I recently conducted an analysis for a car manufacturer, who was trying to market four new vehicles at once.  The goal of this campaign was quite lofty: the car manufacturer wanted to increase awareness of these four new cars as well as to increase intent to buy the models.

This type of online campaign is known as an “Umbrella Branding” marketing strategy.  The key to these types of campaigns (according to Millward Brown’s March 2008 POV) is to have a consistent and clear brand identity across the various components. With Umbrella campaigns, when many models or brands are being advertised, research illustrates that only a few brands benefit and others get ignored.

This was the case with this campaign: while the creatives were synergistic and had a similar look and feel, not only to each other, but to offline advertising as well, some models received more attention than others.  In this case, a luxury sedan and a minivan were more memorable and favorable than either the SUV or the coupe being advertised.

Additionally, this campaign differed from their past advertising in that it focused on multiple vehicles, which accordingly had different targets, different demographic variables, and different psychographic compositions.  By trying to appeal to so many groups, this campaign did not resonate with their main target as well as past campaigns have, which were centered on only one type of vehicle.

Umbrella campaigns are similar to co-branded campaigns in that they often cause the viewer confusion.  Often times at Dynamic Logic, we see that co-branding or Umbrella campaigns can have a negative effect; in this case, the creatives did not cause respondents to react in a negative way, but at the same time, the campaign did fall short of achieving all of its goals.  With these types of campaigns, it is necessary for each car model to have its own moment of clarity, its own moment to shine.

It will be interesting to see how this car manufacturer decides to advertise their new suite of products.  Will they continue to have ads that have a barrage of vehicles, or will they only feature one model at a time?  I guess we will have to wait and see!

When not conducting research, I enjoy photography, traveling, and spending time with my new puppy.

We hope that it will serve as a vehicle to allow you to get to know us better and through this to have a better understanding of our capabilities and the types of unique challenges we meet head on every day.

My name is Scott Gendelman and I’m a Regional Sales Manager in Dynamic Logic’s Chicago office (covering the Central US region).  I’ve been with Dynamic Logic for 1 year, and enjoy helping clients understand how their marketing impacts brand metrics such as purchase/take-action intent, brand awareness & favorability, message association, and ad awareness/recall.  I come from the school of listening to a client’s needs/challenges, and then matching up the right solution(s) that make sense both strategically and economically.

One of the more sticky topics I’ve come across lately is interest in maximizing the impact creative communication components have on achieving campaign goals.  Going thru typical behind-the-scenes motions around the creative process of listen/brainstorm/concept/sketch/develop/deploy, there’s a critical component that is often overlooked.   Some may call it a component, but I like to think of it as a real person – the target consumer!

Not Scott Gendelman

Marketers often think their chosen creative will dazzle the audience and ultimately sound the cash registers to ring so much they fall off the counter!  Setting egos and hopeful ad awards aside, this strategy often will detract from achieving campaign goals which ultimately results in the failure of a campaign impacting the brand in an optimal manner.   What really should (and needs) to happen, is to allow the real experts and decision-makers decide and tell us which creative ideas dazzled and which frazzled.  So who are these people?  They are your specific target demographic….the consumers you’re ultimately trying to reach and impact.

With that in mind, Dynamic Logic has a unique ad-copy/communication testing solution LinkSelect For Digital that provides deep analysis & insights into which creative executions will impact key brand metrics BEFORE a campaign goes live.  This approach allows a client the ability to further optimize the creative prior to launch which ensures the creative with the most legs goes to market.  It’s a unique and relevant way to ensure maximum return on marketing investment (ROMI).

We’ve even done some internal validation research that has uncovered how impactful ad-copy testing is on live, in-market campaign results.  Ultimately, the more you optimize creative prior to launch, the greater the chance your campaign will illicit positive results as it pertains to impacting key brand metrics.  You can find more information around LinkSelect For Digital here:  http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/products/DigitalLink/

Outside of working at Dynamic Logic, I fully enjoy spending time with family, friends, my dog Roxy ( pictured above), skiing (really fast!), playing ice hockey, travelling, dining out, collecting music, and music production (electronic music).

If you’re interested in how Dynamic Logic can help your next campaign perform optimally for you. We invite you to call us at 212-844-3700 or email us at answers (at) dynamic logic (dot) com. Tell them that you read about us here!

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