Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is the most unique value proposition I know, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, we're back again to talk about our 50th anniversary and all that's happened in advertising since 1974. But before we get there, guess what? It's Super Bowl week, our favorite time of the year. It's like Christmas for us.

Lorraine Kessler
Yep, it's coming up.

Mark Vandegrift
I heard last week that one Super Bowl spot this year now goes for $7 million. You got that sitting in your back pocket? Ha ha.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, if you have a big enough audience, you know, we can talk more about this, but the return is there.

Mark Vandegrift
That's right. Well, and compare that to 1989, and spots at that point cost $675,000, which in today's money is the equivalent of 1.7 million. So it's definitely grown. And that doesn't include, I always remind clients, by the way, the 7 million does not include the cost to produce the spot, pay the agency, and hire the talent.

And today's talent, you know, when you look at it, the trend is the same as last year. Celebrities are going to be the headliners. I was watching some TV this week. It amazes me how many spots Kevin Hart is in right now. He's doing Chase, he's doing FanDuel. I mean, there must be three or four brands he's representing, and I'll be surprised if I don't see him in some of the Super Bowl spots this week.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, isn't that kind of a weird combo, Chase and FanDuel? Like, we're going to clean you out gambling. We're going to clean out your bank account. I mean, I don't know.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, use a Chase credit card so we can clean you out. Well, Kris Jenner is set to appear in the Oreos commercial. Pringles is going to feature Chris Pratt. And I think there's a lot of other celebrities. We're going to see where a lot of commercials have two, three, five celebrities in their spots. I don't know. What do you think about all this craziness?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, it's nothing new, right? I mean, this has been, I've been writing articles and doing interviews on the Super Bowl for what? 15 years. And, you know, it's celebrities, cheap laughs, right? Outrageous concepts, over the top production, many times with Hollywood producers, although Hollywood is now I would say, streaming producers or directors, celebrities. I think I already said that.

And then I think, and we're in the last what, seven years or so, teasers, and then getting that, garnering that extra pre-spot, I guess PR, and then after spot comment, which we can talk more about. So but the coffers, you know, they just keep filling at incendiary rates for the networks, right? I mean, last year Fox made, I think, $600 million or something. If I remember from what I wrote, and this year it's in Las Vegas. So they expect that city will just rake in money and tourism, you know, and I read one article that said it might be as much as $500 million to a billion to the city.

And then you keep looking at the audience. I don't know what the audience was last year, but when I started, it was still the biggest TV media event in the world. But this year, it's over 200 million. So, and you know, one of the things that we've talked about too is that it's smart for products that have a large total customer market who want bang and reach that audience all at once because you know, there's just a couple of things: One is that females are 46% of the audience for Super Bowl and unlike most programming that we watch, people actually watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.

Mark Vandegrift
What do you think about the celebrities? Because we've seen a lot of celebrities get in trouble recently. In fact, I think just yesterday, another one was arrested for, you know, some very bad things we won't talk about on a positive podcast. And the other thing, it seems to me like it's kind of a crutch that leaves good brand storytelling behind. In other words, it could be done right, but most of the brands just rely on the antics of the celebrities and that's it. They don't do the good brand storytelling we're used to. What's your take on the celebrity thing?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, number one, anytime you use a celebrity, there's an inherent risk, right? Because something's, Tiger Woods, right? Anything, something's going to happen to that celebrity, Pee-wee Herman, right? In some years...

Mark Vandegrift
That one I could have done ahead of time not to do, but whatever.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, and then he dies and all is forgiven. So I don't know if you knew that, it's like very sweet. So, I mean, this is what happens with celebrities. It's an inherent risk and it's an inherent risk too that's now extended to influencers who are celebrity. I mean, they're a different type of celebrity, but they're still celebrities. So, you know, Martha Stewart, right, she bounced back. That's a risk you take. And with a bet of maybe 10 million, seven million from the spot, three million to produce and do all the wicking or surround, that's a pretty big risk that only the big boys or big girls can really take on.

Mark Vandegrift
That's right. Well, I always like to tell folks that ask me because, of course, being in advertising like you, you get asked all the time, what do you think of the Super Bowl commercials? And, how do you evaluate them? And can you evaluate them without having a bias? And I always give them this test. You've heard me tell them this before. If you're at the Super Bowl party and people are really watching the ads, wait about five minutes after an ad, just take note of it, and then ask someone who's in the room watching the ads, whether they remember the brand of the commercial that was advertised.

