Millward Brown's Mary Ann Packo highlights breakthrough survey data for Summit attendees (part 2 of 3).

At last month's iMedia Brand Summit in Deer Valley, Mary Ann Packo, chief client and marketing officer of research firm Millward Brown, unveiled results of a first-of-its-kind Marketing & Media Snapshot 2004 study, which was sponsored by Advertising.com in conjunction with iMedia Communications. This study analyzed decision-making trends in marketing and media, perceptions about how different marketing media perform, and spending patterns, as well as how online media are being -- or not being -- integrated into the marketing mix. Yesterday, we ran the portion of the transcript in which she talked about media budgets. Here's more of the transcript. You can print or download the Powerpoint presentation to follow along.

Packo: The next area we delved into was asking marketers' opinions about media effectiveness. So we asked them to let us know what they thought. The way we went about this is, we asked about opinions for selective media, and in this part of the survey it was network TV, cable TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor, online, direct mail and promotion. And what we did is we had them rate these media in terms of effectiveness for six different attributes, and I will read them because I think in the back you can’t see these: building brand equity; new customer acquisition; providing measurable ROI; ability to retain, keep customers; ability to reach a target audience; and offering efficiency. So these were the attributes we outlined. And we had the respondents, on a five-point scale -- from extremely effective to not effective at all -- rate the different media.

What we heard was, marketers rated TV and magazines as most effective for building brand equity, direct mail was rated as the most effective for reaching a target audience and providing measurable ROI, and online is seen as the most effective medium for acquiring and retaining new customers, and in offering efficiency.

Now, the next chart’s going to be a little bit of an eyesore, but it’ll come in the actual presentation that you’ll get. What we really did is we looked at -- and you can see the numbers here -- we looked across the top at all the different media and down the side, the six different attributes, and we evaluated them. The bottom line is, the blue is really good, and that’s the most efficient. Green is second most, then it goes yellow, orange and red, which is not so efficient.

What I think is quite interesting is when you really look at online -- it’s the third from the right -- and when you look at all the blue going on in there in terms of it being rated as extremely or very effective as a medium, in general, it was rated most effective overall in these particular attributes. It’s interesting, too, that online in many categories is rated very closely to the more direct response-type media -- direct mail and promotions. Also, if you notice, online got a 54 rating, that’s the efficiency rating, for building brand equity, so even though online rated very strongly in all the more ROI- and sales-oriented metrics and efficiency ratings, it scored well on building brand equity, too.

So we decided to look at these ratings to see some of the budget sizes, the size of the marketer budget, and one kind of interesting thing here is, television and print effectiveness ratings increase with the size of the marketer budget, so the bigger your budget, the more effective you think TV is. Maybe not a surprise. What was a little interesting to me is in the online arena, it’s very consistent. Whether the marketers had small, medium or large budgets, it was very consistently rated with the same degree of effectiveness, suggesting that there’s quite a broad market to be selling all online services.

That’s just some highlights from the media effectiveness part.

The next area we looked at was how marketers view the media and what marketing objectives they're trying to achieve. You’ve probably all seen versions of this pie, this is really just another variation on brand experience or what you’re doing with the management of your brand and how marketing objectives are being met. So again we had attributes that we came up with that fit into these different categories -- awareness or creating awareness of a new product; keeping an established product on the mind; expanding the brand’s consideration; communicating the position of the brand; acquiring new customers; encouraging trial and repeat; retaining customers; and increasing loyalty of those customers. 

So we asked marketers what they thought.

If we start with network TV -- and we did this for all the media, there were 15 different media and I’m only going to look at TV and online here, just due to time -- but if we look at network TV, what we really see here is marketers who use national TV are using it to achieve awareness and consideration. Maybe not a surprise, but those are the areas that you told us this is really the objective you’re trying to achieve with your national advertising. The three main objectives you told us you’re trying to achieve are: communicating the brand’s position, expanding the brand consideration and creating awareness of new product. So that’s what you told us about TV.

If we look at online, we start looking at all the different online components -- advertising, promotion, search and email -- very heavily the primary marketing objectives that are trying to be achieved fall into the trial category. For acquiring new customers, advertising, email and search marketing were the top means for this objective. Encouraging trials, direct mail -- this happened to be where direct mail is at the highest score, but online promotion and email marketing are also heavily used to achieve those objectives. And then, in terms of increasing loyalty or retaining customers: email marketing, direct mail and online promotion. So the entire online area definitely groups in this trial and repeat area in terms of the reasons marketers are using the medium. 

But when we looked at advertising again, it’s a little different. Online promotions and search are very much trial and sales areas. However, Web advertising, although it’s definitely acquiring new customers, is the number one objective reason -- or one of the main reasons -- marketers are using it. The next is creating awareness of new product, and that’s really a three-way tie for expanding the brand consideration and communicating about it in trial. So what we see with Web advertising is, in reality marketers are using it, really to achieve a broader array of objectives than the other types of online marketing, and more than in some of the other major media, when you see the rest of the report.

Email marketing is the other area where it’s interesting because it very much clusters in the trial area, the blue part; retaining customer loyalty, acquiring new customers, encouraging new trial. But email marketing also is being used quite often to create awareness of new product, and keep an established product top of mind. So, these are some of the marketing reasons that you tell us you’re using email.

Monday: Some insight perspective from marketers.