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The Last on Reese's
Name a quest that both Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Disney are on?
You Stuck Your Advertisement in My Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!
Rev'd Up Over Statistics
The View from Seoul

 

The Last on Reese's

rex.briggs | 10 October, 2006 05:09

Previously I raised questions about whether marketers focus enough on their internal media and marketing tools. Do they know the ROI and work to optimize their internal marketing tools? And, if you wanted to measure it, could you? We started with Hershey’s Kissables advertising within Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup packaging and brought into the fray McDonald’s, Disney and ESPN.

Let’s first tackle the question of whether or not marketers focus enough on their internal marketing tools. I don’t think most do and that seems to be the feedback that I’ve gotten on this thread from our well studied readers. There are exceptions. I know that ESPN gets how important their on-channel advertising is. But, because the marketing is relatively inexpensive (internal production costs are often the only "cost") there is tendency to under-leverage this great asset that marketers have with their best customers. And, if these programs are under-leveraged, marketers need to gather insights on how to get the best results possible from these programs, and this takes research. But many assume that such programs are not measurable. Nonsense. With a bit of creativity and flexibility, methodologies like ROMO can help marketers execute design of experiments to isolate the programs effectiveness. But, would a marketer look at the research cost to measure a "free" media, and balk at paying to measure something that is free? Maybe. And if so, that would be a shame, because I would be willing to bet that most marketers could double the effectiveness of these internal marketing programs with a bit of research.

But, until you try it, you wouldn’t know. Just like with Peanut Butter and Chocolate. Until you try mixing them, you’d never know what a great combination they make.

Name a quest that both Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Disney are on?

rex.briggs | 05 October, 2006 03:22

The answer (or at least one possible answer) is the quest for synergy. The synergy of peanut butter and chocolate? No. Cross-marketing synergy. Tuesday, I highlighted the advertising for Hershey’s Kissables inside the package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. This is an advertisement, though it may not show up on a media plan or be measured for its ROI. That’s a shame because it may be a greater asset than most marketers realize.

When Marketing Evolution has worked with ESPN (owned by Disney), we would often see a line item in their media plans called "Synergy." This was internal Disney speak for media elements that ESPN could use to promote their programs within other Disney properties. The idea is that Disney has such a vast array of powerful media that it should make some available to its own family of companies. But even more important than the synergy advertising is ESPN’s own on-channel advertising.

As Marketing Evolution has contemplated and measured the value of on-channel advertising for various TV networks, it’s got me thinking about that Reese’s ad inside their packaging. It’s got me thinking of a conversation with McDonald’s awhile back. McDonald’s once told me that they reach more consumers in a week than most of the media companies that come to them to pitch McDonald’s on buying their media. The McDonald’s executive half jokingly said, he should be selling them McDonald’s tray liner for advertising their media brand. Given the deals with McDonald’s and Disney, McDonald’s does in fact sell media companies. But at what point is it financially better to keep your own media for cross-promoting and at what point is it advisable to sell someone else product? And, what is the ROI on your own media? Are certain strategies more effective than others? Is a simple "Try Hershey’s Kissables" enough to get someone unfamiliar with the product to try it? Or, will it only work with someone familiar with the product to get them to devote a greater share of snack purchases to Kissables?

And, since much of this media is under the radar of traditional media planning, how do most marketers care to calculate the ROI and optimize the effectiveness of these internal programs?

You Stuck Your Advertisement in My Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!

rex.briggs | 03 October, 2006 05:16

Remember those ads from years ago with funny collisions of a person with chocolate bar and a person with jar of peanut butter. In the TV commercial, you’d see someone carrying a jar of peanut butter, and out of their line of sight, wielding a chocolate bar with reckless abandon, was some other snacker. And wouldn’t you know it, the two simply couldn’t avoid colliding. You’d hear exclaimed “You stuck your chocolate in my peanut butter!” Then the counter accusations began flying. While at first the two seemed annoyed at one another, arguing about who stuck what where, for the sake of world peace, they’d move quickly to resolve the conflict by trying the new flavor combination. And, all this drama was packed into a 30 second ad.

Today I found that Hershey’s has stuck their ad in my Peanut Butter Cup. Yes, it seems that Reese’s has combined their tasty Peanut Butter Cups with advertising saying “Try Hershey’s Kissables” –candy coated mini kisses (as the subtitle clarifies). I guess I should yell out “You stuck your Kissebale ad in my peanut butter cup package.” But not only does that lack the poetic flare of the chocolate and peanut butter arguments of yesteryear, I am on a flight on the way to New York, and I just don’t think the flight attendants would get the joke – even though airlines have loaded up their ticket sleeves, food trays, napkins and even the sides of airplanes with marketing messages.

Much of this marketing goes unmeasured. In fact, because there are no ratings for it, some in the agency business group this media as “unmeasured media” in their plans. Or, leave these marketing messages off their media plans all together. But this is smart marketing and should be valued. It is an interesting issue of valuing messages like this and highlights the increasing complexity of marketing ROI measurement. It underscores the increasing complexity of ensuring the effectiveness of marketing across all the touch points.

I will muse about how such marketing elements can be measured. For now, I have some Peanut Butter Cups to eat.

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