Just say, hey, you know that puppy commercial we saw like five minutes ago? What brand was that? 90% of the time, the person I asked that question to cannot recall the brand. Then it gets worse. Then I say, okay, for that same puppy commercial, what product was being advertised? Was it beer, cars, chips, what was it? They can't even remember that. 90% of the time. So, they remember the cute puppy or the celebrity, but they can't remember the brand or the product. I know you and I differ a little bit on what we think around adver-tainment, but give us your take on this. I want to hear your opinion on this.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, 90%, I'd like to fact check your research. It's not enough. I mean, it's many times, right? And the thing is, I think about that. You do love to harp on this… It's a really stupid mistake, right, on the part of advertisers. It's a really stupid, stupid mistake. And you think that CMOs, by this time, would kind of realize who writes their paycheck, what name is on the paycheck, right? And it's easily fixable.

The downside and it's not because they just use celebrity. I mean, one of the best Snicker commercials ever had Betty White. And I think everybody knew it was for Snickers, right? It was just a genius concept. And she made it all the more engaging, which is what you want. And what was it? Abe Vigoda was in it too, I think? And it was just funny. It just makes you laugh. It caught your attention. And that's what a commercial should do. And you remember the brand. You remember the product. So great.

It's really not the fault of celebrity. It's just the fault of the creators. And a lot of times what happens, as you and I talked about, ad agencies, some of them, think they're in the Hollywood business, the award business. We love that about giving ourselves awards. And they make these commercials outrageous more for their own name than for the client they're representing. And if I were a CMO, I would be very much on guard about that.

Then the question becomes, too, and I think you've talked about this, does Super Bowl advertising make sense? And I don't know if you want to go into that a little bit, but I do have some thoughts.

Mark Vandegrift
Let's separate those two things because the media choice of the Super Bowl, I don't think anybody would argue that's a great choice. If you have the funds and if the reach is right, all the things that would go into choosing that, even what Roy H. Williams said, the Wizard of Ads, which is people's emotional state is so positive. So, to associate that brand with the Super Bowl, a fun event, they're at a party.

Then you add to it the audience that you mentioned. And then you add to the fact that, wow, if they're on the Super Bowl, they must really be a brand that has cache. I think that's the word that you used. Let's separate that. I'm talking about the message and how it's connecting in the brand, or in the mind, making a brand connection. Everything's a brand touch.

What are you doing to leverage the fact that you have the perfect medium of the Super Bowl ad to, because there's good, better, best, right? You can make just being on there, let's say that the lowest level is, okay, that's a good brand touch, just because of the medium, right? But let's say you worked on the message and did a really, really great job with that. And when I did my little test with people, you were able to recall the brand and the product, right? And that would be our highest level. So yeah, go ahead and speak to that, but let's separate those two things because I think you could have a good-better-best on how you execute.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, and I think, you know, just as it comes back, there's the old saying that advertising doesn't create the benefit, it conveys it, it communicates it, that's its job. So, if I haven't communicated the product and its benefit and or brand, then I've missed first base, okay? And maybe I've entertained, and that's what happens is this is an entertainment medium environment that these commercials are going into.

So, I think advertisers, those who create ads are very much about how do I take advantage of the entertainment medium and create an entertaining spot. But if you go too far and you leave on the cutting room floor the benefit of the product or brand, then you have done your client, to me, a tremendous $10 million disservice. Because you have 200 million people who are going to see this. And they're either going to react favorably or they're going to just love the entertainment and not have any connection to why they should think about your product or brand, which is to me a miss. We're not hired to just create entertainment. If this was the case, I'd be writing streaming shows for Hulu or HBO, now Max. So, I wouldn't have spent my career in advertising.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I call it adver-tainment and I hope we have some good advertising this coming week and not just the adver-tainment because that it kind of to me, it gives us a bad name when people aren't doing good advertising. For the most part, the common person not paying attention, the ones that aren't in the business or they don't they don't pay attention to mark the marketing industry. I don't care.

For those that have to go out and make the consideration of hiring an ad agency. I just think that can give the ad agency business a bad name.

Well anyhow, some cool news. Next week, we're going to have a special Super Bowl ad podcast and we'll dive deep on all the winners and losers. And just note that since the Super Bowl ends late and Lorraine and I have to go to bed and not work overnight, and we're not the earliest of risers for next week, we'll publish our brand shorthand just a day late. So look for it on Tuesday morning. We'll spend Monday talking about it and giving all of our perspective on the different ads. And then Lorraine, what do you think? Can we pull that off?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I don't know about you, but I probably won't go to bed. Because usually it is an overnight. So I don't want people to think I just, you know, sleep in and have bonbons and, you know. But so by Tuesday, I'll be sufficiently manic enough to cover it.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good. Well, let's get back to the topic at hand, which we've been talking about for the last few episodes. And what's transpired over the last 50 years is we celebrate our anniversary of 50 years in business. And I'll put on the screen again our grouping that we came up with, the categories, which are media proliferation, technological changes, targeting and personalization, which we've talked about those on the last couple episodes.

