The 26th edition of the annual CMO survey conducted in February 2021 for the American Marketing Association by Deloitte, identified that the importance of Marketing had increased during the pandemic.  CMOs said that they were focused on brand building and reported 5 specific “Objectives”.

MSW Research directly addresses each of these “5 CMO Objectives” with unique measurements that enhance your insights process; measurements all founded upon the evidence based, MSW Predictive Brand Growth Marketing Model™…

The “5 CMO Objectives” and how MSW addresses each with, a Philosophical Framework, specific Applications/Products/Services, and the Evidenced Based Proof that supports this:

“CMO Objective” Number 1:  Building Brand Value That Connects with Customers

Two elements of the MSW Marketing Model that address this CMO ”Objective”:

1:  Brand Relationships; existing brand relationships drive Brand Preference.  MSW uses a segmentation model that places every individual into one of eight groups for each brand in the category.  We utilize a relationship decision tree to identify the strength of the brand relationship with customers.

2:  Brand Perceptions; all successful brands have a set of distinctive brand assets (sensory cues: color, logo, design, character, jingle, etc.) that aid memory encoding and act as signals to enhance availability.  Additionally, all brands also have a differentiated positioning (a reason to be).

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Category whitespace and market need priorities-Decoder™
• Brand lift opportunities in competitive context-BrandScape™
• Preference shift linked to short term sales and long-term brand equity-The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Ongoing campaign and individual message/medium brand lift in competitive context-Advertising Performance Monitor™
• Pre and post campaign message and media effectiveness-Touchpoint™

Applications/Products/Services:

• A&U – Decoder™
• Brand Purpose – BrandScape™
• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Early-Stage Message Screening – Sifter™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Of the points that support this objective, one that stands out in particular because of its validation as a predictive indicator of brand health and sales is our RDE Analytic Framework™, which measures Relevance, Differentiation and Emotion.  RDE™ has been proven to grow brands based on 17 years of experience, with 3,500,000+ individual brand evaluations, across 400+ categories, for 2,000+ brands, in 44 countries.

“CMO Objective” Number 2:  Increasing Awareness

Every piece of brand communication needs to build awareness. At MSW, we have proven methods to effectively measure awareness and determine the contribution to the memory structure that drives saliency and brand association.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Ongoing campaign and individual message/medium awareness and preference lift in competitive context-Advertising Performance Monitor
• Pre and post campaign message and media effectiveness-Touchpoint

Applications/Products/Services:

• Development / Copy Testing – TouchPoint™
• Advertising Performance Tracking – APM™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Saliency, as measured by Top-of-Mind Awareness, is a stronger predictor of sales than Aided Awareness (average R2 = 0.70 vs. 0.44). Simply improving a brand’s TOM Awareness can often lead to an increase in market share.  We see this in the correlation between TOM Awareness and sales.  TOM Awareness is usually the second most accurate predictor of sales after our CC Brand Preference measure, which is independently proven to correlate at .94.

“CMO Objective” Number 3:  Acquiring New Customers

Evidence shows that the primary driver of brand growth is penetration, all other growth mechanisms are secondary. New customers can be acquired though promotional activity, but these gains tend to be short lived. A more successful longer-term strategy is to invest in brand building, and evidence shows that message quality is the most impactful element when explaining changes in market share.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Customer Acquisition Forecast and sales from advertising

Applications/Products/Services:

• Development / Copy Testing – TouchPoint™
• Advertising Performance Tracking – APM™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Research conducted by MSW on its database of advertising has found that 52% of changes in market share can be explained by ad quality.  Media explains 13% of market share changes and a variety of other factors explain 35% of the changes.  The importance of ad quality is undeniable, and our validated, proven and in 2 cases Patented, advertising development tools such as CC Brand Preference™, CC Brand Persuasion™, RDE Analytic Framework™ and Outlook® Media Mix Optimization & Market Share Forecast Model™ deliver high quality advertising.

