Mitchell Gooze

A recent Advertising Age article apparently raised a ruckus because it had the audacity to state that a vast majority of marketers set their budgets based on historical spending and gut instinct and not ROI. Is this really shocking? Not to me. While there is more pressure on Marketing to show accountability, it can still skate all too often.

Arguments abound about what ROI measure to use. The primary focus is currently on “brand value.” Problem is there are at least four different measures of brand valuation, and they disagree with each other significantly. This is a bogus focus anyway. Unless and until it is an accepted metric. What ROI measure should you use? Simple, what business outcome(s) is/are your company trying to produce? How can you support those outcomes by investing in Marketing in such a way as to produce a positive return? If brand value increase is a...

Gen X and Gen Y generally believe they can effectively multi-task. While this is provable false, it does not stop them from doing it anyway. The multi-screen, multi-tasking phenomenon is an example: Surfing the net, while listening to your playlist while watching a TV show is a simple example. Tweeting while watching a live theatre presentation was a topic of some recent articles, which included setting up a separate section for Twitter users to sit in.

Tweets during this year’s Grammys peaked at 10,901 Tweets/second according to Twitter. That is a lot of action while one is supposedly watching the show. However, Tweets came to a complete stop when Jennifer Hudson did her tribute to Whitney Houston. Apparently Ms. Hudson is good enough to get people’s attention. Of course, she was...

Two recently released studies, unless ignored, may put a dent in many marketers’ plans for an easy media solution. Turns out Facebook ‘likes’ don’t mean much. And Facebook may not be anymore helpful than mass media.

A study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute “…found slightly more than 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging with the brands.” Karen Nelson-Feld a researcher with the Institute said, “Facebook doesn’t really differ from mass media. It’s great to get decent reach, but to change the way people interact with a brand overnight is just unrealistic.”

In...

A recent article in the November 28, 2011 issue of Business Week, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” focused on the rise of private label sales in retail grocery during this downturn, and the increased focus these house brands are receiving from their companies. Private label or so-called house brands usually show a sales rise in a downturn. However, this time it may be different.

Major retailers, including Safeway and Kroger, are hiring product and brand managers to grow these product lines. The article notes that a 1% shift from national brand to house brand translates into $5.5B in increased revenue for the retailer.

The primary value to the consumer of the private brand has previously been adequate quality at a lower price point. “Adequate” being a relative term. More house brands are finding ways to offer “quality” at least equal to the national brand at a lower price point. (The title of the article says it all.) McKinsey notes that 75% of consumers who...