Brands Matter

Despite all the price wars, brands still matter to Irish consumers across many spending categories. Some 86% of beer drinkers will only buy brands they are familiar with, and 83% of coffee/tea drinkers. Milk, cleaning products and kitchen towels are among the least brand-driven categories.

That's according to our latest research for the National Consumer Agency. You can download more details here, or just flick through the presentation below:

NCA Grocery Shopper Survey July 2009

View more presentations from Amárach Research.

Sex Sells (Sort of)

All marketers are in the persuasion business, and most use sex from time-to-time to help with the persuading. Nothing new there you say: and we've researched hundreds and hundreds of ads over the years to prove it (though we hasten to ad it's not the only thing that sells!)

But tread carefully: if you're target market is men then it's a bit more, shall we say, straightforward as to how the influence of sexual content in advertising works. On the other hand, if your target market is women then sex is not enough. Sure sex still sells, but sex + commitment sells even better.

Don't take our word for it: new research in the Journal of Consumer Research even measures the impact. And it's significant (statistically that is). Should make for more interesting creative testing perhaps ...?

(ht Psychology Today Blog)

Trust Me, I'm Your Sponsor

In these difficult times, it is more important than ever for brands to maintain the trust of their customers. But how? A new global survey by Nielsen gives us some clues:

• In terms of marketing communications options, brand sponsorships top ads on TV (just) when it comes to engendering trust
• newspaper ads are followed by radio ads in the trust stakes
• banner ads and text ads are bottom of the pile of trust building channels
  

But it isn't just down to advertising (online/offline or above-the-line/below-the-line): the opinions of customers are still amongst the most powerful builders of trust (or destroyers). A third of consumers will trust recommendations for friends completely when it comes to choosing brands, and consumer opinions posted online even beat favourable editorial coverage in newspapers for building trust.

What are you doing to turn your most loyal customers into advocates?

A Brighter Outlook for Tourism

Neither the weather nor yesterday's gloomy CSO report showing an 18.4% fall in tourist visitor numbers are conducive to improving the industry's mood right now.

But have faith, our surveys shows a growing interest among Irish consumers in holidays at home (and not just for 'money-saving' reasons). Moreover, the longer-term outlook for Irish tourism is actually quite positive, as indicated in this chart from the recent World Travel & Tourism Council report on Ireland.

We hope that brightens the day for our tourism and hospitality clients ...

Blurring the Marketing Line

Marketing used to be easy: you spent most of your communications budget on above-the-line media, and the rest on below-the-line activities. Not any more. The line has gotten blurred - though it still helps as a very broad categorisation of an increasingly complex and diverse marketing landscape.

The chart is from an excellent new report by the Boston Consulting Group on the theme of The CMO's Dilemma (pdf). One interesting forecast from BCG: this year could see below-the-line spending take a majority share of US marcomm budgets for the first time ever. Driven partly by the internet, but also by the collapse in spending on traditional media.

We're still a long way away from that scenario in Ireland. But perhaps not for much longer ...

The Baby Season

Every business is cyclical - and most are seasonal. Even the baby business it seems! A number of Amárach's clients provide goods and services to young families, including those with babies and toddlers. So we recently analysed monthly data for births (kindly supplied by the National Maternity and Rotunda Hospitals in Dublin) to get a better understanding of the seasonality of the 'baby market'.

The chart shows the combined total number of births in the two hospitals (which together accounted for 85% of births in Dublin in 2006 by our calculation, using data from the CSO). A clear seasonal pattern is evident, as summarised in the table below which indexes each month's births against the average across all months (2006-2009):

	Births as % of Monthly Average
January	94.7%
February	86.8%
March	99.5%
April	95.4%
May	102.2%
June	101.4%
July	106.0%
August	108.5%
September	104.4%
October	106.1%
November	100.1%
December	102.1%

Births in February are over 13% below the monthly average, those in August nearly 9% above the average. Clearly in the case of the former the onset of spring nine months earlier seems to have the opposite effect of those normally attributed to the season! Whereas the shorter days/longer nights of October/November play their part in the birth peak nine months later ...

Measuring Recovery

Everyone you meet asks the same question: "how's business?" It's our way of finding out if the economic cycle is turning.

We've gone and asked sort of the same question of 1,000 adults every month since April. We have created the Economic Recovery Index to guage where we are in the cycle. And hopefully to see the recovery before it shows up (belatedly) in the official statistics.

Download the latest report here - we hope you find it 'hopeful'!