At February's Summit, iMedia's Neil Perry led a top marketer discussion on how expanding channels influence paths of purchase.

Neil Perry, who recently signed on as iMedia's VP of Market Intelligence, moderated this conversation in February at the iMedia Brand Summit in Florida [http://www.imediaconnection.com/brandspring/index.asp ]. His panelists were Stephen Blumberg, Director of Global Media and New Channels at MasterCard International, and Erik Whiteford, Director of Marketing at Electronic Arts Sports Brand. Read the first part of the transcript here. Here's more:

Neil Perry: Erik, let's talk about new channels. I am curious, just from your perspective, which are the new channels, or technologies, that are really appealing to you, and that you are really bullish on? Would it be cell phones or PDAs? I would have to guess that maybe video game integration might be one of your favorites, as well. Talk to us a little about that.

Erik Whiteford: The media market is becoming more and more fractured, so we need to figure new ways to reach the same consumers, and our expectations for growth go up substantially every year. So, part of my job is to figure out new ways to take the same amount of money and reach as many, if not more, people. There are a lot of new exciting technologies coming down the pike. 

Obviously, the proliferation of broadband is great for us because we are a video game company, and our content is video dominated and it looks great when it is in full action. The advent of broadband really gives us an opportunity to go out there and showcase what our products look like and what the advantage of our form of entertainment is -- something static forms of media don’t allow us to do. 

Some of the new things that are coming out -- cell phones are a really interesting way to reach people. I think we are going to walk carefully into that space because we want to make sure that we are only talking to people who want to hear from us. The benefit of being in our position, though, is a lot of people are passionate about our product and our brands, so I don’t think we will have a problem getting a lot of people who want to hear from us. 

So, then the challenge becomes on us to create really compelling and full content that is going to keep people coming back for more. And ultimately, this sort of customized, on-demand marketing messaging we think our consumers are going to want is really going to help us grow the market and maintain our brand loyalty, which is becoming very, very important in our space because there is a lot of competition and the stakes are very high. And, we need to increase our brand loyalty and keep consumers coming back to us and buying our products versus our competitors'. We have got a lot of ideas about how to use existing and new technologies to make that happen. I think the cell phone is a big one. PDAs and broadband. We are all for the proliferation of it and can’t wait for it to be in every single home.

Perry: That’s for sure. Stephen, let’s stay on that cell phone piece. Internationally, I know you do a lot of testing; probably much more so than we do in the United States. Tell us a little bit about how you are incorporating cell phones into the marketing mix over there.

Stephen Blumberg: Sure. As we all know, cell phones are everywhere; but, outside the U.S., they are used in a much different way. There are ways in some countries where you can actually use your cell phone to purchase products. So, we want to make sure that a credit card is attached and a MasterCard is attached to that cell phone, so when someone goes and makes that purchase they are using their credit card. 

In terms of what we are doing, we are trying to develop programs that bring the MasterCard brand as close to consumers as possible. An example would be with the upcoming World Cup in 2006. We have already started some advertising with our friends Yahoo!, with peopleworldcup.com, where consumers in the UK and in Germany are able to download ring tones, download wallpaper with their country’s national anthems, with their country’s flag, or their soccer team’s flag, and just try to bring the MasterCard brand as close to the consumer as possible. The issue that we have is we are a very low involvement category. Everyone has probably multiple credit cards in their wallet, on average five general-purpose credit cards. So, we need to try to figure out ways to get people to think about our brand and become “top of wallet,” just like we want people to think of the brand as “top of mind.” So, it is developing that relationship wherever we can and bringing that brand as close to them as possible.

Perry: I like that “top of wallet” idea -- that’s pretty good. Stephen, let me ask you this: Do you try to evaluate all of the different media channels and get an ROI evaluation on each one of them? Or, are you forced to look at an aggregate score and understand it?

Blumberg: You know it kind of goes back to our marketing mix model. For television and print, since we spend the majority of our money there, we are able to really get an ROI perspective. The one thing everyone has to keep in mind is, we are a brand. We don’t have products. At the end of the day, I need someone to use his card. That’s the only way we make money. So, looking at all the other media vehicles that are out there, it becomes, you know, almost gut. We know that people are using it, but we don’t necessarily have the metrics in place that we can actually measure things on an ROI basis by media.

