Tag Archives: marketing

Indiana moving away from “Illinoyed” campaign to attract businesses?

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Indiana continues campaigns to catch the attention of Illinois firms but it may soon take a different tone:

For three years, in an economic development strategy aimed squarely at jobs and revenue in higher-tax states, Indiana has been trying to poach Illinois businesses. While they say the tactic has succeeded wildly, officials in Illinois say the impact of cross-border moves largely has been a wash, more political theater than anything substantive…

Kelly Harrington Nicholl, head of marketing at the development corporation since 2009, is the woman behind Indiana’s most memorably catty catchphrases: “Illinoyed” and “Stillinoyed.” But after years of poking fun at its fiscally challenged neighbor, Indiana is about to soften its tone. “We’re not going to beat up on Chicago anymore,” Smith says.

This means that a cluster of billboards along I-90 cautioning northbound drivers that higher taxes lie ahead will come down soon, Nicholl says. “It’s time to play nice,” she says. She declines to say whether Illinois’ newly elected Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, has anything to do with it. “There is a sunset to everything.”…

Despite Indiana’s bravado, the number of state-to-state moves are increasing in both directions, according to an analysis of preliminary data by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. The data, supplied by New Jersey-based research firm Dun & Bradstreet, show 70 companies in Illinois relocated their entire business or branches of their business to Indiana in 2013, up from 40 in 2012. During the same period, 48 companies in Indiana moved all or portions of their businesses to Illinois, up from 39 in 2012.

The shift in political theater is noteworthy. Did everyone in Indiana get the political things they wanted? While the shift may be due to Rauner’s election, I wonder if it could also be due to (1) the Illinoyed campaign wearing out (marketing campaigns have a limited shelf life before people stop responding and (2) recognition that, according to the data, the campaign has been a wash (even popular lines can’t hold up forever if not supported by evidence). The competition between the states is likely not completely over but it is interesting to consider how Illinois and Indiana might cooperate to enhance the economies of both states…

National Association of Realtors wants an exemption for drones

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The National Association of Realtors is asking the FAA to allow the use of drones for selling real estate:

The trade group last month asked the Federal Aviation Administration for a regulatory exemption to the agency’s rule on the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes, saying the go-ahead would be a “game changer for the real estate industry” and a “creative and dynamic way” to present a property…

By the end of November, the FAA is expected to propose rules for the commercial use of drones that weigh less than 55 pounds.

For the real estate industry, an exemption could lead to widespread use of drones to market homes, the surrounding neighborhood and even the walk to school or drive to the closest grocery store…

“It’s great to offer an aerial view of a piece of property,” Rodriquez said. “Where it can really be used is on the home inspection side of things, inspecting roofs, before you send a live human up there. Do I think it’s going to be a game changer in the real estate industry? Possibly, but it all depends on how it’s marketed.”…

“For normal properties, normally sized properties, they are absolutely not necessary,” said Mario Greco, a real estate agent at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff Realty Group. “It’s hard enough to take a good picture of a condo, or a kitchen, with a professional camera.

This has some interesting potential, particularly with larger properties and places with backyards that are not easily seen from street views. It is often difficult to judge a backyard with typical photos. Still, the drone photos could hide certain features, like what you see from the back patio or deck, depending on the angle.

Yet, what would stop these drones from getting shots from other properties or photographing other things while in the air? I don’t want a whole mass of regulation for this but it is hard to limit drones once they are in the air.

The different demographics of viewers of America’s major sports

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Derek Thompson highlights the varied demographics of viewers of the major sports in the United States:

  • The NBA has the youngest audience, with 45 percent of its viewers under 35. It also has the highest share of black viewers, at 45 percent—three times higher than the NFL or NCAA basketball.
  • Major League Baseball shares the most male-heavy audience, at 70 percent, with the NBA.
  • The NHL audience is the richest of all professional sports. One-third of its viewers make more than $100k, compared to about 19 percent of the general population.
  • Nascar’s audience has the highest share of women (37 percent) and highest share of white people (94 percent).
  • The Professional Golfers Association has the oldest audience by multiple measures: smallest share of teenagers; smallest share of 20- and early 30-somethings; and highest share of 55+ (twice as high, in the oldest demo, as the NBA or Major League Soccer).
  • Major League Soccer has the highest share of Hispanics by far (34 percent; second is the NBA at 12 percent) and the lowest income of any major sports audience. Nearly 40 percent of its fans make less than $40k.
  • The NCAA demographics for football and basketball are practically identical but they are surprising old (about 40% over 55+) and surprisingly white (about 80%), which clearly has as much to do with who owns a TV rather than who follows the sports.