“CMO Objective” Number 4:  Retaining Customers

This was the primary activity of more CMOs than any other in the 2021 CMO survey.  The pandemic was a shock to the system, but brand loyalty has been declining for years along with trust in brands.  MSW’s brand tracking studies show that approximately half the consumers in any given category are not loyal to any one brand.

An entire industry has been built to measure Customer Satisfaction, and to help companies improve their Satisfaction scores, yet customer loyalty continues to decline.  This has led people to question the value of customer satisfaction and to recognize that the real goal is Loyalty.

For MSW Research, the key to addressing this objective is the ability to accurately measure human emotional response to brands and their messaging, combined with measurement of various brand relationship segments.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Loyalty shifts among various brand relationship segments-The Brand Strength Monitor
• Preference Shift linked to traffic, sales, etc.-The Brand Strength Monitor

Applications/Products/Services:

• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Brand Franchise Analysis™
• Persuadables Segmentation Analysis℠

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Our data shows that Brand Loyalty is affected by how each brand interaction makes consumers feel.  The MSW brand relationship model captures attitudinal loyalty and allows us to understand the drivers of loyalty. A battery of emotional response measurement tools drills down to provide exact direction to activate these drivers.

“CMO Objective” Number 5:  Improving Marketing ROI

Most importantly of all, brand and marketing investment must create brand preference over competitive offerings, which propels sustainable and longer-term financial value and growth.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Continuous measurement – The Brand Strength Monitor
• Point-in-time measurement – Touchpoint 360

Applications/Products/Services:

• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Outlook® Media Mix Optimization & Market Share Forecast Model™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• MSW Brand Preference explained more of the variation in sales across a study of 120 brands in 12 categories over 18 months than other classic market research metrics.  MSW Brand Preference is a measure of Long-Term Brand Equity and it explains most, but not all, changes in brand sales; but we still have a Market Gap that is explained by other factors.
• The link between MSW Brand Preference and Sales has been presented to the ARF and AMA, written about in The Economist, The International Finance Review, The Journal of Brand Management and CFO Magazine, and has been discussed with The International Accounting Standards Board and incorporated into the ISO definition of Brand Equity.

Conclusion

The 5 CMO “Objectives” can be summarized by one illustration.

All brands have potential, not all are living up to that potential.  We help brands identify the reasons for the gap between their Performance and their Potential and provide guidance to help close the gap.

In addition to helping brands meet their current potential we uncover opportunities for brands to expand their future potential.

As usual, there was almost as much hype about the ads in the Super Bowl this year as there was about the game itself.  And one of the advertising storylines this year centered around Cryptocurrency Exchange ads.  This represented a coming-out party for Crypto Exchanges on the year’s biggest advertising stage.

While the four Crypto Exchange ads were superseded by the number of ads in some of the more traditional Super Bowl ad categories (automobile companies led the way with 7 spots), they still managed to steal much of the pre and post-game discussion about the advertising.  However, to a large extent the verdict was less than positive.

At Yahoo! Sports, Liz Roscher provided commentary and grades on all the big game’s ads.  While garnering some positive comments from Roscher, the FTX spot featuring Larry David only managed a D grade.  However, that made it the winner of the Crypto Exchange category as the other three spots all received an F.

Over at USA Today, Super Bowl ad meter results were based on the ratings of nearly 150,000 panelists.  The final tally again showed FTX as the leader in the Crypto Exchange category, with the brand’s Larry David spot finishing a very respectable 17^th out of a total of 66 rated ads.  Crypto.com rode LeBron James to a mediocre 49^th place overall, while eToro only avoided last place due to even fewer viewers liking the somewhat head-scratching bouncing QR-code approach taken by CoinBase.

While ratings are fun, ultimately the true measure of the success of an advertisement comes from what the ad does to bolster the business results of the brand itself.  MSW’s TBSM tracker incorporated the Crypto Exchange category in January, which provided a baseline read on the brands in the category.  Then the survey was run again in the week after the Super Bowl, with an aided advertising awareness question added at the end of the survey.  What were the results?

