David Wiesenfeld, VP, Insights and Innovation, The Nielsen Company; Kristin Bush, Consumer & Market Knowledge Senior Manager, Procter & Gamble; and Ronjan Sikdar, Senior Research Analyst, The Nielsen Company

SUMMARY: The emerging practice of listening online allows marketers to observe naturally-occurring conversations between consumers about products, brands and companies. It’s no surprise that a technique anchored in actual conversations captures context and emotion better than traditional methods. What is surprising is that listening can be essential to finding the real story. In such cases, it may be more correct to think of traditional “asking” methods as a complement to listening. The bottom line: both are required to develop an accurate, robust understanding of the marketplace.

Earlier this year, one of the most successful, well-respected packaged goods brands did a remarkable thing. It listened to its consumers. Tropicana—North America’s largest juice brand—rolled out new packaging for its flagship Pure Premium orange juice line. By all accounts, Tropicana did its homework before implementing this change. Using tried and true research techniques, it asked many consumers a host of questions about the new package design. The answers were analyzed, the design revised. More testing likely followed, and at last, the new package found its way to store shelves.

Then something surprising happened. Tropicana’s switchboard lit up, and its in-box filled with complaints from some of its most loyal consumers. They did not like the new design and they were not shy about expressing the intensity of their dislike. Similar comments about the new package were being posted and circulated on the Internet by other Tropicana loyalists.

Armed with quantitative data supporting the new label, Tropicana might have attributed the outcry to a few diehard extremists - and weathered the storm. But instead, they did something extraordinary: They reversed course and reinstated the old label design. The rationale for this decision is noteworthy:

“What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research.”

Neal Campbell, President, Tropicana North America

This statement has powerful implications for market research. It suggests that Tropicana believes “passion” is an important dimension of consumer opinion; that established research methods did not detect how intensely some consumers felt about the new label; and that only by listening to the spontaneous comments of consumers did Tropicana detect this intensity.

Tropicana is not alone in believing how intensely consumers feel about their views can be just as important as knowing how many consumers hold those views. Nor are they alone when they tacitly suggest surveys and other commonly used research methods may not capture the emotions or depth required to truly understand consumers. A growing number of companies are learning more about their consumers by tuning in to unprompted consumer expression—a practice referred to as “listening.”

Back to the future
The basic notion of “listening” is not new. In fact, when the first professional market researchers sat in consumers’ living rooms and talked with them about their lives and their needs, they were engaging in “listening” as much as they were asking questions. These pioneers were literally the eyes and ears of their organizations. They brought consumers to life in ways that inspired a host of innovations—improving consumers’ lives and their companies’ fortunes in the process.

Market research evolved to become a valued source of information and decision support, even as the connection between researchers and consumers became more distant. In an ironic twist, the social media revolution and 21st century technology afford modern-day practitioners the opportunity to routinely engage in “old school” hands-on research—or at least a form of it—by listening to consumers online.

This emerging capability inspired some industry leaders to take a hard look at how market researchers typically engage consumers. They observed that marketers generally interact with consumers on their terms—

they ask the questions they want to ask, the way they want to ask them, when they want to ask them. This “intrusive” approach is out-of-step with the lives of increasingly time-starved consumers and is not conducive to developing a thorough, accurate understanding of their opinions and needs. They questioned if market research had become so removed from the consumers it sought to understand that it no longer served its fundamental purpose of representing their needs within marketing organizations.

These concerns were famously summed up last fall by Kim Dedeker, then VP of Consumer Market Knowledge at Procter & Gamble, in a simple, provocative statement:

“Without transforming our capabilities into approaches that are more in touch with the lifestyles of the consumers we seek to understand, the consumer research industry as we know it today will be on life support by 2012.”

The promise of listening
Mining online conversations for consumer insights is a seductive proposition. Every day, millions of consumers talk about all aspects of their lives online. This trove of naturally-occurring consumer expression offers the richness of qualitative research, the sample sizes of quantitative studies, and the opportunity to understand consumers on their terms—not ours. By tuning-in to relevant conversations, more can be learned about

consumer attitudes and needs than through traditional “asking” methods alone.

But what’s compelling about “listening” can also be concerning. Valid questions have been raised about listening:

• Do mining online conversations yield the same learning as traditional survey techniques?
• In what ways does the learning differ? Why?
• Can “listening” and traditional methods complement each other, and if so, how?

The Nielsen Company and Procter & Gamble collaborated on a project designed to address these questions by researching six frequently-occurring types of questions using both a traditional survey approach and a listening-based approach. The results from each approach were contrasted to induce a beginning framework for why results differ, and to develop initial guidelines for when and how to utilize the respective methods.

Unexpected findings
The results were surprising and important. While findings from “listening” and “asking” were largely consistent, they were not the same. The two main takeaways were:

1. In every case, “listening” enhanced the story in important ways. In some cases, listening was essential to finding the story;
2. Surveys are still required to determine “how many” consumers held a particular view.

Following are highlights from some of the cases investigated.

Snuggies™—six million purchases and one question: Why?
The Snuggies phenomenon is a great example of the value of listening. Basically, a blanket with sleeves, Snuggies became a fashion sensation, selling more than six million units, and generating online conversation levels equivalent to that of hit TV shows. It seems the critical question is: Why? Knowing why Snuggies became a runaway hit would help brand managers perpetuate Snuggies’ success and apply the winning formula to future new products.

To answer the question, the first area analyzed was the trend of online conversation about Snuggies. The availability of trend data is a useful aspect of online conversation (see chart below).  By overlaying key events with Snuggies’ electronic fossil record, it was apparent that Snuggies’ origins were in its ad campaign, but its evolution was shaped and accelerated by external forces, including YouTube ‘tribute’ videos that went viral, which in turn led to pick-up by mainstream media outlets, including the Today Show, CNN, and Time magazine.

We leveraged the initial scan of online conversation to develop survey attributes that used actual consumer language to describe aspects of the Snuggies product, commercial, and cultural appeal. The survey was then executed and the “listening” analysis was completed.

