Coca-Cola Leads Brave New World for Marketers

Doing something different has not been Standard Operating Procedure SOP for a long timeMarketing Mix Modeling MMM turned out to be the essential for C Suites over the past three decades in rationalizing their marketing decisions MMM is not conducive to doing anything rapidly nor differently quotBayesian Priorsquot is a fancy name many marketing modelers use to mean quotlast year39s MMM resultsquot meaning that new MMM analyses are anchored to yearago MMMs MMM is a methodology that encourages tweaking around the edges rather than doing anything differentlyWhich is not to say discard MMM However it is not going to be very useful right now in the crisis we are in All of the slowly accumulated benchmarks and baselines are out the window The 104week gestation period is inimical to companies39 survivalAre we being dramatic Obviously not based on a quick study of what CocaCola is doing A complete reorganization globally 200 brands on the chopping block the 200 brands being kept reorganized into a new reporting structure designed to quotbring marketing closer to the consumerquot with a new emphasis on innovationThe NY Times quotes Coke39s CEO James Quincey saying the company is quotreassessing our overall marketing return on investment on everything from ad viewership across traditional media to improving effectiveness in digitalquotIs Coke an exception Hardly This is the new normal COVID accelerates all trends The race is to the swift All companies will be making fast and spectacular changes The CEOs know what will happen to them if they play the slow and steady game as revenues plummet The prospect of personally losing tens of millions of dollars a year has a wondrous way of focusing the mindWhat form of research can be used in such a novel highrisk situation There is only one that provides the necessary certainty That is Random Control Trials RCTs amp8211 the way science itself distinguishes real effects from quotmagical thinkingquot The way the vaccines are being tested No medical scientist is going to use a correlation study to develop a vaccineGetting the right answer about quotwhat worksquot in the marketing mix has never been a question that risked human lives which explains why advertising has been slower to adopt such scientific best practices compared to industries such as pharmaceuticals food production and manufacturing But the prospect of life and death for many companies themselves is too real today to ignore the advantage of certainty in knowing which advertising tactics are ROI positive or negativeThis is indeed an important part of the reason why the Advertising Research Foundation ARF came out with its RCT21 program in the midst of COVID19 to help marketers make big decisions with the absolute minimum of risk Marketers already using RCTs such as D2Cs may feel they do not need the training but even they are generally not using RCTs across digital and television typically it39s just digital And practically all D2Cs when they reach a certain stage have realized they cannot get to the next level without adding TVWe see RCT21 as the cheapest way to quickly go back to school to be able to add crossplatform RCT expertise to the marketer39s arsenal In other times maybe that would just be a nice to have But now when doing something different is a necessity it39s obvious that some of these big new and different things will succeed and others will fail spectacularly RCT can discriminate the one from the other before jumping off Using the RCT litmus paper before making public the big changes is prudent business processRick Bruner is CEO of Central Control which helps companies run randomized experiments for advertising ROI RCT21 is an initiative of the ARF with 605 Central Control and Bill Harvey ConsultingClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

Coca-Cola Leads Brave New World for Marketers

Author

Publish date

Channel

Bill Harvey

Rick Bruner

FEMA and the Ad Council Encourage AANHPI Communities to Enhance Disaster Preparedness in New PSAs - Ad Council InSites

More Videos:

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

Coca-Cola Leads Brave New World for Marketers

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Bill Harvey

Rick Bruner

TAGS:

FEMA and the Ad Council Encourage AANHPI Communities to Enhance Disaster Preparedness in New PSAs - Ad Council InSites

Cookies