Creative Issues

There's some friction between marketing and sales departments when it comes to the sales tools (such as collateral, ROI calculators, proposal content) used to win new customers, according to a new survey from KnowledgeTree. The survey uncovered significant gaps in perception between both parties, with 87% of marketers believing they provide the right set of tools to salespeople, but only two-thirds of salespeople agreeing. Read more »

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and the Direct Marketing Association UK (DMA) have teamed up to examine content marketing trends in the UK [pdf], finding that 94% of marketers surveyed are using content marketing, making this activity more entrenched than in North America and Australia. The study also finds that UK marketers find case studies (68%) to be most effective, followed by research reports (66%) and eNewsletters (62%). Read more »

51% of ad agencies report a rise in client demand for dynamic rich media ads, and another 20% expect increased interest this year, details Jivox in new survey results. Agency respondents - 95% of whom run rich media ad campaigns for their clients - believe it's stressful to execute these campaigns, though, and two-thirds would use rich media more if cost and production time were cut. Among those running the campaigns, creative production and/or changes to creative count as the most common challenge. Read more »

Marketers rank strategic insights as their most important criterion when reviewing new agencies, according to results from an RSW/US survey, placing more emphasis on an agency's strategic capabilities than on its creative ideas, chemistry, and cost. The RSW/US survey is one of several to share that result (see here and here for examples). It also finds that marketers' top criteria line up with how agencies believe they should be evaluated. Read more »

[Editor's note: This article has been updated with new research pertaining to ad performance and second-screening.] Analysis of the Super Bowl ads continues to pour in. With an average of 108.7 million viewers for the game, per Nielsen's tally, brands certainly had an opportunity to reach a huge audience. So which brands fared best? Which ads were tweeted about most? Did advertisers experience any post-game lift? This article rounds up and distills the research surrounding the performance of the Super Bowl commercials. Read more »

Marketers are spending an average of 12% of their budgets on content marketing, according to results from an Ad Age survey conducted in late 2012 among close to 600 marketers. 1 in 5 respondents said they are dedicating 19% or more of their budgets to content marketing, but a similar proportion are allocating less than 2%. That's despite recent survey results from Econsultancy and Adobe showing that content marketing is the top priority for digital marketers this year. Read more »

Broadly speaking, what types of creative work best in advertising? Survey results from Adobe and Edelman Berland indicate that consumers want ads that tell them stories. According to Nielsen, the most-liked TV ads in 2012 relied on "audience-appropriate humor, an ownable creative concept and a relatable, emotional appeal," while Ace Metrix finds that the most effective ads "stressed innovation while embracing cause and humor." A common theme? Humor, which seems to appeal more to Americans than to citizens of other countries, and which consumers believe makes them more likely to remember a product, according to new survey results from Lab42. Read more »

Ace Metrix has released its list of the top TV brand advertisers and ads of 2012, revealing that the year "was marked by creative strategies that stressed innovation while embracing cause and humor." Notably, many of the top brands by category were able to achieve a difficult feat: airing high quantities of creative while keeping the quality ahead of the competition. Such was the case for brands like Best Buy, which topped the retail category, and Samsung, which topped the tech category while producing more than 3 times as much new creative as Apple. Read more »

Marketers around the world are generally optimistic as 2012 draws to a close, finds Warc [pdf] in its latest Global Marketing Index (GMI). The index, which is comprised of budget, trading conditions, and staffing components, improved to a reading of 52.5 in December, its highest level since September (52.9). (A score above 50 indicates a generally improving environment, while a score below 50 indicates a generally declining environment.) Read more »

The most commonly used mobile rich media ad features generated below-average engagement rates in Q3, while the less popular location-based and gaming features saw much higher engagement rates, finds Celtra in its latest Rich Media Monitor Report. Video appeared in a leading 45% of the campaigns analyzed, but engagement rate fell below the 13.7% average, at 9.6%. By contrast, location-based features, used in just 7% of campaigns, saw an engagement rate of 18.8%, up 185% from Q2. Read more »