The results were fascinating, and clearly demonstrate the power of listening to generate marketplace insight. The survey tells the story of a functional product supported by memorable advertising that clearly communicated product benefits (see left side of chart below). That’s a true story. Trouble is, it’s not the main story.

After some digging, a New York Times article was uncovered with the following quote from Scott Boilen, CEO of AllStar Marketing, the maker of Snuggies: “We were definitely in on the joke. Do we expect a family to wear these to a football game? No.” This reference to one of the iconic images of the Snuggies ad indicates a deliberate attempt to go ‘over the top’ to break through. Like the survey, listening detects evidence of a functional product backed by effective advertising (see right side of chart above). But the main story garnered from listening is different.

Listening portrays Snuggies as a product that transcended its functional value to become something of a pop culture icon. Even consumer comments centered on the utility of the product or elements of the commercial often contained tongue-in-cheek remarks. The “pop culture” story simply did not come through in the survey—either in attribute ratings or open-ended responses.

The acid test of good research is how well it guides actions that improve marketplace performance. If the Snuggies brand team used the survey learning and nothing else, they probably would have been invested more behind the commercial. It was noticed and it communicated Snuggie’s functional benefits. If the brand team broke with typical industry practices and conducted a listening analysis instead of a survey, they would have taken a different path. Sure, the commercial campaign would have rightly continued, but more events like the pub crawls, celebrity sightings, and video parodies would have also been encouraged to reinforce the magic mix of quirky, cool, and functional—the secret to Snuggies’ success.

Getting to the bottom of cloth diaper usage
Cloth diapers are a small component of the $7 billion U.S. diaper market. Recent reports point to renewed interest in cloth diapering, so Nielsen and P&G wanted to understand more about why some parents choose cloth-diapering. In this case, learning from surveys and listening complemented each other to produce an accurate, comprehensive understanding of the benefits of cloth-diapering.

The survey told a simple, clear story. Cloth diaper consumers want an environmentally-friendly product that is also cost-effective, in that order. The cloth-diaper listening exercise added important depth to the survey findings. Listening research connected cloth-diapering to underlying parenting beliefs, by highlighting the tendency for “natural parenting” practices like home-birthing, home-schooling, and the use of organic foods to occur disproportionately in cloth-diaper conversation. By placing cloth-diapering in context, “listening” offered a more complete and powerful view of this practice.

On the other hand, the listening exercise could not confidently determine how many consumers chose cloth-diapering for environmental reasons versus cost reasons via “listening” alone. In this case, “asking” and “listening” were each essential to telling the full story behind cloth diapering.

Saving face
Like the cloth diaper example, another case in which asking and listening worked together to tell the story is with Gillette Fusion—the first five-blade razor that promised Gillette’s closest shave ever. Brisk Year One sales confirmed Fusion a winner. So it was a mystery when sales of Fusion refill cartridges started to soften in Year Two.

Survey research determined that consumers had come to believe that other razors were just as good as Fusion and that Fusion was too expensive. In other words, Fusion was a parity product with a premium price. Bad news.

Listening indicated the situation was not quite so simple—or so dire. In conversations comparing Fusion to competitors, most consumers credited Fusion with providing a slightly better shave, just not enough to justify the price difference. Fusion was a superior product, but it was priced too high. Better news.

The survey clearly identified performance and pricing as the two areas that required attention. However, it did not articulate the connection between performance and pricing, nor did it fully dimensionalize either issue.

Nielsen’s parallel studies revealed other instances in which surveys did not surface important connections and nuances. It seems that surveys necessarily deconstruct experiences like watching a commercial or using a product into discrete, measurable bits. Listening, on the other hand, preserves linkages between ideas and captures important subtleties to tell a holistic, textured story. In the case of Fusion, that was critical. Fusion did not need a major overhaul—it needed to remind consumers that it provides a superior shave and it needed to align its pricing with that level of superiority.

The whole story
While surveys and other forms of “asking” research remain essential to understanding questions related to magnitude—questions such as “how many” and “how often.”  However, our parallel studies clearly show that listening is essential to telling the whole story.  Our work further demonstrates that sometimes listening is essential to telling the right story. Listening is spontaneous and open. It captures passion and intensity—dimensions that may be as important as “size,” but are often

overlooked. Listening is holistic and contextual. It can articulate the linkages between different ideas, identify lifestyle connection points and capture important nuances in consumer beliefs.

Adding listening to the mix is like going from an X-ray to a CAT scan. The CAT scan provides a richer, more complete view than the X-ray. And sometimes it reveals something important that could not be detected by the X-ray alone.

Getting started
Adopting new methods and protocols can be daunting on many levels. There are, however, a number of easy, effective ways to gain experience with listening, and to begin reaping the benefits.  Here are five of our favorites:

• Organize a “Listening Lunch” for your brand team. Reserve a conference room with Internet access, order some pizza, and take your team on a virtual “consumer safari”. What are consumers saying about your brand, your advertising, or the latest market trend right now? This is an exercise that is sure to inform, inspire, and instill a connection between the day-to-day decisions of the team and the lives of consumers. Nielsen can help you plan and conduct these sessions.
• Use listening to ask better questions. Prior to executing your next survey or focus group, log onto a social media site, such as Facebook or Twitter, and do a search on your brand or category. What are the hot issues? What is the language consumers use to describe their needs or product features? This is an easy way to inform “asking” content and language, and the benefits can be significant.
• Use listening to provide better answers. The next time you need to clarify or expand on survey results, use a search engine to identify leading blogs or user groups related to your brand, category or target consumer. More often than not, you will identify some relevant posts and threads that may help dimensionalize your survey results.
• Request a summary of recent customer relations activity. A frequently overlooked high-value listening post embedded in many companies is the customer relations organization. Reviewing recent call transcripts and consumer e-mails on your brand can prompt new insights and generate new ideas.  Better yet, sit down and have a conversation with some of these folks. Nobody engages more frequently and more directly with your brand’s consumers than they do. They are worth getting to know.
• Conduct a listening audit to establish a baseline. What are consumers saying about your brand? Where are they saying it? How has this changed over time? How does your brand compare to competitors in terms of the volume and content of conversation? Such audits are surprisingly affordable, and are best conducted with a vendor that has expertise in this domain, such as Nielsen Online-BuzzMetrics.