There are much smaller demographic differences – say across gender as all of these sports have primarily male viewers – and larger ones, particularly across race and ethnicity, income, and race.

I wonder if this could all be easily deduced by watching the commercials that play during the games. While the average fan may not be aware of these demographic splits, advertisers most certainly are and target the audience accordingly. Yet, I can’t say I quickly can name notable advertisement differences between the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL off the top of my head in the same way I quickly notice a difference in advertisements when turning on the network news at night (a very rare occurrence).

Chicago innovation #14: Consumer preference research

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A cousin of social science research, consumer preference research, got its start in Chicago:

It was 1928. Benton was working at Chicago’s Lord & Thomas advertising agency when owner Albert Lasker told him to land Colgate-Palmolive by impressing the outsized toiletry powerhouse with market research. Benton worked night and day for two months to record housewives’ preferences for the products of each company.

The firm used the pioneering survey in its initial Colgate-Palmolive campaign and landed the account before the survey was completed.

This drew criticism from an early sociologist:

Sociologist Gordon Hancock hated the idea. It was tantamount to cheating.

In a statement that must have brought grins to the faces of that up-and-coming generation of ad men, Hancock decried in 1926: “Excessive scientific advertising takes undue advantage of the public.”

This was, of course, the point.

This tension between marketing and sociology still exists today. The two areas use similar methods of collecting data such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, and ethnographies or participant observation. However, they have very different purposes: marketing is intended to sell products while sociologists are trying to uncover how social life works. The tension reminds me of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold that questions the marketing complex.

This comes in at #14 on a list of the top 20 innovations from Chicago; I highlighted the #5 innovation, balloon frame housing, in an earlier post.

 

Who wants to be in the “McMansion and minivans” category?

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Big data makes it possible to slice up Americans into all sorts of consumer categories like “McMansions and minivans.” However, how many would want to be in that category?

Acxiom provides “premium proprietary behavioral insights” that “number in the thousands and cover consumer interests ranging from brand and channel affinities to product usage and purchase timing.” In other words, Acxiom creates profiles, or digital dossiers, about millions of people, based on the 1,500 points of data about them it claims to have. These data might include your education level; how many children you have; the type of car you drive; your stock portfolio; your recent purchases; and your race, age, and education level. These data are combined across sources—for instance, magazine subscriber lists and public records of home ownership—to determine whether you fit into a number of predefined categories such as “McMansions and Minivans” or “adult with wealthy parent.” Acxiom is then able to sell these consumer profiles to its customers, who include twelve of the top fifteen credit card issuers, seven of the top ten retail banks, eight of the top ten telecom/media companies, and nine of the top ten property and casualty insurers.

Acxiom may be one of the largest data brokers, but it represents a dramatic shift in the way that personal information is handled online. The movement toward “Big Data,” which uses computational techniques to find social insights in very large groupings of data, is rapidly transforming industries from health care to electoral politics. Big Data has many well-known social uses, for example by the police and by managers aiming to increase productivity. But it also poses new challenges to privacy on an unprecedented level and scale. Big Data is made up of “little data,” and these little data may be deeply personal.

This is not new though the amount of data advertisers and others have – which is often given voluntarily on the Internet – may have increased in recent years. What might be more interesting, given that this is happening, is then to present Americans with the categories they are in and see how they react. Neither McManions or minivans have very good reputations. McMansions are seen as ugly houses owned by people who just want to make a splash, not own a quality house or participate in a close-knit community. Minivans signify suburban parent schlepping kids from place to place. Think the Toyota commercials from a few years back that tried to make owning a minivan cool. Put together these two functional objects that also serve as status markers and I suspect many people would not want to identify themselves as being in such an uncool group. Yet, there are plenty of people in such a group. Drive through any well-to-do suburb and both the homes and the parking lots (lots of Toyota and Honda minivans as well as a range of upscale SUVs – does this category include “McMansions and SUVs”?) reveal a certain lifestyle built around home, kids, school, and safety. It may be derided by outsiders and the people on the inside might not self-identify as such (and they might object to being lumped in a group – we Americans are individuals after all), but these are fairly popular choices to which marketers and businesses can then cater.

