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

At the iMedia Brand Summit in Deer Valley in September, 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.

In part one, we ran the portion of the transcript in which she talked about media budgets Part two covered marketers' opinions about media effectiveness and how marketers view the media. Here's the final third of the transcript. You can print or download the Powerpoint presentation to follow along.

Packo: I thought it might be interesting to share some of the things we heard from our qualitative respondents based on some open-ended questions in the survey. What we heard that was positive about television -- and by the way, for every medium you said good things, you said bad things; each are being used for their strengths and in their own light -- what marketers are saying about TV is positive. There’s a whole group of things that very much are established -- 90 percent of our budget is spent on TV. Television is still strong, it makes a statement. Television has proven it works, it builds brand equity.

And then we heard a kind of whole series of things like, "we’re at a stage where everyone in the company’s TV-centric," or, "we need TV and air coverage because it legitimatizes us in the market." So these are positives, albeit a little bit backhanded. Or, "our CEO wants to be on TV." "Television plays a leading role -- just imagine trying to do without." And my favorite of what was said -- "TV is still the only medium that can make you cry, [making it] the emotional medium."

So these are some of the things the marketers told us were positive and some of the reasons that they are spending like they’re spending and increasing still their spending in TV.

In terms of negative, the patterns of negative that we heard in our interviews, is that TV needs to come up with a better way to prove its value. It’s kind of gotten away with a lot for a long time and needs to change and adapt. It has been a mass, passive consumer research vehicle, and it’s been bought on little information; it’s not up to the requirements of online demos, etc.

We’re hearing that some of you are getting pressure to move away from TV and get some more ROI-oriented media. One person said, "TV is like a teenager -- mature on the outside but trying to figure out what it wants to do when it grows up." And then there's TiVo. We heard a fair amount about TiVo as a concern, really changing the medium. So these are some of the concerns the marketers voiced about TV.

When we go to online, some of the positive things we heard -- and a lot of these very much cluster around the things you might think given the previous efficiency, or effectiveness rating -- very much around the proof in the return, in the value. The kinds of things we heard are, that it's better at targeting prospects, better ROI measurements, better direct response, dollar-for-dollar we get much more, greater value from the Internet than any other medium. We hear online’s measurable, highly targeted, easy to track, instant results, so all the measurability ROI are the positives that were expounded. "We’ve seen great results. Most of our business is generated by the Internet," so when they’re using it for ecommerce as well, they’re tying into these kinds of metrics -- "reaches our target audience" and the one I like best: "the way of the future is online advertising." So those are some of the positives we heard from the marketers.

In the negative -- I think this is really one of the biggest negatives -- the medium became unloved around 2000. It's starting to be loved again, having gone through a tough time, but still, people think everything related to the Internet and online media is in a state of flux. And as flux changes, it’s not that easy to deal with. Marketers tell us that "our people don’t have time to become specialists in interactive media" and that’s kind of required. Online media companies need to improve education; there’s a lot of call for that. And the same person, unnamed, who talked about the age of TV, said that "online is the child that can walk, talk and feed itself; the industry needs to better organize and educate." So those are examples of some of the things that you’re all mentioning as concerns about online.

We then take this to the integrated marketing campaign, and this is an area that we’ve talked a lot about over the last few days and you’ve already shared some of these results. Essentially, 89 percent of you said that you’re doing integrated marketing campaigns, so marketers told us that it’s happening, something like 41 percent said a majority of the campaigns are integrated and what is an integrated campaign? Neil [Perry] talked to you a little bit about this, but interestingly, the definitions are different, not everyone’s defining it in the same way; and it can be anything from, really integrating within the media, or else integrating across media and marketing, all for a single product or a campaign, and some people think that unless the Internet’s part of it, unless online is part of it, it’s not an integrated campaign. So that was interesting to us, the different definitions that marketers use for integrated marketing, and I know we’ve done a lot the last couple days to sort that out.

How do they pull it off? You said it’s not easy. There were several patterns of things that really emerged. First and foremost, the marketers felt their organizations themselves, their own organizations, made it difficult to pull off integrated campaigns successfully. Not having a formal process, finance and budgets, in-fighting for territory and share of the money are big areas that are of course going on inside the client company; the agencies aren’t necessarily aligned in a way that allows them to really take advantage of the integrated marketing opportunities, etc. So those were the patterns of things we heard that make integrated marketing hard -- your own organizations, financial constraints and the agencies.

So what we tried to do is map out -- and this is probably the basis of this whole next study -- we tried to map out and understand how people really are working on an integrated marketing campaign and what’s the process for mixed allocation? And there is no set process, that’s something that’s very clear. This is something that our qualitative moderator who did the interviews mapped out in working with the different marketing executives and CMOs and it seems that loosely, there were three patterns or three groups of things going on, that everyone had in common.

First and foremost, objectives would be set, so this is in terms of setting up the budget for the coming year. Objectives sometimes were handed down from the top or sometimes in a collaborative process. But objectives would be for the brand… in the marketing area. And then it would go into the planning process.

And the first step was really looking at last year. It seems that everybody we talked to says that’s their first natural step; they looked at last year. Looking at the foundation programs, you know, what they are spending on the fundamental elements, sponsorship programs, brand programs, the things like that. So whatever was the fundamental element is first. And at that point, once they looked at last year, there was typically a decision about how much could they afford to increase it? And at that point then, they would look at how much they could afford to increase the core element and then would get a discretionary budget above and beyond. So, what things would you like to spend more on, less on? That gives you the process of deciding the target budget number. 

We also learned that most marketers seem to operate with bursts of money -- there would be the set budget and then special money to add. And in deciding how to allocate, this was interesting. A lot of it was what worked in the past -- what have we done before and what do we think worked? A big proportion [of what's being done] -- more than I might imagine -- [is based on] internal customers, like the CEO liked the Wall Street Journal and wants to be in there, "I want to be on TV,", "We like radio." So it would be for the marketer who wants to see it on TV, it means a lot, or for the employee to do the campaign.

So that was a fairly common mentioned element of determining this. One thing we heard was a pattern; if the company had an ecommerce site it was more likely that they would be embracing of the Internet as far as their mix. Research comes up as something -- the targets they’re trying to reach -- and then what the agency recommends. All the marketers essentially thought it was their responsibility to drive the allocation in these decisions.

So what we really came to realize and see is that it’s really more like an art than a science the way marketers and CMOs are allocating their budgets, making their decisions. Marketers are like sailors of racing yachts: They make decisions from some navigational data but generally much more through past experience, instinct and input from others within the company. They're not supertanker captains where all decisions are made based on metrics and manuals. [Shows photo of a woman on a yacht.] I don’t know if this woman is really on a yacht, but that’s really what we’re seeing out there in terms of how the marketing officers are making their decisions. 

So, in conclusion, the opportunities and conclusions we see are: budgets are up in general, so that’s a good thing for everyone in the room, whether we’re media agencies, advertisers or marketers; online is proving its value beyond the Internet circle. The vast majority of these respondents were marketers who were not of the Internet, per se, and yet were rating it very highly in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, so definitely with the share of total budgets going up, this is a good thing. Marketers want to offer integrated campaigns and take advantage of the strength of each medium in a holistic way. And, marketers need to lead their organizations; that was the other finding.

So, that is the summary. Thank you very much, and I’m going to get a drink of water.