Tropicana and Tropicana Pure Premium are registered trademarks of Tropicana Products, Inc.  Snuggie is a trademark of ASM.  Gillette and Fusion are registered trademarks of The Gillette Company. BuzzMetrics is a registered trademark of BuzzMetrics, Inc. ]]> http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/featured-insights/listen-up-online-yields-new-research-pathway/feed/ 0 http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/breaking-teen-myths/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/breaking-teen-myths/#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:23:39 +0000 Nielsen Wire http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=14825

Nic Covey, Director of Insights, The Nielsen Company

SUMMARY: It’s easy to get caught up in the hype around teenagers. The notion that teens are too busy texting and Twittering to be engaged with traditional media is exciting, but false. To develop the best strategy around teens and media, start by challenging popular assumptions about teens. Don’t focus on the outliers, but on the macro-level trends of media and preferences for the segment. The averages will show you that teens can often be reached by the same means as their parents.

In the recent report, How Teens Use Media, Nielsen debunks many of the myths around teen media consumption. This article excerpts some of the most important findings of that study:

Myth: Teens are abandoning TV for new media

Reality: Television still accounts for most of a teen’s media clock
In fact, they’ve been watching more TV than ever—up 6% over the past five years in the U.S. Nielsen’s A2M2 Three Screen Report showed that the typical teen television viewer watched 104:24 (hh:mm) of television per month in the first quarter of 2009. While less than the average for all television viewers (153:27), it tops teen Internet

use over the course of a month considerably (11:32).

Compared to teens in other markets where TV viewing is measured electronically by Nielsen, U.S. teens actually watch less television per day than most. In South Africa, teens averaged more than five hours per day of TV viewing. In Taiwan, teens averaged just 2 hours and 47 minutes.

Online video is becoming an important part of the overall teen viewing experience. Twelve million U.S. teens—about two-thirds of those online—watched online video in May 2009.  Year-over-year, the audience grew 10% and the average number of minutes increased a stunning 79% to 3 hours and 6 minutes per month among viewers. Torrid growth, yes, but surprisingly, the average teen still lags behind viewing of adults 18-24, adults 25-32 and adults 35-44.

As mobile network speeds and device capabilities improve, more teens are looking to their phones for video as well. In the first quarter of 2009, 18% of U.S. teens 13–17 with mobile phones watched some form of video content on their phone. The experience has been much more popular with teen males, who make up 73% of the teen mobile audience. Teens who watch mobile video do so much more than the average mobile video user—watching 6 hours and 30 minutes a month compared to just 3 hours and 37 minutes.

Myth: Teens are the biggest users of the Internet

Reality: With fewer hours at a connected desk, teens actually use the Internet less than most
Many consider teens of today to be the Internet generation: Born roughly between 1990 and 1996, today’s teens grew up with a mouse in their hands. They are portrayed as Digital Natives, perpetually connected, guided by both the opportunities and constraints of worldwide connectivity. Indeed, some 90% of U.S. teens have access to the Internet at home, and 73% have access on a school PC. Among teens with Internet access at home, 55% say they have a wireless connection at home.

Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online—far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes. As with other media, the gap between teen and adult time spent is less an indication of interest and more a function of access. Unlike adults, many of whom spend hours of the work day with a broadband Internet connection, much of a teen’s waking moments are spent in the classroom, at extracurricular activities, at a part-time job and moving about an otherwise hyper-social high school ecosystem.

Across the markets, teen Internet use mirrors the Internet use of adults in many ways. The most popular online categories for teens—general interest portals and search—are the same as for their elders. Member

communities (social networks and blogs) do have a unique place within the teen experience, though. In the U.S., nearly half of online teens 12–17 visited MySpace and Facebook in May 2009 (45% and 44%, respectively). Reach of these sites among teens is still slightly higher than among all U.S. Internet users, though the demographics of social networking are expanding (41% of U.S. Internet users visited Facebook and 33% visited MySpace in May 2009). Teens make slightly more prolific online publishers, too. Two-thirds (67%) of teen social networkers say they update their page at least once a week, compared to just half (53%) of all social networkers.

Myth: The only way to reach Teens over the phone is through texting

Reality: Teens are early adopters of ALL mobile media
Teens do text at phenomenal rates, but that’s not all they do on their phones. Increasingly, the mobile phone plays a critical role in the media lives of teens. In the U.S., 77% of teens have their own mobile phone and another 11% say they regularly borrow one.

Of all the mobile behaviors of teens, texting is most talked about. Fingers flying and phone cameras flashing, 83% of U.S. mobile teens use text-messaging and 56% use MMS/picture messaging. The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of 2,899 text-messages per month compared to 191 calls. The average number of texts has gone up 566% in just two years, far surpassing the average number of calls, which has stayed nearly steady.

Still, texting isn’t the only means of communicating with teens over the mobile phone. Teens are avid users of a wide variety of advanced mobile data features. More than one-third of teens download ringtones, instant message or use the mobile Web, while about one-quarter of U.S. teens download games and applications. To a lesser extent, teens are using video messaging (26%), watching mobile video (18%) and using location-based services on their phone (16%).

Myth: All gamers are teens and all teens do is game

Reality: Teens account for just 23% of the console audience and less than 10% of PC gaming minutes
When we think of teen media use, gaming is often one of the first activities that come to mind. Over the course of the past 20 years, though, the gaming audience has broadened. New devices and games have extended gaming beyond boys to girls, young adults, and with the introduction of Nintendo’s Wii, people on the younger and older sides of the demographic spectrum. In the fourth quarter of 2008, teens 12–17 made up 23% of the U.S. console gaming audience, over indexing for their overall audience composition, but still leaving three-quarters of console minutes for older and younger gamers. On the PC, teens account for fewer than 10% of all game minutes played in a typical month—a medium that has done a better job attracting females ages 25–54.

Though teens don’t make up the entirety of the video gaming audience, the medium does reach most of them in some way. Today, 83% of U.S. teens have at least one console in their home. Seventy-five percent of males 12–17 and 57% of females 12–17 used a console at least once during the fourth quarter of 2008 (compared to 36% of the total population, two and older). The typical teen averaged 25 minutes of console use per day last year—considerably less than they spent on TV, but comparable to their time spent online. The average time spent is significantly higher for teen boys (41 minutes) than teen girls (8 minutes).

