In general, people are more likely to act on face-to-face product recommendations, versus those sent via social media.  While this holds for youth, they are more likely to act on all types of recommendations, especially from close contacts, regardless of mode used to receive the recommendation. 

Fundamentally, effective experiential marketing should have a compelling consumer focus which can often lead to increased word-of-mouth for participating brands. Social media can be effective at facilitating WOM among youth, as it is integral in their lives and it does not lose impact like it does for adults.

To view the actual case study statistics, broken out by both age (youth versus adults) and by whom (friends, family and acquaintances), please click on the links below for the full article.

For more information on the EMF, visit http://www.experientialforum.com/ where you can join to receive regular updates on the latest experiential news, research and insights.  The EMF / IMI International research articles are also available for viewing on IMI International’s Downloads page.

As the headline notes, “if women hold so much buying power, why aren’t marketers doing a better job of communicating to them?  Kristin Laird outlines the key ways companies can meet the needs of female consumers”.

Of course, different consumer segments exist within the female consumer segment, so be sure you’re understanding your specific target fully prior to acting on any macro insights.

Women consumers: a snapshot

• 71% are more concerned with price than fashion or trends
• 60% enjoy sampling different brands of similar products (e.g. soft drinks) for the sake of comparison
• 47% are loyal to environmentally or socially responsible brands
• 58% actively look for products that offer coupon discounts
• 65% will encourage friends or relatives to purchase a product she likes
• 62% think store brand products are just as good as name brand products
• 39% say name brand products are a status symbol
• 58% usually purchase the lowest-priced product

IMI International provided Marketing Magazine a number of current consumer insights pertaining to female consumers, as a result of conducting three different studies earlier this year.  The studies provided these latest insights by looking at the attitudes and behaviours of Canadian women consumers 13 to 64. 

To read the full article, please visit Marketing Magazine or click on the link for IMI International’s Downloads page and find the article under the Media section.

For more information on ConsumerTrack™ Insights pertaining to Female Shoppers, please contact Tim Bishop at 416-440-0310 ext. 341 or by email at tbishop@consultIMI.com.

Dan knows from extensive experience that shopper marketing is a compelling, integrated approach to meeting consumer wants and needs and instilling a sense of confidence from the moment a brand first starts interacting with consumers. 

During his presentation, Dan will deliver consumer-validated insights, case studies and best practices in order to make your shopper marketing program succeed in a measureable way.

To review a summary of Dan’s presentation, please click here to go to the Downloads page and find the presentation under the “Conferences” section.

Tim Bishop, Business Development, North America, will be speaking about social media measurement plus providing the latest insights and experience on how to measure ROI (and as a hint, it’s not about friends, fans or retweets…).

In recent years, social media has grown from a provocative set of online community chat rooms to a legitimate marketing communication vehicle that attracts millions of diverse users from around the world.  

What is a marketer to do:  Avoid social media until it becomes more proven since this all seems too “new” and “risky”?  Or jump into it without a good understanding of how it compares to other marketing tools? 

The safe bet is to understand its measurable impact.  IMI International has been studying social media from its inception using ROI measurement models to evaluate it compared to all other marketing tactics.

Tim will highlight how to measure impact and ROI, plus share consumer insights, best practices and global case studies so that social media can be considered as an effective tool within your sponsorship activation toolkit.

For a summary of Tim’s presentation, please click to visit IMI International’s Downloads page and look under “Conferences”.

For more information on social media ROI and measurement, please contact Tim Bishop at 416-440-0310 ext. 341 or email at tbishop@consultIMI.com.

Don Mayo, Managing Partner of IMI International, is again one of the leading conference speakers for the Canadian Sponsorship Forum.  Held annually, this year’s event is hosted in beautiful Whistler, BC, site of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Be the first to see research focused on actual in-market effectiveness, impact of recent brand activations, consumer-validated insights and recent Vancouver 2010 Winter Games observations. Whether you’re an official sponsor or simply delivering best-in-class activations without any sponsorship affiliation, you will learn best practices both on how to win in the current economic climate and during major events.

Derived from a study completed during February & March 2010 by IMI International and in association with TrojanOne, the key focus of this session will be on the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games as well as other major properties. Don will isolate case studies on ‘who impacted consumers,’ ‘who avoided consumers’ and ‘means to optimize your activation plan going forward.’ Further, this session will detail not only recent sponsorship activations, but will include trending based on consumer research completed throughout prior years.  

The key focus will be on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics plus other major properties, such as the Super Bowl, Grammy Awards, Daytona 500, NBA All Star Game, Mardi Gras and others.

Based on the study’s consumer-validated insights plus recent at-the-Games observation, IMI International will isolate some case studies on ‘who impacted consumers’, ‘who avoided consumers’ and means to optimize your activation plan going forward. Further, this session will detail not only recent sponsorship activations, but will include trending based on consumer research completed throughout prior years.