Today we'll get into transactional media and that's lead generation, first party data, all of that. I don't think we'll get into B2B advertising today, so that'll be a topic for a couple of weeks from now. And then the last two, the growing importance of branding and the rise of experiential marketing. So, as I said, we talked the first three, the last couple episodes.

And this week we'll focus on transactional media. Now let's define that for our audience because some people may...

Lorraine Kessler
Hey, define that for me.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that's true. You know what it is, but now you always have to put labels on things in our business so that we know what we're talking about. I met with a client just yesterday, not real marketing, I guess. He doesn't know the marketing lingo. And he goes, this all sounds great. I just need to get used to the terms that you use.

We do have kind of a terminology that tends to sneak into our business, but I'll put these on screen and also let's talk through them.

Awareness media, that primarily aims to generate brand awareness. So a Super Bowl spot, we would call that awareness media.

Transactional media, on the other hand, is for the potential customer who maybe already has the product in his shopping cart or she's already thinking about, “I'm buying this.” Think about doing a Google search and I'm ready to buy a car, right? So, the transactional media might be SEO or it might be Google ads, right? We see a Google ads ad. That's an example of transactional media. What it means is it usually doesn't take much to take that final step to purchase.

And so regardless of these definitions, we got the awareness media, transaction media, or transactional media. We have to remember awareness media can lead to a transaction, and transactional media always makes a brand impression. It's just this ultimate goal of each media that defines it. So LPK, can you provide us some perspective on how we should think through these without diving too far into our sixth category, which is the growing importance of brand advertising?

Lorraine Kessler
Sure. I make one distinction. I don't like globalization, so I don't, when I heard transactional media always makes a brand impression, that's not necessarily true, right? It plays a very important role in brand conversion, but there's a great deal of transactional media, things that force you to buy, right? Whether it's an impulse purchase because you saw a Facebook ad, or you were served up something, a new thing, a new widget that you never saw before, which I'm the all-time buyer of, especially if it has to do with, anything to do with home remodeling, where the consumer ends up buying the product because of the ad and the benefits that are communicated about the product without ever knowing the brand, right? I just bought an outdoor bird, electrical so birds can have water during the winter. I have no idea what brand it was, right? I went to Amazon, I looked, I saw the type I wanted and I bought it. And I think there's a lot of transactional media that plays in that space. But transactional media has a real role to play. It's almost not a clear divide, right? It's not like I'm going to do brand advertising or transactional. I think you need both because the brand is long-term.

It's building a long-term consciousness within a category and a value and an impression so that the next time you're in the market, it typically works really... You can't do long consideration cycle purchases without a brand. Now, by that I mean like insurance or car, because it's not like you buy a car every week when the cereal box is empty, right? So brand has this long-term...

And it's been proven that if you do that, your actual value, you actually not only sell more over time, but you make more, you get a higher margin. So brand, that's what it plays to. But at some point, you got to sell now. I mean, people have to be able to buy products now. So that's where the transactional ad, I would say, kind of a harvest is what has been planted and what has sown in your mind. It kind of comes along and it allows that to happen. And so marketers should be really thinking about these two kind of in tandem, not one or the other. If they want to build brands and not just sell as seen on TV type products, right? One-offs, which to me is not exactly the best place to play. At least it's not an interesting place for me to play in when I'm doing marketing for clients.

So it's to be balanced, equal part, think about where your customer might be in the cycle. The other thing transactional ads adds to brand, there are other peak points at which someone's thinking about a brand. Like summer, I'm thinking about outdoor lounge chair or outdoor furniture. So you may have been building a brand value around your outdoor collection that has sustained throughout the cold months and the early winter months, even fall. But what you want to do around the peak season is really transactional and start to convert, start to... So, you know, those kinds of things, seasonal, or it could be the market conditions, you know, housing market, the interest rates have just dropped. So what a time to really jump into the housing market with whatever you're doing as a realtor.

So, there are conditions outside forces, I guess is what I'm saying, that make transactional, which is short term and can be done quickly and is aimed at creating a sale now, really, really important to do.