The games they choose to play may surprise some, who think teens spend all of their time on shooter games. Of the top five most anticipated video games among teens since 2005, just two were rated “Mature” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), two were rated “Teen” and one was rated “Everyone”. The most anticipated video game among gamers 13–17 since 2005 has been Halo 3, a first-person shooter game rated “Mature” by the ESRB. At its peak, 61% of active gamers said they had a definite interest in Halo 3. The other Mature-rated game in the top five was Grand Theft Auto IV, which—with a 37% “definite interest” among teens—tied Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (rated Teen) for the second most anticipated video game. Mario Party 7 (33%) and Guitar Hero: World Tour (32%) round out the list of the five most anticipated games. Play-along music and fantasy driving games, it turns out, are as relevant to the teen gaming experience as some more violent or mature ones.

In a word, teens are more “normal” than most think
It’s true: the media universe is expanding for teens. Social networks are playing an increasingly important role and many teens are accessing the Web over their phones. Teens are time-shifting video with DVRs and place-shifting on their video MP3 players. Yet teens are not unique in this media revolution. The media experience has evolved, and cross-platform engagement will be critical to reaching all consumers, not just teens. Media innovations have impacted everyone’s experience—not just the High School Musical set.

As the Nielsen report, How Teens Use Media, argues more fully, it isn’t necessary to reconfigure the playbook to reach this highly-buzzed about audience. Discard the assumption that, as a rule, teens are “alien” and plan for them as you would any demographic segment—with careful attention and calculus, not panic. Keep your eye on the averages, keep your head on your shoulders and before you rewire the system, remind yourself: Teens are people, too.

For additional insights on teen media use, including further detail on these categories plus theatrical activity, DVR and DVD use, newspaper readership, music consumption and advertising engagement, download a free copy of Nielsen’s full report, How Teens Use Media.

Julie Enzweiler,  Automotive Research Director, The Nielsen Company

SUMMARY: In economic terms, the auto industry was hit by the perfect storm: high gas prices, tight consumer financing, plant closings, brand reductions, dealership pruning, employee layoffs, longer vehicle retention, surplus inventory, manufacturer bankruptcies and waning consumer confidence. Despite a 37% decrease in total auto sales over 2008, bright spots persisted: the redesigned Forester revved up Subaru sales while price leaders Hyundai and Kia gained traction from new models. Online media has changed the rules of the road for auto marketing by placing consumer generated media squarely in the driver’s seat.

Unprecedented. Unbelievable. Unfathomable. The state of the auto nation is shaky at the moment, but all is not lost. Offsetting the unrelentingly negative news are 2009 highlights like a 69% spike in Sorento model sales, a 48% increase in Sedona sales, and the successful launch of the economically-priced Hyundai Genesis and Kia Soul, both targeting younger drivers.

Conversely, luxury vehicles that attract middle-aged consumers managed to outpace the market, although the category experienced a long tail effect, a two to three month delay from shopping to closing the sale. Only one domestic car manufacturer—Lincoln—outperformed the market, even though sales remained in negative territory on a year-to-year basis.

Fueling sales

The Nielsen online panel, comprising 250,000 individuals representing the U.S. online population, detected another hopeful sign for new vehicle sales based on Internet new vehicle shopping patterns. While online new car shopping downshifted by 9%, this represented a mere fraction of the precipitous 37% sales decline, suggesting the existence of pent-up demand. Consumers sought out roadworthy vehicles like the new Ford Fusion, proven gas sippers like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic, or buttoned up their wallets and opted to maintain their current car or buy used.

Foreign automakers benefited disproportionately from escalating gas prices because of the consumer perception that their vehicles—especially hybrid and diesel models—are more fuel-efficient. German and Korean automakers realized the largest gains in online vehicle shopping activity, posting 1.7 and 2.2 percentage point share increases respectively, while their U.S. counterpart slid 5.5 percentage points. The Volkswagen Jetta and CC models, BMW 1- and 3-series and Mercedes-Benz E class were among the variants driving shopping inquiries.

Model behavior

Sport utility vehicles, with some 61 models available, continue to hold the “most shopped” position and rank number one in the U.S. for share of new vehicle shopping. Although activity waned with rising gas prices, consumers appeared to be hedging their bets, shopping longer in the hopes that gas costs would plummet and justify the purchase. And while the government is putting pressure on automakers to reduce these larger vehicles from their fleet, demand at the moment is not supporting this mandate.

The biggest disappointment among model types proved to be the basic economy vehicle, which peaked with a nearly 30% online shopping share in May 2008 when gas prices were at the highest (around $4.00/gallon), and dropped to half that a year later when gas prices declined to about $2.00/gallon.

Upper middle car models like the Fusion, Camry, Accord and Altima maneuvered into the second most shopped segment by April 2009, with hybrid variants moving the sales needle. Hybrids remain an exciting, but emerging segment, as consumers wrap their heads around the concept and take their time investigating the genre. Luxury entrants cruised along with steady sales, experiencing a boost from the Hyundai Genesis introduction. Luxury models attract aspirational buyers who savor the shopping experience and take their time to consider price before taking the plunge, elongating the buying cycle.

Trading places

Rankings of the Top 25 automakers based on online shopping activity wheeled in some interesting changes, with Kia jumping 11 slots from number 24 last April to number 13 in

April 2009. Volkswagen leapfrogged seven spots from number 15 to number eight courtesy of the CC—their most-searched vehicle on the Internet. The redesigned Forester sparked consumer interest as well and elevated Subaru to the number 22 slot, up from 27.

Saturn fell out of orbit, dropping 13 spots to number 23, followed by Buick’s 12 point decline, GMC’s six point downslide and Pontiac’s five point plunge. A heads-up to Volkswagen, the beneficiary of online buzz over the curvy CC: while initial online interest spikes rapidly, it can quickly taper off. The trick is to sustain interest over time and keep the vehicle top of mind with prospective buyers.

