State Of The Industry

Unsurprisingly the upfront is soft. Advertisers have woken up to the error of our ways. Sure enough, interruptive ads as the sole use of magical media is a shortfall. New ways are needed and we need to find them. In the meantime let’s test everything and slow down the outpouring of vast cash in habitual ways except where the proof makes that justifiable to those who would ask marketing to defend its life.

NCM has found for example that the ancient practice of sponsorship works – but not all sponsorship. It has to:

1.Not be perceived as advertising by the consumer
2.Engender a gratitude effect in the consumer as in “how surprising that X-CO brought me this program without ads – and how hip – I guess I misjudged X-CO – maybe their products deserve another look”

But look at what happens when you do that:

Slides are excerpted from Bill’s presentation to the ARF Annual AMS Conference June 21, 2006

Five to seven times the persuasion effect of TV commercials – ROI way above the average for plain old advertising.

Would love to post any other cases where new ways have garnered results which break the low 4:1 ROI ceiling implied by MMA findings above – do you have any you’d care to share – please post it here as comment so we can all see – thanks. Best to all, Bill