Last year an important shift took place. Millennials became the largest living population group. This year another major shift is happening. More money will be spent on digital advertising than traditional advertising. These things are related! But what we have been told might not be completely accurate.
Generally it has been accepted that digital is the way of the future, the way millennials want to be marketed to. It is the way automated advertising can be purchased and the way “big data” can collect information about your buying likes and dislikes. It is the prevailing topic in many board rooms and anyone not fully behind digital advertising is out of step and swimming against the tide.
But what if the small group of decision makers are the ones who believe this way and the general consumer (millennials, boomers and the rest) is not all in on digital? What if the millennials employed by businesses are advising that digital is the only way to go because their individual enthusiasm points in that direction? It could mean that more money will be wasted on digital advertising this year than ever before!
A recent study by Cadent Consulting Group and reported on in the February 23 edition of Advertising Age took a look at the five main advertising channels which included: trade promotions (discounts, on pack, container), shopper marketing (ads and offers presented at retail in-stores), consumer promotions (inducements to purchase like free gifts, buy one get one and may include discounts), traditional advertising (TV, radio, print) and digital (mobile devices).
The study investigated shoppers reactions to the advertising in two areas – awareness and influence. Basically did a shopper see and acknowledge the advertising and did it have any influence on a purchasing decision. Digital was at the bottom of the barrel! Trade promotions had 46 percent awareness and 39 percent influence; shopper marketing 39 percent, 31 percent; consumer promotion was 39 percent , 30 percent; traditional advertising hit 25 percent, 15 percent and down at the bottom was digital at 14 percent awareness and only 10 percent for influence.
The results were not what was anticipated because the people pushing digital advertising assumed incorrectly that everyone else had the same enthusiasm for the technology that they had. Last summer a TradeTime survey that was discussed in Ad Week showed that 71 percent of consumers preferred brick and mortar to online purchasing. The article also pointed out that just 9 percent of consumer spending is online.
It must be acknowledged that online shopping is growing, traditional retail is shrinking and at some point I will be writing about the market being upside down – but that isn’t today! And the consumer reactions measured by these surveys hold true for the specialty advertising/promotional markting industry. In fact we have a much better score if similar data is measured. Awareness created by specialty advertising is 80 percent and influence is 38 percent! That is 75 percent higher awareness than top rated trade promotions and a spectacular 477 percent better job than digital!
This information has no value at all if you keep it to yourself. Your clients will almost certainly be going with the flow. They will be reacting to the constant media attention to digital marketing. Stories about the flow of money to digital advertising will dwarf any reporting on the lack of influence digital is having on the consumer. But you can show your clients how to get much better results for far less investment.
In the spirit of full disclosure: I am as much a specialty advertising enthusiast as any millenial digital enthusiast out there. The difference is that enthusiasm backed by more than a 100 years success supported by a vast amount of data vs. amazing new technology that is fun to play with – is not much competition!
Will this change? I feel it will. Things like VR (virtual reality), games, QR and other technological advancements will continue to make digital devices more useful to everyone. How quickly will this happen? My guess is somewhere between the next 10 minutes and maybe a half dozen years! But with groceries and fast food being able to be ordered on a mobile device and picked up (or delivered) a short time later; medical diagnoses being made from locations across town or the country and other stunning new uses, mobile devices are here to stay. What is not so certain is their growing influence as a marketing and advertising channel.
That means that specialty advertising/promotional marketing has a solid place in the advertising industry, creates more awareness and is as influential as the best channels out there. You can be proud of being in a solid and important part of the the marketing community – don’t let your clients be dead fish!
Gregg Emmer is chief marketing officer and vice president at Kaeser & Blair, Inc. He has more than 40 years experience in marketing and the promotional specialty advertising industry. His outside consultancy provides marketing, public relations and business planning consulting to a wide range of other businesses and has been a useful knowledge base for K&B Dealers. Contact Gregg at gemmer@kaeser-blair.com.