Perry: And, Erik, you had some concerns about measuring ROI and going a little too far with the whole idea of analysis.

Whiteford: Well, yeah. I think obviously analysis and data is really important, and we do a ton of research, and we do a lot of analysis of our media buys, and map them to sales, and look at trends. And, we do have the luxury of having a fairly repeatable business. So, we can make tweaks to our marketing or media mix and see how that impacts rate of sale, versus years previous, as well as to other products in our category. 

But, at the end of the day, I think you also have to not do everything “by the numbers," because at the end of the day there's incredible media opportunities that are either in current forms of media or grass roots types of things that don't really pay out on an ROI model. You can really make a huge impact with your brand by taking chances and going with a little bit of your gut. So, I think, we end up using a lot of science and a lot of, sort of, intuition when we are making our media decisions. My concern is that we get sometimes pushed into saying, “Well, you have to do everything by using a very complicated model,” which I think is great to have that as a tool. But, it is how you use that tool and how you interpret the results of that model that will ultimately lead us to making really good decisions with our media dollars and coming up with not only efficient media programs, but also innovative and impactful media programs.

Perry: Okay, good. Erik, are you using any third-party research companies to help you evaluate your buys and what are you doing out there right now?

Whiteford: Yeah, we are. We have done some studies with Inside Express. We have done some things with Dynamic Logic. This past year, for example, we did a special program on Yahoo! where we went with Wal-Mart and we talked to them specifically, to their stores and the zip codes of their stores. We found out which were NCAA football … one of our titles sells the best, and we did a Yahoo! targeted campaign, specifically at those zip codes and those stores. And then, we followed that back up with a research study, which we went in and asked them beforehand if they were aware of the product, and then we measured that against awareness and intent to buy after these specifically targeted programs had occurred. And, the lift was huge! Then we went back to Wal-Mart and saw if they had a disproportionate level of sales in those different stores and it turned out they did. So, that to us was a really great study to try to figure out the effectiveness of doing really specific, targeted … and, actually we came up with a customized creative for each of the regions, which we also found to be very successful. So, we do study these things a lot and are getting good results from the data we're getting back.

Perry: Okay, great. How about you? Third-party researchers?

Blumberg: Absolutely. Again, since we don’t have a product and we can’t necessarily gauge sales, we do want to look at those general brand measures of brand awareness, intent to use. We have used Dynamic Logic several times. We actually did two or three Inside Express studies towards the end of 2004. We are waiting for results to see how that comes back, but our research group has definitely become aware that we do a ton of research offline, that we now need to move it online and see how well our creative and our media choices are being made.

Perry: I can see the Dynamic Logic people foaming already just trying to get up here to get a few minutes with you. Let’s talk about what is right and what is wrong with these measurement metrics that are out there right now. I know, Erik, you and I chatted a little bit and you had some concern about some of the ambiguities on online measurement. So, share a little of that with the audience.

Whiteford: Well, when I look at the online media plans that we buy, obviously we see all of the different impressions and the different ad sizes, and a lot of those are the really great ad units that we want, and that is why we are advertising. And, then at the lower part of each block, I see lots of impressions, you know, millions and millions of impressions that have a zero CPM attached to them. And, ultimately at the bottom line, it looks like the CPM (or Cost per Click) is relatively low. But, to me, I think a lot of that stuff is kind of thrown in there and it isn’t really tremendously valuable. And, I think that eventually I would like to see a measurement where you really get a better sense of exactly what you were getting, and getting media that was really impactful and moving the needle, versus ad placements, or buttons, or things like that that really, depending on the site, are not that valuable and they are sort of thrown in there to round out the plan.

I am getting more and more savvy about it, but I work with my partners in the product marketing organizations and they can sometimes be swayed a little bit by these sort of “throw in” impressions, which I don’t think are necessarily beneficial to our media buy. And, ultimately, I don’t think they are really helping anybody because they are not driving anything. They are not driving any clicks. I don’t think they are driving any brand awareness. I think if they want to throw them in there, great. But, they are not necessarily a part of the media plan that is valuable to us.

Tomorrow: Video game integration and blogs.