The Super Bowl has pretty much become the only television show where viewers purposely and diligently pay attention to TV ads. They go out of their way to see them instead of doing their usual utmost to avoid them. They make their trips to the kitchen or bathroom during play action in the football game and even pause party-time conversation at the first sign of a commercial message. In fact, a recent poll conducted by polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, found 58% of respondents talk about the commercial with co-workers on the Monday after the game, while only 47% talk about the football game. Fifty-eight percent said they would rather miss some of the game than any of the commercials, a figure that topped 67% among women. Another survey by InsightExpress similarly found that while 54% of Americans planned to watch the game, 50% were watching specifically for the commercials and 58% said they pay closer attention to ads during the Super Bowl than those they see every day.

This kind of data along with the mammoth audience the Super Bowl draws would seem to indicate that paying the budget-busting price the network airing the game typically demands is worth the investment. But advertising experts who saw the commercials during Super Bowl XXXIX could easily challenge this contention and likely demonstrate disappointing ROI for most of the companies that plunked down $2.4 million for each :30 second spot.

According to a Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Greenfield Online survey of over 1000 Americans, a scant 4% of all Super Bowl viewers thought the commercials were absolutely terrific this year. Nearly half (48%) thought they were only OK and nearly a quarter said they were sub-par. Men and women felt pretty much the same about this year's spots, but there were some interesting differences among age groups.

Not surprisingly given the careful nostalgia of many of the spots (and, for that matter, of the whole Super Bowl production with Sir Paul McCartney crooning Beatles hits at halftime) and the declaration by many advertisers that they were appealing to the 55+ audience, a slightly higher percentage of viewers in this age group rated the commercials as above average, or 23% versus 18% of the total audience. Still, advertisers didn't exactly score big with this audience—49% said the commercials were only OK. What's more, they lost ground with 25-34-year-olds who gave the spots a below average grade much more frequently—30% said the spots were below average compared to 23% of the total audience. See results table below for more interesting findings.

No, there wasn't a farting horse or crotch-biting dog—both featured characters in Bud Light's advertising last year that came to symbolize the low brow humor and general indecency that characterized the broadcast of Super Bowl XXXVIII—but the 55 Super Bowl ads that aired this year weren't exactly a showcase of sophisticated, appealing, highly effective commercials either.

CareerBuilder.com put chimpanzees in suits and Bud Light employed a talking parrot in a bar. Degree antiperspirant's "Mama's Boy" spot had a plastic toy version of a grown man magnetically (and disturbingly) attached to his mother. A man gets pepper-sprayed and beaten when he is, troublingly, mistaken for a robber at a convenience store in a pitch for Ameriquest. Down-and-out wrapper MC Hammer came flying over a fence in exchange for a bag of Lay's potato chips and former Pip frontwoman Gladys Knight appeared out of nowhere during a rugby match for MBNA credit cards. Former Chicago Bears football players and an ex-Chicago Bull basketball player debate who best fits with the Diana Pearl countertop style. Pretty weird and random images that got us no closer to understanding what it was about the advertised brand that makes us want to buy it.

The standout for stupidity among this year's spots, however, has to be the spot for GoDaddy.com. An homage to the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, a satirical commentary on FCC censorship, and a plug for the business all in one, is probably how the agency presented it. For anyone who didn't see, hear or read about it, the spot featured a well-endowed young thing in a halter top that suggestively came undone as she testified in front of some sort of congressional committee. Sure, it likely inspired many men to log-on to GoDaddy.com to see what it was all about, only to find not porn or anything scintillating, but instead, as the buxom lass briefly mentioned in the spot, a place to inexpensively register websites. Great to get the website traffic, but is any company in its right mind going to associate its brand with or trust its URL to a company with a Hooter's waitress as a spokesperson? The answer is no, and that's not going to help GoDaddy's bottomline.

The audience may be large and overly attentive, but if a company doesn't take the rare and precious opportunity the Super Bowl offers to share a strong, compelling, and clear reason-to-buy-this-brand-and-not-another message, then it's wasting its money.

Copernicus and Greenfield Online Super Bowl Advertising Survey
*Percentages based on respondents who self-reported watching the Super Bowl and commercials

Results Table

"Making marketing more accountable is the battle cry across the marketing industry," proclaimed Forrester Research's Jim Nail. Indeed, a recent study among senior marketing executives found that 81% said accountability had increased in their marketing organizations over the past 24 months. Companies across industries and around the globe are investing huge amounts of time and money into metrics and ROI measurement systems.