Natural gas bus commercial misses that riding the bus is already helping the environment

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This commercial from America’s Natural Gas Alliance highlights natural gas buses in Los Angeles. The message is that the natural gas buses are better for the environment. They may be – but it misses the point that individuals using mass transit are already helping the environment (let alone traffic congestion). So having a natural gas bus is a bonus. Perhaps we would all be better off if more people were willing to ride any kind of bus in the first place.

However, given that it is difficult to get wealthier people to ride buses, we should then ask when we might have cars powered by natural gas. If natural gas is cleaner to burn, why not reduce the emissions from cars rather than focusing on the limited number of Americans who regularly ride the bus?

(I realize the natural gas buses may just be a marketing ploy. However, it is really about helping the environment, not good PR or trying to sell more natural gas, why not use natural gas to power more things?)

Why are so many car commercials set in the Los Angeles area?

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I’ve noticed something about car commercials lately: many of them are shot in the Los Angeles area. Here are three common scenes:

1. Driving down a few blocks of downtown Los Angeles, possibly with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the background or in the parking garage that provides a nice overlook over the city. Even if you don’t know the concert hall by name, you may have seen this behind numerous cars:

WaltDisneyConcertHallJul12

It takes some work to block off urban streets but these few blocks of downtown get a lot of air time.

2. Driving on Highway 101 along the Pacific Coast. Think of scenes with cliffs on one side, the Pacific Ocean on the other, a sunny day, and a beautiful car driving down a narrow road over curves and with sweeping vistas.

3. Driving along Mulholland Drive with the city in the background or along a similar road in the hills north of downtown Los Angeles. One of the commercials on the air right now ends with a shot of the new car winding its way toward the Griffiths Observatory. The observatory is a nice place to explore and there are good views:

LAfromGriffithsObservatory

Overall, I suspect there is some good reason for all of this. Perhaps it to simply take advantage of all of the power and tools of Hollywood. Perhaps LA is great because of its varied landscape. Perhaps there are some tax breaks involved. However, there are plenty of other cities where this filming could take place and LA is far away from Detroit, the traditional center of American cars. At the same time, this might provide more reasons why that Super Bowl commercial about being “Imported from Detroit” received so much attention.

Just how many fake Twitter accounts are there? And why does it matter?

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Twitter and experts disagree on how many fake Twitter accounts there are:

In securities filings, Twitter says it believes fake accounts represent fewer than 5% of its 230 million active users. Independent researchers believe the number is higher.

Italian security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli say they found 20 million fake accounts for sale on Twitter this summer. That would amount to nearly 9% of Twitter’s monthly active users. The Italian researchers also found software for sale that allows spammers to create unlimited fake accounts. The researchers decoded robot-programming software to reveal how easy it is for spammers to control the convincing fakes…

Jason Ding, a researcher at Barracuda Labs who has studied fake Twitter followers for more than a year, also thinks Twitter underestimates the prevalence of fake accounts on the network. Mr. Ding says users don’t understand how active and realistic the fakes can appear.

Read on for more details how the battle between the black market and Twitter’s use of algorithms to discover fake accounts is going. Even if the average user can’t quite figure out who is a real or fake user, the consequences are real:

The fake accounts remain a cloud over Twitter Inc. in the wake of its successful initial public offering. “Twitter is where many people get news,” says Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. “If what is trending on Twitter is being faked by robots, people need to know that. This will and should undermine trust.”

According to this article and others, it appears that fake accounts are most commonly used for promotional purposes, whether for Washington politicians or entertainment stars. How harmful are these fake accounts which might be used to boost the number of followers or retweet material?

