Meals, for free.” (See “How to Increase COVID Advertising Effectiveness 175%).
Subway used that same type of strategy, focused on food donations for those in need.
Like McDonald’s and Subway, Amazon’s advertising has had remarkable staying power since Spring of 2020 until now. Amazon’s ad focuses on the exceptional work of its employees to help others through the pandemic, this time with a female pilot.
QUESTION: According to Laura Holloway, Founder and Chief of The Storyteller Agency (@StorytellerAgcy on Twitter), “Storytelling is our obligation to the next generation. If all we are doing is marketing, we are doing a disservice, and not only to our profession, but to our children, and their children. Give something of meaning to your audience by inspiring, engaging, and educating them with story. Stop marketing. Start storytelling.” What does this quote mean to you?
I’d like to invite Gary Getto, President of ABX, to comment.
Gary: The best ads are “problem-solution.” If a client elevates the problem, painting a clear enough picture, he has established the first part of the story. The product, then, becomes the hero. My thoughts are based on measuring 250,000 TV, video, radio, print, FSI and OOH ads in 14 countries.
The brand has to be the hero of your story. Too often, we tell a story that isn’t related to a category or a customer need, and then mention the brand too late, perhaps, in an effort of appearing subtle. When that happens, customers don’t know who the ad is for and get angry at the brand. Bottom line, don’t get so overwhelmed in storytelling that you are unable to create an ad that works.
TWEET THIS: The brand has to be the hero of your story. –Gary Getto, President @ABXindex #BrandStorytelling #BrandExperience #DebbieLaskeysBlog
QUESTION: If you could predict the future, what marketing trend, marketing buzzword, or social platform will we be talking about a year from now?
Gary Getto offered a surprising answer to this question: “Faith.” When the world is falling apart, and the problems just keep piling on, people rely on faith, or on others with faith. This is not predicting any particular kind of faith, but it would likely be based on principles, such as truth and honesty, and would encourage treating others well. We will see this trend intensify.
QUESTION: My favorite marketing quote is from Walter Landor: “Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.” What does this quote mean to you?
Gary: Brands are created in everything the product does, from conception to build-out to delivery to customer service and to the entire relationship. It is the whole gestalt, which ultimately makes you experience far beyond just what the brand or product provides. It’s everything about your experience interfacing with the product.
TWEET THIS: Brands are created in everything the product does, from conception to build-out to delivery to customer service and to the entire relationship. –Gary Getto, President @ABXindex #BrandExperience #DebbieLaskeysBlog
My thanks to Angela and Gary for sharing their insights.
LIKEWISE, ABX THANKS DEBBIE FOR INCLUDING US IN THIS POST. Image Credit: Dustin Humes via Wordswag app.