Yet for all of the activity and spending in this area, the prevailing conventional wisdom is that it's not possible to get accurate ROI data and information for marketing programs. In the same survey referenced above, more than 80% of senior marketers indicated that they were, in fact, dissatisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI. Fewer than 20% of marketers in a CMO Council poll said their companies employed comprehensive and meaningful metrics.

Is there a gap between marketing effectiveness measures and actionable ROI data? Or is the conventional wisdom little more than a myth? We decided to pose these questions and more to marketing effectiveness measurement expert John Nardone. John is Executive Vice President, Product Development and Marketing, at MMA, the nation's premier consulting firm dedicated to helping companies plan, measure, validate, and optimize their marketing. MMA has some of the most advanced and widely-used approaches to teasing ROI insights out of sophisticated econometric analyses of large databases which capture marketing investment inputs (such as advertising expenditure) and macroeconomic inputs (such as gasoline prices or consumer confidence) and relate them back to sales, market share, and profitability. Here's what he had to say:

Copernicus Mzine: What do you say to folks who say that it's not possible to get an accurate measure of ROI?

Nardone: The conventional wisdom is wrong. It certainly is possible to get "good enough" measures of ROMI, if you have a reliable data history to draw upon. Over the last fifteen years MMA has successfully developed ROMI measures for hundreds of businesses…across numerous product categories. The important thing to remember is that these measures are meant to support a decision process. They do not substitute for marketers' judgment and experience, but rather provide a fact-based point of reference for evaluating and planning marketing investments.

Copernicus Mzine: Several recent surveys have showed that a majority of marketers are dissatisfied with their ability to measure ROI. Why do you think this is?

Nardone: There are a few reasons for that. First, developing ROMI scorecards has historically required a lot of work. In some cases, studies would take so long that the results were not always seen as timely or actionable. Second, it can be difficult to tease out the impacts of smaller or experimental programs, which are often of particular interest to marketers. Finally, marketers sometimes don't get the results they expect and blame the measurement approach. While these issues do get in the way for some marketers, many others have been able to get their processes and metrics aligned so that they can act upon their ROMI analysis. These marketers tend to be satisfied with their efforts.

Copernicus Mzine: In your experience, what are the components of a best practice marketing effectiveness measurement system? When evaluating different ROI metrics, what should marketers take into consideration?

Nardone: The most important components of a marketing measurement system are that the information is timely, forward-looking, and can quickly and easily be used to make decisions.

When evaluating ROMI metrics, it is important to consider both the long- and short-term impacts of marketing. Most often, ROMI measures only reflect the short-to-medium-term impact of marketing efforts. However, many marketing campaigns contribute to a positive long-term market impact as well, so appropriate interpretation should be applied when considering results. The converse can be true as well: some marketing tactics (such as discounting) can show strong immediate ROMI, but erode the brand over time.

Copernicus Mzine: What tips can you give marketers to ensure they are getting "actionable" ROI information?

Nardone: Actionable ROMI information comes from solid models, current data, good tools and a marketer who uses them appropriately. The first tip is to invest in your data. Treat it as a valuable asset and keep it current, because timely analyses are more likely to be acted upon. Second, strive for accuracy rather than precision in your measures. It is not necessarily important that a measure is empirically correct, but rather that the analysis guides you to the best decision. Finally, put your emphasis on anticipating future outcomes, and limit the amount of time and energy spent dissecting the past.

Copernicus Mzine: If you had the ear of every CEO in the world for five minutes, what would you say to them about measuring marketing effectiveness?

Nardone: I would tell CEOs that they must make better, more empirically based and accountable marketing decisions than they are making today or they will loose ground to their competitors. ROI measurement systems make marketing organizations more effective, and within three years, nearly every Fortune 500 company will be using one.

John Nardone can be reached at john.nardone@mma.com. He is currently working on the rollout of MMA's Avista, the first enterprise decision support service for marketers (Avista DSS). Avista DSS is powered by a continuously updated marketing database, MMA's marketing mix models, and state-of-the-art SAS analytic engines. It allows marketers to anticipate and test the impact of unlimited numbers marketing scenarios so they can make more informed decisions. For more on MMA and Avista, visit www.mma.com.