On the other hand, Turkle suggests these fake accounts could easily mask what is really happening on Twitter. Perhaps they are pushing certain Twitter trends, which then influences other users. Or, perhaps these fake Twitter accounts could push false news reports, which could have some different consequences depending on the situation. It could be worse if a large number of users find out they were interacting with or trying to engage with fake accounts.

While I agree with Turkle that this does present an important trust issue, I wonder if it would take some high profile case before this becomes a real issue. Imagine someone is able to use a set of fake accounts to pull off a terrorist act or throw off the government.

Both eHarmony.com and Match.com claim to be #1 sites for marriages. Who is right?

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After recently seeing ads from both eharmony.com and match.com claiming they are #1 in marriages, I decided to look into their claims. First, from match.com:

Research Study Overview & Objectives
In 2009 and 2010, Match.com engaged research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey to conduct three studies to provide insights into America’s dating behavior: a survey of recently married people (“Marriage Survey”), a survey of people who have used online dating (“Online Dating Survey”),
and a survey of single people and people in new committed relationships (“General Survey”).
Key Findings Marriage Survey
• 17% of couples married in the last 3 years, or 1 in 6, met each other on an online dating site. (Table 1)
• In the last year, more than twice as many marriages occurred between people who met on an online dating site than met in bars, at clubs and other social events combined. (Table 1)
• Approximately twice as many recently married couples met on Match.com than the site that ranked second. (Table 2)

The data is from 2009-2010. And from eHarmony.com:

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – June 3, 2013 – New research data released today, “Marital Satisfaction and Breakups Differ Across Online and Offline Meeting Venues” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows eHarmony ranks first in creating more online marriages than any other online site.* The study also ranks eHarmony first in its measures of marital satisfaction.* Data also shows eHarmony has the lowest rates of divorce and separation than couples who met through all other online and offline meeting places.

eHarmony Ranked #1 for Number of Marriages Created by an Online Dating Site

The largest number of marriages surveyed who met via online dating met on eHarmony (25.04%)

eHarmony Ranked #1 for Marital Satisfaction by an Online Dating Site

The happiest couples meeting through any means met on eHarmony (mean = 5.86)…

*John T. Cacioppo, Stephanie Cacioppo, Gian C. Gonzaga, Elizabeth L. Ogburn, and Tyler J. VanderWeele (2013) Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1222447110/-/DCSupplemental)

Just based on these brief descriptions from their own websites, here is which number I would trust more: eHarmony.com. Why?

1. More recent data. Data that is a few years old is eons old in Internet time. People on dating sites today likely want to know the marriage rates today.

2. More reliable place where the study is published as well as the more scientific method. It looks like match.com hired a firm to do a study for them while the eHarmony.com data comes from a respectable academic journal.

When two companies both claim to be number one, it is not necessarily the case that one is lying or that one has to be wrong. However, it does help to compare their data sources, see what their claims are based on, and then make a decision as to which number you are more likely to believe. .

Commercials that market smartphones as education devices shouldn’t fool many

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In the past few months, I’ve heard several commercials for smartphones that suggest kids can and will use them for educational purposes. When your child needs help on their homework, they can whip out their phone and find the answer.

Who do they think they are fooling? While parents want to hear about helping their kids succeed in school (this is an American constant over the decades), these commercials offer implausible possibilities. Kids could use their phone for homework or studying. But, I suspect the smartphone is used for two other tasks that will far outweigh educational purposes: social interaction (texting, chatting, Facebook, etc.) and media consumption (music, YouTube, TV and movies, etc.). The real education provided here might be in how to be a media-saturated, 21st century American kid.

This may be effective marketing but it also hints at another issue: the idea that new technological devices automatically lead to more learning. Where is the evidence for this? We can argue that kids needs to keep up with technology to understand and use it for their good like applying for jobs. We can argue the new technology engages kids. We can argue the technology can open up new opportunities like forming and maintaining beneficial relationships or learning how to code. But, suggesting it actually leads to more learning is a more difficult case to make.

My conclusion: such commercials play off the interests of parents who would say they want to help their kids succeed without marshalling much evidence that the new smartphone will help kids learn.