Category: Communication Activation

  • Stop Them in Their Tracks!   The Importance of Gaining Viewer Interest Quickly

    Stop Them in Their Tracks! The Importance of Gaining Viewer Interest Quickly

    Stopping Power in advertising can be defined as an advertisement’s ability to capture audience attention and interest.  For a print advertisement this would represent an ad causing a reader to stop reading an article or flipping the pages and take notice of the ad.  For a video commercial this would represent an ad’s ability to…

  • Independent Audit Confirms MSW-ARS TouchPoint® Copy Test System’s Powerful Linkage to Financial Performance

    Independent Audit Confirms MSW-ARS TouchPoint® Copy Test System’s Powerful Linkage to Financial Performance

    Last week the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) announced that TouchPoint®, MSW-ARS’s advertising copy test solution, has completed the Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP) – MASB’s formal process for validating the relationship between a marketing measurement and financial performance. TouchPoint uses a behavioral, multi-media experience to collect the criterion CCPersuasion® metric. This unique approach avoids…

  • Evidence-Based, Customer Journey Management to Build Brands

    Evidence-Based, Customer Journey Management to Build Brands

    Evidence-Based, Customer Journey Management to Build Brands The Opportunity for Marketers As customers become exposed to a cascading list of product choices, store choices, and information sources, the opportunity exists to connect all the communications about any specific brand and product into a single consistent, coherent message relevant to the individual customer’s needs.  The customer…

  • Why won’t TV advertising just die already?

    Why won’t TV advertising just die already?

    The answer…  Synergy – the compelling reason why television advertising is as relevant as ever. For the last two decades it has been fashionable to prognosticate the death of television advertising whether delivered by broadcast, cable, satellite, or stream.  The general storyline has been that emerging digital channels will displace television advertising through a combination…

  • Surpassing the Norm – Better Approaches to Providing Meaningful Context – Part II

    Surpassing the Norm – Better Approaches to Providing Meaningful Context – Part II

    In Part I of this blog series, we examined some of the practical issues with the use of standard normative data for providing context for  advertising research.  While having the global databases and expertise to provide traditional database averages as the situation warrants, MSW●ARS also offers approaches to the question of context that avoid the issues…

  • Effective Ethnic Advertising Results From Understanding the Cultural Impact on Your Brand

    Effective Ethnic Advertising Results From Understanding the Cultural Impact on Your Brand

    Effective Ethnic Advertising Results From Understanding the Cultural Impact on Your Brand With a purchasing power estimated to reach 1.5 trillion this year, the U.S. Hispanic segment has become a key target for many advertisers. With our studies proving that Hispanics tend to be more responsive to advertising than their non-Hispanic counterparts in terms of…

  • Clarity or Contempt:  What Does Familiarity Breed? A Look at Branding Cues

    Clarity or Contempt: What Does Familiarity Breed? A Look at Branding Cues

    A continuing advertising campaign can bring instant recognition to a brand’s communications.  In an era in which consumers are drowning in commercial messaging and in which a thirty second advertisement is considered long, this could certainly be considered a benefit.  However, we are all familiar with the adage “familiarity breeds contempt”.  Can a continuing campaign…

  • Online Video’s Growing Importance in The Media Mix

    Online Video’s Growing Importance in The Media Mix

    In our previous posting on “How to Turn the Cord Cutting Trend into an Advantage”, we outlined how substantial video viewing time has migrated to internet-based platforms.  This growth of online video has created new levels of complexity and uncertainty in the media buying and placement world, but also has brought new opportunity to those…

  • How to Turn the Cord Cutting Trend into an Advantage

    How to Turn the Cord Cutting Trend into an Advantage

    For many years, cable and satellite television services have been viewed almost as a utility akin to electric, water or telephone service – as an essential. However, recent trends toward cord cutting – the discontinuation of cable service – and cord shaving – changing to smaller and less expensive television packages – is dramatically changing…

  • Creative is King – Long Live Great Creative!

    Creative is King – Long Live Great Creative!

    Not since the advent of the television ad in 1941 has the potential for new ad formats been so great. The emergence of digital platforms is enabling marketers to experiment with a number of new ad formats, each of which could revolutionize marketing as we know it. Throughout 2014 we have been highlighting the most…