Setting your sites

The auto industry enjoys a relatively unusual electronic landscape, with a host of powerful, established third party shopping sites available to consumers like Yahoo! Autos, Kelleybluebook.com, AutoTrader.com and cars.com to name a few. Manufacturer or OEM web sites need to maintain a polished look and feel with robust content to stay in the game, offering complementary information and highly interactive features like build-a-car customization tools, 360° rotating car views, dealer information, engaging games that keep customers returning to the site, virtual experiences, testimonials and incentives.

While 86% of online shoppers rely on third party sites for price information, OEM sites are the preferred source for visualizing build-outs, researching special offers and obtaining financing information about tax incentives, special offers and government programs. The combined use of both third party and OEM sites actually enhances the consumer shopping experience, providing complementary rather than competing information.

Value of video

Kia Soul, one of the year’s most successful launches, earned kudos for an exciting web site that features techno pop music, robot animation, a personalized video from the chief designer about his “rhino with a backpack”  vision, a floating picture gallery, build-a-soul feature and “Escape from Hamsterdam” game, which leverages the primary advertising visual—hamsters. Of course, the under $14,000 price tag and 31 MPG green angle helped jump start things.

Video streaming is playing out across the computer screens of America, with 124% annual growth overall, and a turbocharged uptake rate of almost 200% for Ford videos. At last count, there were more than 80 million videos available on YouTube, and that video library is growing by some 200,000 clips per day. Nothing engages consumers like real-life clips from owners and test drivers sharing their experiences. In addition to posting videos on OEM sites, manufacturers can enhance both reach and impact by pushing out digital clips to social media outlets like YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, Facebook and others.

Ad impressions

Nielsen data show local magazines, national newspapers and local radio taking the biggest hit with shrinking ad budgets, accounting in large part for the precipitous 31% downtrend in total first quarter auto ad spending from 2008 to 2009. Online ad impressions ramped up during Q1 of 2009, stabilizing at approximately five billion impressions per month during the March to May period, with a correspondingly constant spend rate of $35 million per month.

Following a classic advertising paradigm, exposures may indeed be rekindling demand. Nielsen surveys suggest that “intent to buy” is rebounding from an all-time low in the Spring of 2009 to a more historic level as seen in summer’s past. It seems that consumers have been kicking the tires, but doing so via virtual showrooms.

Listen and learn

“Listening” is the new marketing. To succeed in a multi-media world, automakers will need to engage and interact with shoppers, delivering a complete experience from initial contact through post-purchase. In the process, they’ll need to leverage the power of search and social media, developing a cadre of independent reviewers and product evangelists willing to spread the word about their cars, without filters.

Search engines represent the first point of contact for many shoppers, and carmakers would do well to influence the tone of the conversation and their placement on the page one rotation. Deploy the power of Web 2.0 on OEM sites, incorporating quotes, surveys, reviews, testimonials, buyer videos, interactive games, audio and video feedback loops, special offers and incentives that hook the consumer and give them a reason to keep coming back.

Lisa Rider, Vice President, Retail Marketing, U.S., The Nielsen Company

SUMMARY: Conspicuous consumption is giving way to a conscious consumerism that favors thrift and fosters an appreciation for value-priced store brands. The winning store brand formula combines two key factors: better perceived value for the money and products that meet or exceed expectations. Nielsen shares five best practices that define a successful store brand strategy and introduces the six consumer segments that shop them.

Bad economic times are providing a good financial impetus to store brands. The Private Label Manufacturers Association in the U.S. determined that shoppers can slash their grocery bill up to 30% by purchasing store brands. During the year ending February 2009, Nielsen reports that store brands in the U.S. posted $84.4 billion in sales, a nearly 10% annual increase attributable in large part to consumables like dairy, packaged meats, frozen foods, deli, dry grocery and alcoholic beverages. During the same period, store brands outperformed the national brands reported 2.3% increase, and corresponding total store results of a 3.5% uptick.

Not only are store brands posting impressive value and volume sales gains, they are doing so in categories that were traditionally resistant to private label goods. These include hair and skin care, baby food, diapers and baby care products, household cleaning chemicals, cough and cold, oral care, antacids, whole bean coffee and tea, cooking sauces and glazes, breath fresheners, carbonated beverages and feminine hygiene products.

Global view
There’s plenty of room for the American store brand trend to turn into a juggernaut, since the domestic 17% store brand share trails the uptake in western European counterparts like Switzerland (46%), the UK (44%), Germany (32%), Spain (29%), Belgium (28%), Austria (27%), Canada and France (26%). Given the interdependency of the global economic markets, the appetite for store brands may well be increasing across affected regions.

Image issues
A U.S. 2008 Nielsen store brand survey, designed to replicate a 2005 study, determined that consumer perception of store brand quality continues to improve. Once viewed as upstart offerings that sacrificed quality for price, store brands have gone mainstream and achieved parity on quality criteria.

Almost two-thirds of study respondents in the U.S. rated store brand quality equal to national brands, and more than 70% felt store brands were a good alternative to national brands. Perhaps the best testament to store brand gains is the fact that more than 90% of U.S. households said they feel comfortable serving store brands to guests.

Six shopper segments
To better understand, reach and target the store brand consumer, Nielsen divided shoppers into six discrete segments based on attitudes toward store brands and shopping behavior by store brand tier. The six segments include:

• Downscale Value Committed—patronize downscale retailers, are committed to the value tier retailers because of good quality/value relationship
• Downscale Value Price Driven—shop downscale retailers because price drives their purchases, but have negative quality/value perceptions
• Mainstream Loyals—looking for mid-tier or national brand equivalents at mainstream retailers
• Upscale Premium—shop upscale retailers, buy premium store brands that command a big part of their budget
• Low-Spend Potentials—despite positive store brand perceptions, spending levels are low compared with other segments
• Low-Spend Rejecters—bad quality perception of store brands matched by minimal spending

The largest segment (Low-Spend Potentials) captured 27.5% of all-outlet UPC-coded dollars, while the smallest segment (Upscale Premium) drove just 13.2% of dollars. In general, downscale shoppers purchased store brands as a matter of necessity versus choice. The same holds true for mainstream households, which tended to be older, male, retired and focused on stretching their budgets.

