Measure / don’t measure? (An advertising fable)
Crucial sell memory chips for computers. So far, so mundane. But I’ve been buying the stuff for seven years. It started because getting memory for Macs used to be an expensive business laden with worries about compatibility. Crucial were far cheaper than other suppliers, guaranteed their memory would work, and offered a handy online ‘configurator’ (ugly word) that made it easy to find the memory chip for any given Mac. So they offered good service.
In the last seven years I’ve ordered nothing but Crucial memory. Mac memory is easy to get these days, but why change? Crucial have made it easy to keep using them. I don’t know what I’ve spent with them, but it could be up to four thousand pounds.
In that time I’ve also seen a lot of Crucial banner ads on sites I visit. Response rates to these ads are entirely measurable: clicks through to Crucial’s site are definitely tracked, and in theory where I hover my mouse could also be tracked and measured as a proxy for my engagement with the ad (but probably isn’t).
I’ve never clicked on a Crucial ad. Does that mean money wasted? One short way to end the question is if the ads are pay-per-click (CPC). In that case Crucial pay out nothing.
Chances are though that these are pay-per-impression (CPM) ads, so there is a cost for Crucial in showing me them. So does that mean money wasted? After all, I’m already a customer, and I never clicked an ad. The part of me that loves direct response would say yes, money wasted, sell me something new instead. But there’s another way to look at this: Crucial remain my default choice for computer memory. Brands are an example of the power of defaults.
Advertising Crucial repetitively reinforces Crucial as my default choice for this product. On a competitive basis, if Crucial buy out that media, that prevents another memory supplier catching my attention by placing ads in that space.
So far, so much basic brand theory. I thought this worth posting because we are very involved in understanding and expressing both the measured (in the direct-marketing sense) and non-measurable value of advertising. The internet offers a wonderful blend of the two.
My current default position is that if an advertising response can be measured, it should (obviously if it can’t, then it can’t). That’s necessary, but not sufficient: it’s my belief that the most effective advertising campaigns will be built to meet a clear business goal, and their value will be measured in part by direct response elements; however understanding the full value will also require softer measures less amenable to statistics, such as conversation and opinion tracking, and fascinating aspects such as fan activity and product ambassadors (obligatory Lego reference).
Got an opinion on this? Send me your thoughts: andy@teamrubber.com
I’m at the other end of lazy tech leeching - I go to a forum and get other people to do the thinking for me regarding hardware. People on these forums have the time, knowledge, and attitude to cater for you.
Advertising to these tech heads must be a hard game when they benchmark specs and review for each other so rigorously and without bias. The power of the message is so often clouded by the spec.
Discussion on these forums really does come down to the best product at the best price over ‘this is always the best brand to buy’ as views change so quickly there with the specs. There are those who can’t keep up so keep brand loyalty, but it only takes a minute to sign up and post a question. I guess it’s quite worrying that I’d build a system purely on their reccomendations, but you can guarantee that a thread you start in the right place will get you a far better answer than any you’d think up even if you dedicated a day to it - or a month in my case.
02 Sep 2008 at 11:18 pm