The 71% of respondents who indicated they had watched the Super Bowl were asked if they remembered seeing any ads for Cryptocurrency Exchange brands during the Super Bowl and if so, they were asked to indicate which brands they saw an ad for out of a list of 13 major Crypto Exchange platforms.   The ghost awareness level (average misattribution to unadvertised brands) was 10%.  All the advertised brands were able to comfortably surpass this level with the exception of eToro at only 10.4%.

It is also interesting to note that while claimed advertising awareness levels for Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro are all highest among respondents aged 18 to 34, FTX really popped among those aged 35 to 54.  In fact, FTX ad awareness of 23.9% among those aged 35 to 54 more than doubled the level among the younger age group.  Chalk that up to the Larry David effect!

Next, the survey results showed an overall lifting of brand awareness levels for the entire category in the week after the Super Bowl versus the January baseline.  But the advertised brands in particular saw a very strong lift in the level of aided brand awareness.

However, the key metric collected by the TBSM survey is brand preference.  This metric has been shown to be strongly related to actual market share and

it underpins most of MSW Research’s primary research methodologies since movement in Brand Preference is validated and proven to corelate to actual in-market business results.  So, while awareness can certainly indicate that the advertising was having an effect, the true winner is that brand that sees the strongest movement in share of Brand Preference.

While all the advertised brands saw at least some level of positive movement in Brand Preference, FTX again is the winner with a jump in Brand Preference of 2.6 percentage points.  Again, this gain was driven by respondents aged 35 to 54 among whom FTX realized a Brand Preference gain of 4.3 percentage points.

Beyond the effect on the individual brands, these high-profile advertisements can have an effect on the category itself, particularly given the nascent nature of the Crypto Exchange category.  One sign of this can be seen in claimed category participation.  The percent of respondents claiming to not be buyers or sellers of cryptocurrency dropped 6 percentage points to 37% in the post-Super Bowl read.

In addition, there is evidence that the advertising and associated hype had a positive effect on branding in the category.  The TBSM survey asks respondents to select the one characteristic (from a list of eight choices) that is most important in deciding on a method to buy or sell cryptocurrency.  The only item to gain, with an increase of 4 percentage points, was “From a Brand I Trust.”

Despite the snap reviews of the Super Bowl Crypto Exchange ads which were not favorable, to say the least, TBSM tracking data suggests the advertising has been effective at raising awareness and building brands in the category.  This is particularly the case for FTX.  And the use of Larry David as spokesperson – that could never be wrong!

please contact us for more information on the MSW TBSM survey and what it can reveal in your category.

The Persuadables℠;  the consumer segment with the highest ROAI.

Essentially, it’s a narrowing of your target from a broad-based approach to those consumers who already have a likelihood of choosing your brand.  And because they already have a predisposition towards your brand, they are more responsive to advertising, easier to move and ultimately return a higher ROAI.  Identifying those consumers and then what message will pull them towards your brand is the key.

The concept is relatively straight forward – of course, like most other things, the devil is in the details.

Fortunately, MSW has been doing this since the early 1960’s. The idea grew out of our early work on Brand Loyalty and is actually related to the old debate of which is a more efficient way to increase sales; a strategy of penetration (increasing your user base) or a strategy of increased usage (getting those who already use to use more).  The answer in most cases is increased usage.  Getting non-users, who express no interest in future use, to choose your brand is the least efficient strategy (they don’t use it, are not interested in using it and aren’t likely to be convinced, and if you can convince them it’s going to cost a lot).  The next least efficient strategy is getting loyal users to increase their usage (they already use it, how much more can they buy).  The most efficient way to target is in the middle; to get repertoire users (those who rotate through your brand and other brands) and non-users who are “attracted” to increase their use of your brand over others (increased loyalty or increased share of requirements) or buy for the first time.  It’s this last group that some people are now calling the “Movable Middle”, but what we refer to as the “Persuadables℠”.

The genesis of the thinking was that…  The nucleus of a brand’s franchise are the consumers who are loyal to it – but every brand also has a proportion of consumers who are “Persuadable”.

