This document summarizes key findings from a study on consumer perceptions of brands and marketing. Some of the main findings include:
- Consumers find paid media to be essential for telling a brand's story, but prefer brands promote differently through things like sponsorships which feel less intrusive.
- Emotionally connecting with consumers through more genuine humanized messaging sells best. Aggressive or frequent advertising can feel like being "terrorized".
- Transparency about mistakes and portraying genuine rather than just positive aspects builds trust. Consumers want to feel like partners, not just targets, of brands.
- Social media allows for more sustained dialogue but consumers still don't always feel in control of or passionate about brands
8. “When you have a story and you begin
telling it, in order for the story to take
shape, paid media is essential”
Marketing Director
Sketching the storyline
9.
10. 66%
a brand is like an interesting
person at a party
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Catch my eye
11. 79%promoting a brand differently, through a different product,
for example a concert sponsorship would be less intrusive
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Show me something
different
12.
13. [The brand]...I feel like it goes under
my skin if it gives up the cold, rigid
talk, it’s just like a professor that gets
off the desk and sits next to the pupil
Consumer
Emotion sells best
14. Consumers
say not so much,
28%
agree
Online banners/ commercials are
intrusive for consumers?
Marketers
52%
agree
17. 64%some brands advertise so loud and
frequently it feels like I am “terrorized”
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Aggressive exposure
= shouting
18.
19.
20. People are making an effort looking for
information about you
The last thing you want is to make them
feel fooled
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Don’t bend the truth
21. 64%Brands present on their websites only the
positive aspects
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Be genuine
22.
23. 69%
They will stay with you
56%
77%
READ INFORMATION REGARDING THE
BRAND ON THE WEBSITE
READ INFORMATION REGARDING THE
BRAND ON THE FACEBOOK PAGE/ WALL
LOOKED FOR INFORMATION,
COMMERCIALS REGARDING THE BRAND
24. 47%Participated in a brand contest
online
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
They get responsive, only
when a challenge is given
26%leave comments on discussions
about brands/adverts
25. 74%“if a brand makes a mistake I expect to hear it
from the brand itself”
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Transparency = trust
27. “It doesn’t matter that [telecom brand]
is displaying all sort of offers, if when
trying to talk to the brand, replying
is someone who does not know how
to handle the conversation. On
twitter, they reply randomly [...] the
person behind the brand is the brand
itself, so beware who you hire”
Sustain the dialogue
28.
29.
30.
31. 56%social media makes brands to behave more
responsible
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Its best deployment is surely
social media
32. 42%do not feel they control the brands via
comments/posts in social media
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Still…
33. 63%did not become passionate about a brand
in the last years
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
Friendship needs to be
earned
34. 77%When I am passionate about a brand I look for
information and ads related to the brand
SOURCE: CONSUMERS
But it pays off…
35. Do consumers perceive the
brands as friends?
passion brand regular brand
a friend/ close
friend 74% 37%
36. HOW CONSUMERS VIEW BRAND
PASSION
BRAND
REGULAR
BRAND
NET: A friend/very close friend 82% 41%
HOW CONSUMERS BELIEVE BRAND BEHAVES
Is close to people 38% 10%
Is consistent 42% 8%
Is genuine 49% 9%
Makes you feel good/better 54% 9%
Tries to do things better/improve 43% 11%
Is really interesting 56% 8%
Acts more like a person 35% 10%
Denotes Passion Brand is significantly higher than Regular Brand at 95% confidence level
37. 69%
75%
61%
67%
67%
If a brand makes a mistake I
expect to hear about it from them
If a brand behaves badly I will
make sure others know about it
If a brand behaves in a positive manner
I will make sure others know about it
38. pe [in digital] we can build more
complex stories cheaper [than on TV]
you can give more layers to the story...
“It happens rarely, but when it does, I
spread those online campaigns that
really engage me…”
Marketer
Consumer
Humans crave stories. We, as humans, always have and always will crave these stories because great storytelling captures our imaginations and takes us on emotional journeys. Journeys that are both happy and sad, funny but sometimes depressing, entertaining but sometimes damn right boring, memorable and often very personal.Great stories help shape our beliefs and opinions on everything and we then use these stories as ammunition to tell our own stories to others.Stories are literally the currency of conversation and humans crave this currency. Everyone and every life has a story to tell. Stories are literally what define us.Advertising at its best is about storytelling. Creating compelling commercial content which captures the attention of the consumer and changes the way they think, feel and act about a brand This compelling commercial content can take many different forms but our final goal is to make the consumer part of the story itself.The way we, brand and agency professionals, have delivered these branded stories has changed dramatically in the past several years. The ubiquitous nature of digital and social, the proliferation of screens, the new forms of media has expanded the ways in which brands can both tell and deliver their stories to our customers.
When we started telling our branded stories we were confined to traditional media outlets such as TV, print and outdoor billboards. One-way communication models. The consumer could only watch and listen to our stories and consume the message passively.With the introduction of the Internet in the 1990’s, consumers started to have more of a choice in how and when they consumed a brand story. We could even start to voice our opinion of a brand or product by writing and leaving our reviews at a multitude of different places within the digital ecosystem. The stories we were telling started to become more involving and engaging and the consumer could start to participate within the storyToday, through technological innovation and the rise of social, the storytelling landscape has changed forever. We have experienced a paradigm shift which has changed the rule book forever. The canvas upon which we used to create our stories has totally morphed into a multifaceted participatory model where the consumer sits front and centre. This real-time participatory Internet gives brands the opportunity to engage with their consumer audience in an ongoing conversation and enables brands to create their own fully fledged storytelling platforms in the form of branded web destinations, mobile applications and digital communities.BUT brands must remember within the development of these platforms the consumer has to be front and centre.Play VW case study
Given this new multidimensional (and potentially fractured) environment of paid, earned and owned media, marketers ,more than ever, need better insights into how to effectively shape and deliver the brand stories they depend on to engage with the end consumer. How do paid, earned and owned media impact storytelling and how companies convey their brand stories to their consumers?How should brands best leverage the art of storytelling to better connect with the consumer audience across paid, earned and owned media?How do paid, owned and earned media work separately and together to fulfill a consumers needs when learning about and interfacing with a brand?These were the increasingly critical questions that lead BBDO and Yahoo! to join forces to undertake a unique study to understand the art of storytelling in the paid, owned and earned landscape
It was important for us to field a comprehensive study and garner insights that would empower marketers and help them better tell their stories.Before doing we share the details of our project, it’s important that we crystallize the definition of paid, earned and owned mediaPaid media includes all of the different media channels where brands pay the channel owner for an opportunity to be in front of the consumer and grab their attention. This includes TV and radio (where brands pay for time slots to tell their story) and print, outdoor, online ads and sponsorships to name a few.Owned includes any brand experience that is wholly created, subsidized and owned by the brand itself. This includes everything from brand websites, Facebook and Twitter pages, storefronts to blogs and interactions with customer service. Earned media consists of any form of neutral media environment where brands “earn” the attention of the consumer. Usually, this takes place in social media-driven environments where consumers can openly and publicly interact directly with brands and branded content and brands have the opportunity to reciprocate.
Storytelling. It’s at the core of what we do as marketers. And it drives the commercial content that builds relationships between brands and consumers on a daily basis. The new consumer journey as defined by paid, earned and owned media has introduced new rules to how best to tell these stories so that they are integrated and accomplish their goals effectively. We were happy to provide you with insight into what these new rules are and how brands can leverage POE in much the same way we all build human relationships with those around us.
