NEW YORK — Despite years of innovation and investment, the push continues for more accurate and effective measurement in promoting, whether brands are assessing viewership across linear and digital channels, attribution across walled gardens or the connection between exposure and outcomes. Some would even say solutions have gotten more complicated as fragmentation hits nearly every a part of the media-advertising ecosystem. The reality is that marketers still haven’t completely discovered measurement, according to Keurig Dr. Pepper CMO Drew Panayiotou.
“The misconception is that we all know for certain, to the penny, what we get after we put $1 into marketing,” Panayiotou said during a panel discussion at Advertising Week New York on Wednesday. “The answer is that we feel confident — plus or minus ten to fifteen percent across disparate and disconnected tools – that it’s working.”
Measuring ad effectiveness around key areas like sports investment — the subject of the panel — remains to be a ways away, due to the presence of walled gardens and media fragmentation. Even the tens of millions of viewers who turn into live football games might be streaming across quite a lot of platforms, devices and channels — further complicating attribution.
“Everyone wants [attribution] to be deterministic measurement — we did A and we got B and and in between the A to B, something’s deterministic,” said Panayiotou, who was appointed CMO of U.S. refreshment beverages a few yr ago. “Sixty percent of ROI in our space is driven by the message, and forty percent is driven by all the opposite stuff — getting the message to the precise person, the precise place, the precise channel. As we take into consideration attribution, we’re trying to unpack each of those issues.
Panelists also included executives from Disney, the NFL and measurement company EDO.
As an example of the complexities in measurement, Panayiotou pointed to Keurig, the corporate’s brewing system that’s in 43 million households and is a business driven by a handful of major retailers. Keurig Dr. Pepper doesn’t own the brand’s sales funnel, but as an alternative relies on retailers like Amazon and Walmart which have powerful retail media operations that may higher exhibit a deterministic relationship between top-of-funnel exposures and bottom-of-funnel sales.
As they chase measurement and attribution, marketers needs to be careful what they want for, said Kevin Krim, president and CEO of EDO.
“If you select to give attention to the underside of the funnel as marketers, as media owners or especially as agencies, watch out, because at the underside of the funnel, there’s plenty of individuals who want to take credit and plenty of individuals who want to deflect blame,” Krim said in the course of the panel discussion. “Frankly, it isn’t marketing’s job alone to drive the sale. You’ve got all these aspects that an organization as sophisticated as Keurig Dr. Pepper knows all about: inventory, price, promotion, competition, weather… Those are all affecting the underside of the funnel.”
Worth every penny
In a landscape where measurement and attribution remain unsolved, marketers have increasingly turned to live sports to connect with consumers. Keurig Dr. Pepper and Disney Advertising this yr ramped up an ongoing collaboration with recent initiatives around enhancing digital fan engagement in the course of the college football season.
But at the identical time that the fee of running ads during live sports has gone up, younger consumers have modified their behaviors around viewing and engagement. Gen Zennials, a key audience for Dr. Pepper, are engaging with creators and watching games concurrently in a way that resembles the favored “Manningcast” series hosted by NFL greats Peyton and Eli Manning.
“The major thing has gotten dearer… but then we will’t ignore the digital platforms where that engagement is occurring with Gen Zennials, because they’re those buying our products,” Panayiotou said. “It’s an advanced web.”
Still, the chance for advertisers around live sports is commonly greater than well worth the high cost. Soda brands would have had to buy greater than 48 regular prime time ads, including other live sports not on Disney, to get the identical impact as a single 30-second spot during last yr’s college football playoffs, per EDO data.
“That’s a wins-above-replacement metric that helps you’re taking something that is very hard to quantify — what’s that 30-second spot value? — and provides you a tangible benchmark against which to compare,” Krim said.
Fandom drives engagement
The opportunity in live sports was clear for Dr. Pepper, which is the presenting sponsor of the faculty football championship game. The brand saw 80% more engagement in that game than across all of its ads — and people of its competitors — in the course of the remainder of the yr, per EDO data. For Dr. Pepper, sponsorship is essential because the marketing community moves from the notion of a funnel to one in every of a flywheel, Panayiotou explained.
“There are things that we would like to do which might be deterministic, that drive performance and show the worth of sales, but the opposite half of that’s about how the brand is being present and connecting to culture,” Panayiotou said. “That is incredibly necessary for beverage brands — persons are emotionally connected to the brand that they select to eat.”
Dr. Pepper’s sponsorship is critical to making a cultural connection between brand and consumer — a key part to driving not only sales overnight but brand over time, generating long-term value that shouldn’t be all the time measured in quarterly earnings reports. Sponsorships also give the brand different opportunities to show up in media, whether in content featuring sports stars and media company talent or on-screen branding elements. Dr. Pepper’s best performing creative last yr featured University of Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and NFL legend Brian Bosworth as a part of its long-running Fansville series.
“How do you weave many elements of engagement against fandom? We had the most important variety of [name, image, likeness] deals that we have done: Fifty five college football athletes have a relationship with Dr. Pepper. They generate content for us across the games,” Panayiotou said. “That’s a part of maximizing this fandom with college football and our brand.”
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