 And in order to bring about favorable sales results, the advertiser must accomplish two main objectives: 

1)  ATTRACT new buyers

2)  RETAIN possible defectors

Now, identifying who to ATTRACT and RETAIN is one thing – activating them is another.  Some people refer to this group as the “Movable Middle”; identify them using a traditional type of segmentation analysis, heavy on demographics, and then use that segmentation to target media buys.

While identifying and targeting is a good start, it doesn’t provide the most effective framework because it leaves out the most important piece.

At MSW, we do it different and better.  Our framework for a truly actionable and effective process is four-steps:

Yes, we identify and enable targeting of media buys, but we also inform our clients “HOW” to Persuade (or Move) this target – what messaging will have a positive impact on sales.

Including the “HOW” comes from our heritage in advertising and communications research –research centered on “HOW” to persuade these “Persuadables” to buy or buy more of your brand.

How we do it; Step 1, Identify Persuadables℠.

We have two techniques that we use in combination to identify the Persaudables℠.

• We don’t define the Persaudables℠ as others do, as consumers with a 20-80% probability of choosing your brand, as the result of purchase interest question. Purchase Interest, by itself,  is actually one of the least accurate ways of predicting brand choice.  MSW’s CC Brand Preference is the most proven and sales validated measure available to predict brand choice.
• We combine our proven and sales validated CC Brand Preference™ and our Brand Franchise Analysis™ to more accurately identify and segment consumers relationship with, and likelihood to purchase your brand.

How we do it; Step 2, Identify HOW to Persuade Them.

• Then we use our Persuasion Driver Analysis™ to inform HOW to move the Persaudables℠.

How we do it; Step 3, Test Messaging.

• Testing messaging and communications to ensure ad impact on future sales volume and market share.Messaging and Creative is the one thing that has the most impact on both short-term sales lift and long-term brand equity.
• MSW’s suite of advertising assessment and creative guidance tools used to test messaging and ensure impact on Persuadables.

How we do it; Step 4, Target Media.

• And finally, targeting the Persaudables℠ using the segmentation analysis completes the process. While MSW Research is not a media buyer, we do provide our clients’ buyers with segments, definitions, targeting and everything they need to effectively execute and buy.

Some final thoughts…

• Roughly 1/2 of category users are Persuadables℠
• 2/3rds of new penetration comes from Persuadables℠
• Only 1/3 of new penetration comes from all other segments
• Persuadables℠ are twice as important as all other segments; as they deliver 2/3rds of new penetration

 

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In What MSW Research Products/Services is this Persuadables℠ Segmentation Analysis available?

We offer the Persuadables℠ Segmentation Analysis throughout the communication development process.

1. It is available in early stage Foundation & Purpose research as part of our Brandscape℠ product which is a category and brand equity analysis that deconstructs equity into base pillars for marketing planning. It is the first step in our communications development process that includes rational and emotional measurement that’s hard-linked within our brand equity improvement paradigm.

We build the Persuadables℠ Segmentation Analysis into Brandscape as an integrated analysis to understand your brand’s position relative to direct and indirect competitors, as well as your place with regard to mission, vision, core values, niche markets, strengths and weaknesses.

Identify the strongest brand claims/benefits to find those which are worthy of building communications around.

Determine if you have the opportunity to leverage and/or increase existing brand equity by extending or spinning-off your brand.

Explore the interaction between a brand and it’s customers over the duration of the relationship.

Understand your customers’ state of mind, complete experience and interaction with every brand touch point they encounter from awareness and need generation to usage and loyalty.

2. It is available in Screening & Development research as part of all our Early-Stage Message Screening (Sifter™) and Copy Testing (TouchPoint™) products.

Again, we build the Persuadables℠ Segmentation Analysis into these products as a fully integrated analysis to bolster the actionability of the outputs – insuring in-market impact.

3. And finally Persuadables℠ Segmentation Analysis is built into our tracking services as a fully integrated analysis to; a) confirm that historical communications strategies are on target and performing as predicted and, b) be viewed as a leading indicator to guide future decision making with regard to messaging and targeting. 

​Contact us today to discuss identifying and activating your Persuadables℠ with one our senior executives.