The paper presents research findings of Sesame, a survey including hundreds of advertising campaigns in the various media, designed to compare average media effectiveness - and the methodology used for this survey. The results show the specific functions of magazines as a medium - on average, magazines perform better than all other media to build up brand awareness. A piece of experimental research also provides qualitative insight into the perception of advertising in magazines, and allows better understanding of the specificities of this medium.
We intend to show how CONOT a new tool aiming to measure connotations be usefully applied to brand evaluation and strategy. We currently wonder which words, concepts, feelings would be evoked in peopleâs minds by a stimulus - a word, group of words, image... -? For instance, tradition is connected in the mind with various words and concepts. When using "tradition" as a stimulus, these connected words will be retrieved, by activation of the associative pattern. This associative set is the word's connotative meaning. Although this meaning is far more relevant, in daily life, than the denotative one, it is ignored by dictionaries! Words connotations, or evocations in people's minds, are a central concept in consumer research' they tell us how a word is inserted in the associative network, which constitutes the consumer's MFR (mental frame of reference). This insight is a key to efficient communication, concepts and words evaluation, brand strategy. Despite the importance of the connotation concept, its use is currently limited to qualitative research. CONOT intends to fill the gap. It has been created as a quantitative tool, which measures connotations of a word or other stimulus, in order to introduce the wealth, sensitivity and relevance of the connotation concept into the range of measurement tools. As such not only it provides an insight into consumers' mind, but it allows to compare, to set precise objectives, to track over time. CONOT is not a method, but a tool which may be used in a variety of situations, for checking connotations of words and concepts, across languages and countries for an international advertising campaign. In the context of this seminar, we will focus here upon another main application of this tool: brand evaluation.
In this line, we have designed a large research programme, SESAME, which started in France last February, supported by media and advertisers. This programme will provide tools for media mix, through measuring the value of each main medium for each class of criteria. Results will allow for a media mix decision adapted to the specific campaign goals from the beginning. Such second order feed-back process should constitute a milestone in media research, and will speed up the present ad hoc adaptation process.
In this line, we have designed a large research programme, SESAME, which started in France last February, supported by media and advertisers. This programme will provide tools for media mix, through measuring the value of each main medium for each class of criteria. Results will allow for a media mix decision adapted to the specific campaign goals from the beginning. Such second order feed-back process should constitute a milestone in media research, and will speed up the present ad hoc adaptation process.
Nestle is strongly concerned with making right decisions about budgets, media and advertising strategies, and, consequently, with monitoring its campaigns. Nestle has been tracking some parameters, generally supposed to be connected with the way advertising works, such as brand awareness and brand image. They appeared to be very stable over time and their relations either with campaigns, or with brand share did not appear at all clear. Consequently, it was decided to start a new system, based upon a more progressive approach. This system was worked out jointly by Nestle Research Department and Marc Vincent, based upon a theoretical framework developed by the latter. Through a satisfactory 3-year test period with one product- line (1975 - 77) , the system has been fully applied in the Company, from 1978.
In the times in which we live, there is perhaps no problem so fundamental, and which yet is so little taken into account in marketing research, as that of the effects of personal communication in all its diverse forms. While the idea of the existence of word of mouth publicity is time-honoured, yet the explicit recognition of its manifestations and of its influence on consumers, together with the idea of analysing this phenomenon scientifically, have only recently come into being. Certain direct mathematical approaches undertaken by various writers, including my own modest contribution, have analysed the phenomenon using the tool of models of propagation. This comparison with certain processes pertaining to the domains of biology or of the physical sciences constitutes an unsatisfactory simplification of the more complex underlying psycho-sociological reality. We should make an effort to take into account phenomena such as that of leadership, or the fact that communication is the crucible containing an amalgam, so difficult to resolve into its constituent elements of transmissions of information and of direct influence of one person on another. A great step forward would be taken to promote research work in this domain if the place of this phenomenon were to be explicitly recognised in marketing models, forecast studies and the research on ideas for new products, since explicit arbitrariness has the considerable advantage over implicit arbitrariness of being a prime mover in the sphere of progress.
Various qualitative media research conducted, mainly from 1972 give some insight about relevant variables to be considered in present media strategy and in future media research. Our experience in qualitative media research include two main pieces of research, one for the Television Authority and the other one as a part of the Syndicated program of research for advertisers, agencies and medias (Estudio General de Medios). We will mention the main objectives and specifications of these pieces of research.
We propose to examine the methods of approach which have up to now constituted the bases of the leading work done in this field. We shall then demonstrate how this phenomenon is generally taken into account when it lies in each of the three great domains constituting the subject of synthesis in the course of this Congress: forecast models, marketing models and research into ideas for new products. At the same time, we shall attempt to analyse the practical implications of this situation, that is to say the risks that limit the practical application of forecast and marketing models because of the omission of or the insufficient treatment given to the phenomenon of diffusion in the models we have mentioned.
We propose to examine the methods of approach which have up to now constituted the bases of the leading work done in this field. We shall then demonstrate how this phenomenon is generally taken into account when it lies in each of the three great domains constituting the subject of synthesis in the course of this Congress: forecast models, marketing models and research into ideas for new products. At the same time, we shall attempt to analyse the practical implications of this situation, that is to say the risks that limit the practical application of forecast and marketing models because of the omission of or the insufficient treatment given to the phenomenon of diffusion in the models we have mentioned.
Useful research can be achieved at various stages of the whole advertising process. First, motivation research about the pro duct and brand-image situation are a guide for the advertising policy (target-client, and effect aimed at). Concept and copy-testing, as well as media-planning, help in the preparation of the campaign. Efficiency control ex-post provides the announcer with conclusions about the new situation in order to re-orientate the next campaign, and, in some cases, to take decisions in other fields of marketing, product-design, or production. We were asked for this whole research assistance by a company, and this practical case is the principal theme of our paper, although we will broaden its experience content with some other actual pieces of research, in almost any of the various steps we mentioned above. The aim of this paper is to give a realistic picture of what advertising research can do, through actual cases. Of course, the experience basis implies that such a picture will be very far from exhaustive in such a large subject.
Useful research can be achieved at various stages of the whole advertising process. First, motivation research about the pro duct and brand-image situation are a guide for the advertising policy (target-client, and effect aimed at). Concept and copy-testing, as well as media-planning, help in the preparation of the campaign. Efficiency control ex-post provides the announcer with conclusions about the new situation in order to re-orientate the next campaign, and, in some cases, to take decisions in other fields of marketing, product-design, or production. We were asked for this whole research assistance by a company, and this practical case is the principal theme of our paper, although we will broaden its experience content with some other actual pieces of research, in almost any of the various steps we mentioned above. The aim of this paper is to give a realistic picture of what advertising research can do, through actual cases. Of course, the experience basis implies that such a picture will be very far from exhaustive in such a large subject.