Path to success
The analysis confirmed what many suspected: store brands are fast becoming a viable retail strategy and potential point of meaningful differentiation in the marketplace. There are two pathways for retailers to grow store brand sales: one is to follow the path of Aldi and Save A Lot who limit their selection to mostly store brands, the other is to embark on Best in Class practices to building a strong brand portfolio.

Setting aside hard discounters, there are already a handful of recognized retailers where UPC-coded store brand sales account for almost 30% of dollar sales.

Five proven practices
What does it take to enter the fray and create a powerful store brand? There are five best practices employed by store brand leaders:

• Manage your portfolio. Determine where the store brand opportunity lies—in the value or opening price point tier; national brand equivalent tier; or premium and specialty tier—by evaluating shopper demographics and purchase patterns. Tier preferences differ by income, channel and geography. Don’t de-list high-penetration, high-frequency or strong niche brands that might divert shoppers to retailers who do carry them.
• Manage your brand equity. Brand share is directly related to brand equity. To build one is to build both. Premium tier and national brand equivalent products do the best job of nurturing brand equity by meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
• Market your brands vigorously. The most successful store brands also enjoy the most prominent positions on store web sites along with highly visible ad blocks in store circulars, across in-store marketing vehicles and other media.
• Get the pricing gap right. Avoid arbitrary rules like “all store brands will be offered at x% below national brands”. To do so leaves money on the table. Be aware that brand price elasticities vary by category and brand. Retailers should make sure that price gaps don’t get too large.
• Employ consumer packaged goods (CPG) best practices. Imitation is both the highest form of flattery and good business. Consider hiring classically-trained CPG marketers and follow their process, from leveraging consumer research to testing product concepts and packaging. Flank national brands with store offerings that fill gaps and respond to unmet consumer needs. Establish performance benchmarks and monitor the numbers.

Manufacturer’s respond
Manufacturers need to innovate in order to differentiate. Build a point of difference in the hearts and minds of consumers and look to low-marketed categories where the shift to store brands is typically the strongest. “Me-too” products will lose out. Some best practices include:

• Work with retailers to combine name brands and store brands in joint promotions and displays.
• Test offering unique items to retailers that only they carry aligned to their shopper.
• Understand the role of the category leader for each retailer and how important store brands are to that mix.
• Provide top quality analytics—an area where retailers are growing in sophistication.

Universal values
Getting a good value is a universal consumer value, with more than three-quarters of European shoppers in France, Italy, Great Britain, Span and Germany becoming increasingly sensitive to food prices. Nearly half or more of respondents to a Nielsen Consumer Confidence survey in Europe said they would switch to a cheaper grocery brand to save money.

In the big five European countries, shoppers stated they would actively look for promotions, purchase fewer indulgences such as alcohol, biscuits/cookies and chocolate, and gravitate toward store brand products where the delivered value was seen as equal to or exceeding the national brand. With the exception of booming China, more than 50% of Asian shoppers declared their food price sensitivity. This was particularly true for South Korean consumers who have been strongly affected by the global financial crisis.

Penny-pinching strategies proposed by Asians included buying just the essential products needed to stock the cupboard, saving soft drinks, chocolate and cookies as special occasion treats. Only one-third of Asian shoppers said they would switch to less expensive grocery brands, because they believe branded products are better for their family and represent a better value for the money.

Across geographies, channels and income brackets, the quality perception of store brands is a primary indicator of the consumer’s propensity to buy store brands. A store brand that delivers on its quality and value promise, fulfills the universal consumer financial need to save money as well as the universal consumer psychological need to nurture their family. Today’s store brands have started to deliver on both counts.

The Nielsen Company compared the network TV ratings for the 3rd and 4th rounds of golf tournaments played by Woods after the U.S. Open in 2007 with those same tournaments he missed in 2008 due to a season-ending knee injury. And the results are just what you might expect: Tiger’s absence almost singlehandedly sliced tour ratings in half.

VIEWERSHIP OF PGA TOURNAMENTS MISSED BY TIGER WOODS DUE TO INJURY IN 2008-09

The average household rating/share for the 2007-08 tournaments played by Tiger was 3.3/8. The same tournaments played without the injured Tiger in 2008-09 averaged 1.7/4. An estimated average of 4.6 million viewers tuned in to those tournaments played by Tiger, compared to 2.4 million the following year, a drop of almost 47%.

For the record, Tiger won last year’s Accenture Match Play Championship in front of an average 4.2 million TV viewers tuned to NBC.

The “Tiger Effect” extends beyond TV ratings; it has an impact on web traffic, as well. When Tiger amazed fans with his victory at the U.S. Open last June, it was also a victory for the PGA Tour’s Web site, which drew its highest audience of the year that month, with 1.6 million unique visitors. In fact, the average monthly PGA Tour Web traffic for April through June was 24 percent higher than in the following three months, after Tiger’s departure from the tour.

Source: The Nielsen Company 2009

Percent of Blog Buzz Volume for Best Actor and Actress Nominees within Nominee Discussion, January 1-February 15, 2009

Buzz volume spiked for this year’s best actor and best actress Oscar nominees on January 12^th following the 2009 telecast of the Golden Globes and again on January 22^nd as the nominations for the 81^st Academy Awards were announced.   The most notable spikes in online chatter were driven by Kate Winslet after winning two Golden Globes for her leading role in “Revolutionary Road” and supporting role in “The Reader” and Brad Pitt, as consumers discuss whether he will take home an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” after losing to Mickey Rourke at the Golden Globes.

Pre-Oscar Internet Buzz Trend for Best Actor and Best Actress Nominees, Among All Blogs

Other Online-related notes on the Oscars from Nielsen:

• Online interest in the Oscars is up significantly this year, with unique visitors to oscars.movies.yahoo.com growing 462 percent year-over-year, from 832,000 in January 2008 to 4.7 million in January 2009. The top page driving traffic was a blog post about Angelina Jolie’s unusual fashion choice to wear her dress backwards for the SAG Awards.
• Oscar.com also enjoyed double digit growth in January, from 471,000 unique visitors last year to 1.0 million in 2009.
• Collectively, the movie Web sites of the films nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress drew 450,000 unique visitors in January. Last year the Oscars were still under the cloud of the writers’ strike, which may account for increased interest this year.