Mark Vandegrift
The reason we're bringing this up is it's changed. We didn't have a lot of this transactional media in the past, right? So, another thing that would be called newer in the life of what we talk about is the idea of the funnel. And one way that advertisers like to discuss awareness versus transactional media is by what part of the sales funnel is being impacted. Well, we didn't even talk sales funnel 30 years ago.

But brand awareness is typically known as top of the funnel, whereas the transactional media is at the bottom of the funnel. And that's the easiest way to understand it. But it really comes down to how close is the prospect of making a purchase? Well, I don't entirely agree with that. To your point, you bought you've bought stuff off of Facebook before. Did you go through the funnel like really quickly or did you just make an impulse purchase?

Lorraine Kessler
I just saw an impulse. I mean, it's no different than if you go up to the cash register and you saw something. Right. I mean, it really is that same reactive behavior versus planned consideration. Planned consideration might be, uh, I want to buy a pressure cooker. And so what are the brands I'm aware of? I'm aware of Instant Pot itself. But I might just go to the store one day and say, I'm going to buy a pressure cooker and compare at that time and say, oh, I've heard a lot of Instant Pot. I'm going to look at them first. And there are other things that can influence my purchase at the shelf, for example, maybe that Instant Pot cost more or maybe it doesn't have the features that the Cuisinart has or whatever and Cuisinart's a brand I trust. But that's a considered purchase and I'm going down a path, right? I'm literally going down a path starting out here, it's almost like the funnel itself and then going down to a narrow decision action.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, and I like to, since we're talking about the Super Bowl, we touched on that. I think if I see a Super Bowl ad for a Hyundai, that I'm not in the mode of buying a car. Now understand, my last car purchase for myself was in 2011. So, it's been 13 years since I bought a car. I'm not in the mode for shopping for a car, but I get a brand impression. Well, yeah, I probably did because I just mentioned a Hyundai to you. And that's one of the brands that's sticking in my mind. Now that would be a much different scenario where if I'm actively searching for a car, I'm probably what? I'm Googling it. I'm like, okay, I'm this age, I'm ready for a performance car, I'm done with the safe family minivan that I have.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh man, the white van, oh my gosh. The white van!

Mark Vandegrift
So, white stallion, yeah. Still out in the parking lot.

But using Google ads or SEO or display ad, I'm further down that funnel, right? Because I end up on a car dealer's website. Then the other thing, you know, is when you think of assumptions here, then because of the technology changes we talked about last week, I as an advertiser can now develop more specific messaging for those who are interested in this car or that car or you are looking at a certain budget. Maybe when I did my search, I look for all economy vehicles. I can only afford this purchase. Well, their analytics, if they're doing a good job, see, okay, I got a lead from Mark Vandegrift and he's looking at all these economy cars, so I'm not going to try to sell them electric car. And I think from that standpoint, both the media that I use to get there and the analytics of the technology that allows them to know what I'm doing, their media now should be tailored to what I've shown them or what I've uncovered in the veil that I like to do when I'm shopping. So that media might be email marketing. So maybe I didn't convert, but I filled out a form and they reached out to me. I'm not ready, but they have my email now. So, they're going to start dripping some emails to me that say, “hey, here are some nice economy vehicles,” or maybe it's retargeting. Maybe I didn't give them my information, but I was on their site, so guess what? I'm going to have some retargeting display ads or some videos, or a whole host of other media options that might more specifically speak to the buying interests that I've shared.

So, looking at this change, this trend toward transactional media and noting like you said, you can't do all brand and all transactional, you need a balance. We have clients that they want the here and now and they only want their transactional. How do you think that is either, let's talk about it in a positive light that it's available or in a negative light that, guess what, we have too many people that have taken brand media or awareness media and thrown it out and they only live for the transactional media. Give us a sense of, based on your experience over your years as a marketer, how we've seen this shift take place.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, the shift has definitely been to better transactional media and use of it based on analytics. I think the problem is, the limitation is that very few companies with CRM and with even their data tracking are really pulling it together in an effective way. For example, we are looking to replace one of our cars. We have one since 2011 as well, and we keep that but we want a new one because we travel a lot and we want the warranty and all that. So, we decided we'd like to look, we have Jeep, we like to look at Kia. I've been all over looking at different Kias. I have yet to get a meaningful message on anything that I've searched from Kia that says, you know, the color, the type you're looking for, the Sorento or whatever is now on special or it's a good time to look or I haven't had one, but what I do see are more Kia ads. Now that doesn't help me because I've already decided I want Kia. So, they're just saying the same thing over and over and over which is not moving me through the path. So, I think the use of analytics, the use of data is absolutely the holy grail and it has to be applied. The clients who want the… we've always had clients back in 1981 before any of this happened.