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Marketing ethics may, to some, sound like an oxymoron. With debate raging about food manufacturers advertising directly to children, drug manufacturers under fire for not disclosing serious health risks associated with a certain class of heavily-promoted prescription drugs in commercials, and the growing list of Americans adding their names to the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Registry which prevents (most) unsolicited telemarketers from contacting them, traditional media has taken the brunt of ethical criticisms. But consumer scrutiny is hardly limited to TV advertising and direct marketing, especially as marketers shift more dollars to non-traditional media.

Already raising the ire of many advocacy groups is the use of advergames—computer games which are fun, interactive advertisements for products—to market things like Oreo cookies, coco puffs, and Lifesavers candy to unsuspecting/unaware kids and "product operatives," men and women who strike up conversations with strangers in places like bars, talking up a product without necessarily explaining their affiliation with a company. There's selling naming rights to public landmarks and institutions and the "product placement" of the "No Child Left Behind" Act in conservative commentator Armstrong William's op-ed pieces and other media appearances. For those unfamiliar with this story, the U.S. Department of Education, in an arrangement coordinated by Ketchum Communications, confirmed it paid William's production company $240,000 not only for traditional advertising during his program, but also for his positive personal plugs for the school-standards law in his op-ed pieces and other media appearances, but none of the parties shared details of this arrangement with the reading, listening, and viewing public.

"In its desperate clamor to claim the attention of potential shoppers, the [advertising] industry invents a new intrusive ad mechanism almost every week, until citizens are driven nuts by all the billboards, product placements, junk faxes, pop-unders and all the rest of it," ranted Gary Ruskin, executive director of consumer protection organization Commercial Alert, in a recent Advertising Age editorial. A 2004 Yankelovich poll that reported 60% of Americans have a "much more negative" view of advertising lends further credence to Ruskin's complaint.

Now we're not trying to be marketing's thought-police or offer some dogmatic view of how marketers should or shouldn't behave. And we're sure that the impure premise of our profession, "to solve people's problems with products and services for [not the greater good, but] a profit,"* will always set some people off. However, we do want to make the same plea we've made before: Do not doom non-traditional media to traditional media's fate. No matter how novel the media channel, the more dubious and skeptical consumers become about marketing messages, the less responsive to our multi-million-dollar marketing efforts they will be.

Already organizations including the Public Relations Society of America and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WMMA) have put out guidelines for their respective practices. WMMA has also issued standards for practitioners to prevent deceptive practices. Of course, the rules are self-regulated by agencies and companies, so we can only hope as marketers get more experimental with alternative means of delivering marketing media they recognize that determining where the fine line between clever and stealthy, discrete and dishonest, lies is just as important as it ever was.

*Source: Procter & Gamble

For more insightful marketing discoveries, visit http://www.copernicusmarketing.com/discover/index.htm

Have a hot discovery for our next release? Contact us at info@copernicusmarketing.com

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We were fascinated by David Brook's Bobos in Paradise, a book that explained the emergence of what he called the bohemian bourgeois class, so excitedly picked up a copy of Trading Up to learn more about the brands, products, and services that appeal to bobos and why. Silverstein and Fiske describe the motivations for purchase decisions and include extensive examples of brands that have caught on to the "New Luxury" phenomenon and flourished. Reading the book has whetted our appetite for Silverstein's presentation at the upcoming AMA Strategic Marketing Conference in May.

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The 2005 AMA Strategic Marketing Conference, Six Sigma Marketing: Turning the Dream of Marketing Perfection into Reality, will feature the best ideas in the practice today. Leading authors, consultants, and practitioners including customer lifetime value measurement and experimental design expert Paul Berger; Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia, authors of The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets; Michael Silverstein, author of Berry-AMA Book Prize winner Trading Up; Ed Keller, author of The Influentials; James Lenskold, author of Marketing ROI: The Path to Campaign, Customer, and Corporate Profitability; Roland Rust, inventor of the Customer Equity Framework; and Copernicus' own Kevin Clancy.

The AMA conference will take place on May 9-11, 2005, at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago. Register early to reserve your spot at the conference today. Don't delay, the 2004 conference sold out quickly! For more information, visit: http://ecommerce.ama.org/strategic.htm

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