This article was originally featured in New Media Age Magazine.

The downturn in the economy has effectively rebooted the growth of the internet in terms of the time people spend online and the number of sites they visit. Over the first nine months of the year, people weren’t spending more time online than they did in the corresponding nine months the previous year. The average year-on-year growth each month, in terms of average time online per person, was just 1%.

Between March and June 2008, people actually averaged less time online than they did in the same period in 2007. However, during the last quarter of 2008 they spent 22% more time online than in Q4 2007.

The degree to which people are increasingly turning to the internet as a financial first-aid kit is shown by the fact that the two fastest growing sectors in 2008 were Free Merchandise and Coupons/Rewards (see graph). The latter sector was visited by 9.8m Britons — more than one in every four people online, compared to around one in every seven people a year ago. The tenth-fastest growing online sector was Loans, which grew by 55%, again far outstripping the overall internet growth rate of 11%.

In the first half of 2008 people visited 8% fewer sites than they did a year before. Yet in the second half they visited 7% more sites. The plateauing of behaviour consequently meant growth could only be achieved at the expense of someone else. The economic environment, perversely, seems to have changed this. For example, consumers in the Coupons/Rewards sector now visit 2.3 sites on average, compared to 1.7 a year ago — a small increase but relatively significant (38%). The two most popular sites in the sector, Nectar.com and MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, shared a very small audience. In December 2007, only 5% of people who visited Nectar also visited MyVoucherCodes; in December 2008 this figure had almost quadrupled to 19%.

Opportunities for growth in the current economic climate can be discovered by looking at which age groups are exhibiting large changes. For example, the biggest increases to the Coupons/Reward sector were among 12-17-year-old girls (an 184% increase in their numbers), men aged 18-24 (166% increase) and 55-64-year-old women (155%). What this shows is the economic situation is affecting people’s activity online across the board and the opportunity is there for everyone online to profit, particularly if they promote the web’s money-saving capabilities.

By: Palak Patel, NeuroFocus

SUMMARY: Unless you understand how the brain really works—and why—you cannot be certain that the products and brands, marketing materials and messages, and all the other elements that make up the marketing mix are optimized for maximum impact. By monitoring actual brainwaves, marketers gain a picture window into the deep subconscious mind. Discover how PayPal used neuroscience to understand how its brand was really perceived by its customers and prospects.

Traditional means of measuring consumer attitudes and beliefs—surveys and focus groups—can only evoke articulated responses. That is, they can only report what consumers say they think, feel, and believe about a brand. But neuroscience has a surprise for marketers of every description: the way the brain is basically designed, and the way it really works, reveals that focus groups and surveys alone cannot discover the whole truth about consumer attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs.

The way we are neurologically wired can actually prevent us from accurately reporting what we really think, feel, and remember when we are asked. The real truth lies below and beyond where conventional consumer research methods can delve—it lives in the subconscious mind. You have to dive deeply to get to it. And neurological testing is the vessel to take you there.

It only takes 500 milliseconds
Only 500 milliseconds separate fundamental truth from flawed interpretation. Dr. Robert Knight, one of the world’s preeminent neuroscientists (and Chief Science Advisor to NeuroFocus) sums up the whole universe of marketing research in four words: “the brain makes behavior”.

At first glance, that may seem patently obvious. But on deeper reflection, it encompasses the absolute essence and fundamental fact about why neurological testing stands so far apart from traditional methods of consumer research. Unless you understand how the brain really works—and why—you cannot be certain that the products and brands, marketing materials and messages, sponsorships, product placement, packaging, price points, and all the other elements that make up the marketing mix are optimized for maximum impact. That is as true for online brands as it is for the most long-established legacy brands sold on store shelves.

By monitoring actual brainwaves, marketers gain a picture window into the deep subconscious mind. Why is that so vital? The answer is simple: because that is where brand identity and purchase decisions are formed.

Purity at its best—no bias
A half-second is the total time it takes for the brain to receive a stimulus and react to it. That is when the ‘data’ is neurologically pure; when it is still newborn in the subconscious mind. That is when it is free from cultural biases, differences in education and language, and the host of other factors that influence—corrupt, really—the responses that people make when they are asked questions about their reactions to stimuli. This first 500 milliseconds is the point when neurological testing captures data in its pure form.

Why is it that answers are essentially corrupted information? Because they are based upon another 500 milliseconds—representing the second half of the brain’s cognitive process after it receives a stimulus. During that ‘second half’, the brain develops and delivers physical responses—words and gestures—to express its reaction. The conscious mind takes over.

As a result, that second half of the cognitive process is when the data is subject to all sorts of influences. Everything from what language you speak to what your grandmother told you come into play at this stage.

Neuroscience reveals that when you are asked a question about how you think about something, or what you feel, or what you remember, in the course of formulating your answer your brain actually changes the original data it received. Since information gathered with other conventional forms of market research—such as surveys and focus groups—is collected at this stage, the answers are filtered through too many mental mechanisms to produce the level of pure, precise information that neurological testing does.

The seven dimensions of brand essence
NeuroFocus applied one of its patented tools to enable PayPal to gain that knowledge. The Brand Essence Framework (BEF) captures the subconscious resonance that brands have with consumers. To do so, the BEF studies seven different but complementary dimensions of a brand. Taken as a whole, these dimensions form the totality of how consumers perceive brands. The beauty and power of this tool is that individual dimensions can be neurologically isolated, measured, and evaluated, giving clients the flexibility to zero in on the aspects of their brands that are most critical to them.