I've always had clients who were looking for the silver bullet, you know, and I always said if I had the silver bullet I'd sell it to you for a $100 million and I'd retire at 30, right? I mean if I had it do you think I'd keep it hidden? I mean, it doesn't exist this and I don't care what it is I don't care if you're talking about brand advertising or transactional. I think you have to look at every situation.

So, and the other thing is certain, if your category is brand, is dominated by strong brands, I don't think you can afford to just play transactionally. Because those brands typically do have better customer data, typically do use it better.

They already have a head start on you because they've created some impression, some value, and they own some part of the target market. And so you're fighting for market share, and I don't think you can do that with transactional media.

Mark Vandegrift
Definitely not. We live in the world of transactional media, honestly, because it consumes so much more time at the agency. But the things we know are going to move mountains is the brand advertising. And when you marry those two things, it's hard to convince a client that hasn't done both before to understand how much better the transactional media can perform when you're doing some brand advertising. We saw that in the last couple of years with a particular client where he was just, I want transactions, transactions. And when we finally convinced him to do a little bit of brand advertising, his transactions grew. Well, that was the aha he needed in order to go, “I get it now!” And even though you spend over here on the brand side and you go, well, I can't say I have a return on investment or at least a return on marketing investment. He was able to actually tell how his transactional media increased and now he had a return on marketing investment to figure out because the lead cost went from say $80 to $40. Well, goodness gracious, for what he spent on the brand marketing side of it, that was a great win for him. So now he always wants to do both. If you're paying attention or if you have an agency that can help you with that, like us, you know, Innis Maggiore, then it makes sense. I know, shameless promotion. How dare I? I'm on a podcast nonetheless. But anyhow, to me,

Lorraine Kessler
Shameless, shameless.

Mark Vandegrift
What you said at the top was that balance between the two. There's never a 50-50 split. You have to figure how much brand marketing is going to benefit the transactional side. It's like you said with Kia, they're not maybe over here on the transactional side enough to kind of land the plane.

Lorraine Kessler
…personalization side to understand, you know, they haven't broken down their data, as you always say, to get that single view of the customer and what they're after. So something's not clicking right there for them.

Lorraine Kessler
I do want to say something else though about back in the old day before transactional digital media, there was still conversion media. You would always blend integrated, usually direct mail was a way of getting down that funnel, right, from awareness, interest, decision action, which is the old AIDA funnel. But I will say this about brand and people do not under... Because brand is evaluated over the long term. And I've always said this, it's more qualitative than quantitative. Clients mistakenly don't give it enough, who don't want to do it. And why don't they want to do it? Is it really because they don't believe in it? No, I think it's because they don't want to spend the money. I think they want to protect their pocketbook and they make up excuses. “Oh, it doesn't work, I can't measure it.” All this stuff is just a big distraction or deflection, if you will.

The truth is, if you go back to what we talked about, the top of the segment, the Superbowl's proof, that brand, none of those ads are… well, there's been a few, but most are not transactional, right? Right, very small. They are brand driven. And just to give you some statistics, because I happen, I'm gonna read this, because I don't walk around with this stuff in my head, and hopefully the audience knows that, especially numbers, because I'm more qualitative, right?

I mean, who cares how many years you've been married? They want to know what's the marriage been like? What's the quality of the marriage? So, I err on that side. You could have 50 years and have a miserable marriage. I know people like that.

They said that there's a 68% increase in word of mouth, online and offline, three days after the game. Now that's free chatter. And as we know from Wizard of Oz, right? That kind of inside champion discussions, those kinds of things, they're invaluable. You can't even put a price on it.

There is a 22% increase in word of mouth, online and offline, one week after the game. And 16% increase in word of mouth, one full month. That's huge. So now not everybody gets the Super Bowl moment, but if you're constant with your brand message and you have consistency and when you're in the market with recency and some amount of frequency, three times against an audience that you need. The chances are you're going to start to experience. It's bigger than what you paid for, is all I'm trying to say.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Well, we'll land this topic just like we're trying to land sales. For our listeners, as I mentioned, we're going to have a special Super Bowl podcast next week, and we're excited to bring that to you. And then we'll be back with talking about our 50 years of changes in advertising the week after that.

Thing one, we we're going to land this topic today. And we got through another category, a few more to finish out in a couple of weeks after we have our special Super Bowl commercial podcast next week. So, thank you to our listeners for joining us. If you haven't liked, shared, subscribed or told your friends about the brand, shorthand podcast, please do. Until next time, have an amazing day.