Highlights will include some of the ‘winner’ activations, featuring not only how marketing impacted behaviour, talk value and brand equity, but how winning campaigns engaged consumers. Additionally, the presentation will detail best practices both on how to win in the current economic climate and during major events, whether you are an official sponsor or simply delivering best-in-class activations without any sponsorship affiliation.

The panel topic, “What Will Appeal to Tomorrow’s Shopper: Learn from Representatives Across All Sectors of the Shopper Marketing Industry” is sure to create an active discussion regarding the future of shopper marketing.  

It will be interesting to hear what the panelists have to say, given their varied experience and backgrounds in the experiential, consulting, snack food and research spaces. 

IMI International has extensive experience with shopper marketing and views shopper marketing as the management of the full path-to-purchase cycle.  When done correctly, shopper marketing is a compelling, integrated approach to meeting consumer wants and needs and instilling a sense of confidence from the moment a brand first starts interacting with consumers. 

To learn more about Shopper Marketing and how IMI International can help your brand or agency meet its goals, please contact Dan Hunter at 416-440-0310 ext. 233 or email at dhunter@consultIMI.com.

This month’s topic is “How to Measure & Optimize Experiential Marketing” which is a three-step process:

1. Isolate the experiential impact versus other marketing campaign drivers
2. Use consistent measures, with the key categories being efficiency (reach), effectiveness (residual impact) and cost effectiveness ($ cost for the gains)
3. Compare results to an objective database in order to show relative program strength

With this consistent approach, experiential programs can be evaluated against each other and against various marketing programs. 

For experiential programs, as with all marketing campaigns, it is imperative to focus on targeted reach and conversion to actual program impact.  Further, leveraging IMI International’s best practices by dollarizing experiential impact via a ‘Cost Per Impacted Consumer’ model equalizes all campaigns so the best, fact-based marketing investment decisions can be made.

For more information on the EMF, visit www.experientialforum.com where you can join to receive regular updates on the latest experiential news, research and insights.  The EMF / IMI International research articles are also available for viewing on IMI International’s Downloads page.

This Canadian consumer insights module conducted in autumn 2009 looks at a number of topics, including:

• How consumers viewed the recession during 2009
• The effect of the recession on various marketing tactics
• The changing attitudes of consumers and how these can explain the change in marketing tactic effectiveness
• Brand health with 85 brands ranked based on consumer responses
• Brand-specific examples of good and bad tactics used over the last 2 years
• Keys to your marketing success in 2010

This module provides a look into how consumers are thinking, what tactics will work the hardest for you and how brands have utilized these to their advantage.

For more information on ConsumerTrack™ Insights, please contact Tim Bishop at 416-440-0310 ext. 341 or by email at tbishop@consultIMI.com.

Erik Hauser, founder of the EMF, noted a large gap in case studies, best practice learnings and research-validated insight in the field of experiential marketing.  Thus, the partnership between the EMF and IMI International was born to deliver just that. 

The newest articles focus on experiential optimization and evaluation, including “Optimizing Experiential Interaction Time to Impact Purchases” and “Mass or Experiential – the Cost Per Impact is Equal”.  These articles are now available on the EMF website to members.

For more information on the EMF, visit www.experientialforum.com where you can join to receive regular updates on the latest experiential news, research and insights.  The EMF / IMI International research articles are also available for viewing on IMI International’s Downloads page.

If there was one overarching lesson from the 2009 WOMMA (Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association) Summit in Las Vegas, it was said that to succeed in WOM, you first have to listen.  Before delving into a WOM campaign, you must first invest in a listening campaign. Once you are in touch with the consumer, the conversation can begin. Social media is an excellent tool to develop the two-way conversation. 

The measurement of any activation program is not complete until the impact of Word-of-Mouth is included.  That was a key focus of IMI International’s presentation on November 18 where IMI International co-presented alongside their beverage client and Escalate on the “Effectiveness & Efficiency of WOM on a Beverage Experiential Trial Program”.  Laura Bernshausen, Senior Brand Activation Manager; Stuart Sheldon, Division President at Escalate and Dan Hunter, Partner at IMI International, lead the conversation with a full house of attendees.

As conference participants learned, using WOM to accelerate an experiential marketing campaign is both effective and efficient at driving brand love, purchase and adoption over time.  Leveraging IMI International’s Word-of-Mouth ROI measurement approach, this beverage client measures the impact and cost effectiveness of WOM in combination with other marketing tactics in order to understand more holistic returns as a result of the campaign.

Also from the WOMMA Word conference blog recap, Steve Knox of Proctor & Gamble mentions correctly that “consumers talk for many reasons. It might be simply because there was a lull in a conversation or that a consumer wants to exude the image of a product. But you will never learn why consumers talk about your product specifically if you don’t listen. Once a solid amount of data is gathered, test your programs, continue listening and work from there. No campaign will be perfect out of the gate, but it will be doomed if you don’t listen.”