The seven dimensions that comprise the Brand Essence Framework are:

• Form: attributes of the physical manifestation of the brand—product attributes, package attributes, aisle attributes, store attributes, location and category relationships
• Function: the unique and compelling functional attributes of the brand that provide a level of indispensability in our lives
• Feelings: the emotional archetype of the brand—the naturally-surfacing feelings that arise at the mere thought or mention of the brand
• Values: core values grounded in individual, social, global and moral precepts exemplified by the brand; brand connection points
• Benefits: the compelling benefits of interacting with the brand—financial, emotional, entertainment, education and self-worth-enhancing benefits
• Metaphors: the brand as a metaphor for a larger operating context—the brand becoming the tangible manifestation of life events, conditions, norms, aspirations, lessons and challenges
• Extensions: the natural logical extensions of the brand and its attributes to domains of interest not normally or logically covered

PayPal looks for clarity
Looking to discover clarity about its brand, PayPal turned to NeuroFocus to take a good long look at how its brand was really being perceived by its customers and prospects. They selected three Brand Essence Framework dimensions (Functions, Feelings and Benefits) to study. BEF studies center around specific brand attributes within each dimension that are identified as key components of the brand’s identity.

For each of the three dimensions selected, three specific words or phrases were chosen as attributes representative of the PayPal brand. They were:

• Function: convenient, fast, secure
• Feelings: confident, hassle-free, in the know
• Benefits: new opportunity, on my side, empowering

In addition to the BEF, NeuroFocus also deployed an online survey, to gain articulated responses to compare with those from the neurological testing.

Brand Essence Framework study parameters
Subjects were tested based upon a specific screener protocol provided by PayPal, NeuroFocus recruited 21 consumers. They comprised a scientifically valid, neurologically ideal blend of 11 men and 10 women.

This group was further segmented into three subgroups: Regular and Light PayPal users, and Non-PayPal Shoppers. Within the Regular and Light segments, subjects fell into four sub-categories: those who sold ‘Less Than 10′ items per year; ‘More Than 5′; ‘Non-Sellers’; and ‘Undisclosed’.

Enlightening results
For the “Function” dimension, “Fast” ranked the highest among the three brand attributes tested, especially with “Regular” PayPal users. This degree of resonance indicates that this particular attribute becomes more important to consumers with increased PayPal use. Men had a stronger response than women. (The “Function” dimension typically has a higher neurological ranking with men than women.)

The online survey demonstrated the same overall degree of resonance for “Fast”.

For the “Feelings” dimension, “In the know” resonated best subconsciously overall. Among “Regular” users, both “Confident” and “In the know” ranked well, although “In the know” still led.

With men, “Hassle-free” ranked alongside “in the know”. Women exhibited a stronger subconscious response to “in the know” than men did. (The “Feelings” dimension evokes stronger levels of responses among women than it does with men.)

In the survey, “Confident” ranked highest.

For the “Benefits” dimension, “On my side” achieved the strongest subconscious resonance, particularly with “Regular” users. That attribute also ranked highest with women.

The survey results showed the opposite: “On my side” ranked as the lowest attribute among the three. This difference serves to underscore the scientific advantages that neurological testing offers companies seeking to discern what consumers truly perceive about their brands.

Optimized for maximum impact
NeuroFocus’ evaluation of the study resulted in specific PayPal implications and recommendations that not only increase brand awareness, but also deliver targeted messaging that truly resonates with their user base. These guidelines include:

• Leverage the inherent strengths of the “In the know” brand attribute by emphasizing how PayPal users are savvy Internet consumers who can benefit from their superior knowledge and abilities by using the service.
• Launch a special marketing effort targeted toward women, also based upon the “In the know” brand attribute platform. The research showed that women have a higher need for ‘transparency’, and that leveraging the “In the know” attribute would address and answer that need.
• Focus marketing messages on how PayPal empowers individuals, and has a core brand identity well aligned with companies that have carefully-cultivated relationships with their customers (such as Southwest Airlines, for example) that foster strong brand loyalty and repeat usage.
• Explore the potential for using social networks as a communications channel to reach the female audience. The BEF study shows that this group has more of an emotional attachment to the PayPal brand (stronger results in the “Feelings” and “Benefits” dimensions).
• For the male audience, focus on the practical advantages of using PayPal. They tend to see the brand as more of a ‘tool’ than a ‘friend’ (strong resonance in the “Functional” dimension).

Google searches accounted for more than 64% of all Web searches, with almost 5.2 billion queries.  Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings on CNET.com and Silicon.com, as well as in Mediaweek and Media Post.

Review September and October 2008 search results.

What’s driving the wild success of EA Sports’ star product? 

A marketing vision that combines a deep understanding of the game’s core fan base with an innovative, “three-screen” strategy that leverages TV, online, and mobile phone outlets for the game, Matt Foran of Nielsen Sports, writes in the November issue of Nielsen’s “Consumer Insight” online newsletter.

Thanks to websites like Xbox Live, “Madden” gamers can head online to play with friends and anonymous fans across the country — making the game a communal experience, Foran notes.

“Madden” is also one of the top ten mobile game downloads: 142,000 mobile users downloaded the game in July 2008, paying an average of $4.34 for the game, according to Nielsen’s latest Mobile Games Report. 

Not surprisingly, the mobile version of “Madden NFL 2008″ skews heavily male.  In Q2 2008, 78% of the game’s downloaders were male.  However, Foran notes, the game also skews more middle age than the overall mobile gaming population: 44% of “Madden NFL ‘08″ downloaders were between the ages of 45 and 64.  In comparison, just 21% of the overall mobile gaming audience falls within that age group.

And because video gamers are avid football fans (in 2008, NFL games have drawn 44% higher TV ratings among households with video game consoles than those without, according to Nielsen), EA Sports expanded the “Madden” franchise into TV. 

The company partnered with ESPN to create “Madden Nation,” a “Survivor”-esque reality show airing on ESPN2, Foran notes.  The show, which draws an average of 300,000 viewers each week, has come up with innovative ways to integrate cross promotions of NFL teams and sports apparel.

“Madden” has also found success with other ESPN programs, such as “Sunday Countdown” and “Monday Night Countdown,” Foran notes.  The programs regularly feature “EA Sports Virtual Playbook” segments, in which ESPN analysts diagram the plays using the “Madden” video game with super imposed graphics. 

The takeaway for marketers?

Follow the “Madden” marketing team’s lead: a strong presence across multiple media platforms and a commitment to authenticity are essential for reaching increasingly empowered 21st Century consumers.

Read the full article.

View the latest issue of “Consumer Insight.”