iMedia Brand Summit panelists talk about how media accountability study will affect their future planning (final of 3).

At September's iMedia Brand Summit , Mediasmith president David Smith led a panel discussion around the findings of an MSN Media Accountability Study. The study, conducted by MSN in conjunction with Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution, analyzed the online component of ad campaigns conducted by Nestlé's Coffee-Mate and Kraft's Jell-O brands and found that the Web can provide media impact equal to or better than other media effective at branding.

On the panel were Briggs; Carole Walker, director, e-Communications, Advertising & Strategy at Kraft; and Todd Manion, Manager, E-Business & Consumer Relationship Management at Nestle USA. Last Thursday, Smith presented the topline findings, and panelists revealed how they've impacted their brands. In the second third of the transcript yesterday, the panelists talked about the significance of the study. Today, they look to the future. You can view the presentation here.

David Smith: Okay. Carole, Todd -- any other points you wanted to make that we didn't get to in this?

Carole Walker: Well just that I do think that one of the benefits of integration is really clearly understanding the role of every marketing contribution. And I think one of the unique differences for us next year is -- we required the agency, the traditional agency -- to understand -- for themselves and for the brand -- what the role of each medium is, including the Internet. It was easy for them to articulate the role of magazine and television. But, in the past we had required them to really fully figure out what the role of online was, for either the marketing program or the media program, because obviously there are a number of different roles that online can play. And so because the online role within the entire program was very clearly articulated, I think it has a much better chance of hanging on when again, as always, budgets start to be scrutinized in the following year.

Todd Manion: And I would say pretty much the same thing, which is that to -- from our process where we had traditional agencies kind of leading that -- now we have brand people leading that with strategy and vision, saying, here's the strategy and here's the vision for where we're taking the brand. Here's what each of the mediums need to execute in terms of making that happen.

And I think the other thing for us in terms of how we're doing it -- the dollars have shifted and that's a great sign for us, and (I've said this before at a couple of these meetings) we used to walk around with tin cups begging for money. I don't have to do that anymore and that's kind of a nice thing. The other part of it is recognizing within our organization that other brands now want to participate in studies like this -- that's a big step.

And probably the biggest thing for us is that we normally don't work with Kraft, we normally don't work with P&G and we certainly don't share information with those organizations. An organization stepped forward and said, it's about time we started understanding the medium, understand what's going on, understand what our competition's doing, and we all agreed -- and it took a long time for all our attorneys to sign the contracts, quite a long time, if you remember? But they did finally sign and said, listen, we will share the information, and the scary thing for us was -- and Rex did a lot of coaching with us -- that we had to share the information be it good or be it bad.

Thank God it was good because I wouldn't be sitting here otherwise. The information's been shared and we're actually presenting it to these groups and they've allowed us to actually sit onstage together. And for us organizations, I think that's a big step.

We have to thank MPS, Marketing Psychology Services, for tracking the data from a sales standpoint; they did a great job, and I thought MSN did a great job, which goes back to -- you know, we didn't place all our ads on MSN, it was a variety of networks that were targeted to the demographics based on people who buy those particular products, be it Jell-O, be it Oil of Olay, which is the P&G product, or be it our product, Coffee-Mate -- coffee's perfect mate, I have to throw that in there every time.

Smith: I want to give Rex the opportunity - - four Procter & Gamble studies finished; three more in the works, entertainment movie categories in the works… what other categories are coming up?

Briggs:  Yeah, we're doing both a number of private studies for client that don't have to show their results, but there's some real exciting public research where there's again, joined investment from MSN for a couple of categories -- entertainment, and retail, and the IAB coming together with a consortium of different publishers to support financial services and another automotive.  And those, again, will all link to sales, and that's a big push that marketing evolution forward.  Let's measure both the attitudinal and the sales part, and, where possible, let's work together in consortiums.

I think the key learning for me with number one, is the power of when different brands work together in consortium, and we're going to do a lot more of those in the future because I think that they're really useful. The second thing was, how important it is for people that wear an interactive hat to network throughout the organization and use the research and methodology discussions as a basis to talk about the deeper issues and to really push that along.

And the third one was, this was an incredible amount of work from Carole, Todd, and Tim Kopp, who's here from P&G, and that's an investment of time and energy, and the commitment to having a gold standard research instead of the cheap and easy way of going - - I think is what really ended up in the end paying off and changing the organizations.  And I think that they should all really be applauded for their bravery, because they would have to release results one way or the other.

And so, maybe as a transition to Q and A: a big hand for those companies.

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Smith: OK. If there are questions, we have time for just a couple of brief ones. Does anyone in the audience have a -- oh, there goes a hand.

Sara Williams: Hi, I'm Sara Williams from L'Oreal and I'm not going to ask about IPOD. It's great that there's 1,500 studies … I'm going next week to talk in France, to look at the big picture. If you were to narrow down out of the 1,500, the one or two studies that look at the top line, the big picture, the growth of the influence of online/offline sales, because our company's very focused on how ecommerce is growing in our space, and missing the big picture of media, and I'm scrambling for that really perfect reference -- you've got to get it, you've got to understand it before you dive into this individual study.

Briggs: I just saw some of the people in Sydney from L'Oreal a couple weeks ago and we've been talking with them in Asia about doing a study as well, and I think the best thing is to do a study on your own brand because you're able to go through the whole process, and I think it's as much about the process as the end result. But, if you're looking to save the time and the cost of the study and need to get the dialogue going, then obviously because of your association with Nestlé, that's a great research to start with. When this Olay research comes out that will be a great one because it's in your category and directly relevant, as will the other study which is in field now. That one is a couple months off, I think, so that's probably next spring, unfortunately.

The Nestlé and Kraft ones, I think, are applicable to your category because they show the logic of being able to integrate everything together, and they do show a range of results. Sometimes TV is the most competition, sometimes it's online, but regardless, online is always -- or has been so far -- an above average performer. You should really shift the burden onto the other person and say, why aren't we doing this, with all this evidence out there, as opposed to waiting around for the perfect case study of your competitor having figured it out first.

Don Klingseisen: Hi, Don Klingseisen from Kimberly Clark. Question on your marketing mix analysis. We've run marketing mixes and we've struggled trying to get a read on that line due to penetration issues, even on a local market basis. Was this an issue for you and how did you overcome it?

Briggs: That was the breakthrough of the research, solving that specific problem and at 4:27 on the clock, I don't have time to go through it, but let's talk right afterwards and I'll show you how we did that. That is the innovation of this research from a methodology standpoint -- it solved that specific problem.

Walker: And one of the issues that we've always faced in getting a read from MMA is the extremely low level of spend that online tends to get, so another advantage to the study is it helped us form minimum spending levels, and I've been able to drive that through the organization as well. So unless you're spending the money you can't really get the read. But, the methodology that this study entails allowed us to do that, with a lower spend.

Smith: To summarize, I think one of the really important things about this research and why it's different from the other 1,498 pieces of research out there, is that it is a true integration study, it's a true media mix, it shows the payout of various kinds of media and how they can really give brands help, not only from a marketing standpoint but from a bottom line sales standpoint, and that's what made this significant as far as our integration topic today, so thanks for your time everybody and thank you to the panel.

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