fox
The Grand Unified Theory of Marketing(tm) – Digital String Theory
Just as physicists and mathematicians have been searching for the grand unified theory of the universe, I have been looking for a way to tie together the disparate disciplines of marketing and advertising, a way to correlate metrics from different industries that interrelate with marketing (e.g. market research, Nielsen, etc.), a way to put all past theories in context and perspective (Michael Porter’s Five Forces, Net Promoter, etc.), and a way to explain marketing successes and failures — all in one.
My method is the scientific method – which is simply put doing experiments and making observations that either support or refute hypotheses.
A grand unified theory will also need to be able to take into account phenomena such as social networks, etc. What are the organizing principles of such; what is the value? Why now?
Using digital tools — such as search volume trends — we can start to correlate marketing spend effectiveness across different forms of media and also different advertising and marketing techniques. The example below compares eTrade and Drobo. What is most embarrassing is that eTrade, a well known brand from the first dot-com heyday, spent lots of money creating and airing TV ads which it hoped would go viral. They even paid for Superbowl ads for the last 2 years to promote the “eTrade talking babies” as you see from the 2 spikes in search volume during February of 2008 and 2009. However, when compared to Drobo (a startup company that developed a very easily upgradeable back up hard drive array), it is shocking to note that Drobo spent NOTHING on advertising and relied entirely on word of mouth and an awesome product. And their search volume is not only larger than eTrade but also sustainably larger despite zero advertising and media cost. The “totals” even suggest that the volume under the curve of Drobo is 8X (EIGHT TIMES) that of eTrade.
So if you consider that eTrade spent millions of dollars to create the TV ads and even more millions of dollars to air them on TV in order to drive interest, demand, and hopefully new customers, then Drobo can be considered to have gotten the equivalent of 8X more dollars in advertising and media – for FREE using techniques and channels other than TV advertising. So what does that say about the relative value of TV advertising compared to these other, newer techniques?
godaddy vs megan fox
How Megan Fox got the equivalent of $50 million of Superbowl ad spending – for FREE! — the marketing of Megan Fox
godaddy superbowl ad spending led to sharp spikes in search volume every February for the last 5 years straight. Other advertisers who spent on Superbowl ads have similar lift in search volume from the TV advertising.
Source: Google Insights for Search
If you believe that lift in search volume indicates interest and intent and if you consider that each 30-second ad cost $3 million in 2009 (WSJ: NBC Super Bowl Ads to Cost $3 Million) and assuming GoDaddy’s ad did not air more than once, they spent $3 million to get their ad in front of a TON of people and to get people’s attention. Those people who saw the ad and were interested enough to take action went online and searched for more information by typing godaddy into search (see lift in search volume during February of each year) .
If we assume that it took $3 million to generate a certain lift in search we can use multiples to calculate the media dollar equivalent of any lift in search — for example, if godaddy spent $3 million to get X lift in search, then a 2X lift in search would have required $6 million of media (in a very very simplified back of the envelope estimate; it usually would cost more than 2x to get that lift) — i.e. it would have cost at least $6 million in superbowl ad media dollars to achieve a 2X lift in search volume.
So, if we now compare search volume on megan fox side by side with godaddy search volume, we will see that in Feb 2009 Megan Fox was indexing at 21 while godaddy was indexing at 12 (this is normalized to a scale of 0 – 100). So search volume on megan fox indicates she was getting the equivalent value to $6 million of super bowl media ad spend – FOR FREE — roughly 2X the search volume of godaddy in the same time period.
At the peak of her search volume in June 2009 (corresponding to the release of Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen), she was indexing at 100 and godaddy at 7. This is 8x the index of godaddy of 12 during the Feb 2009 time period when they were airing their superbowl ads. This implies that she was getting the search volume that would have required the equivalent to a $24 million super bowl ad spend to achieve — again for FREE!
If you want to research futher, use the following link to bring up Google Insights for Search to see relative search volume
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=godaddy%2Cmegan%20fox&cmpt=q
In February 2008, Megan Fox indexed at 8 and GoDaddy at 8. In 2008, Superbowl ad spots cost only $2.7 million — so she had the equivalent search volume as a paid advertising spending $2.7 million on a Superbowl ad.
In 2007, Godaddy indexed at 6 during Feb 2007 Superbowl. Megan Fox indexed at 43 during the July release of the first Transformers movie — this is an 8X multiple on Superbowl ads that cost $2.6 million — or $21 million
So the perfect “product placement” of Megan Fox in the two Transformers movies garnered her nearly $50 million worth of advertising based on search volume equivalency. This does not even take into account her sustained and increasing search volume, compared to most advertisers’ search volumes which drop right back down to pre-ad levels once the ad is finished airing.
Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars
search volume of various movie and television celebrities is driven by movie or television show; some are hit drive, others have sustaining power
Increasing and sustaining search volume – Megan Fox
Hit Driven – Emma Watson search volume goes with Harry Potter movie search volume, exactly
Spider Man Movie, Kirsten Dunst and Toby Maguire stars – search volume match exactly
Fading Stars – Jessica Alba has some search volume spikes around the time when movies come out, but there is an overall decline in baseline search volume over time.
Fading TV Show – in January of 2006 and 07 there was still significant search volume around the star of Fox’s 24. In 2008 and 09 there was not. Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert)
Flatliners – Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt search volume
The Perfect Babe – Megan Fox (pics)
Megan Fox – The Perfect Babe Product Placement
No, this post is not about Megan Fox. Well, yeah it is. But it’s about the MARKETING of Megan Fox.
Megan Fox has been around in films and TV since 2001 (see filmography below). But it wasn’t until 2007 when she starred in the first Transformers movie that she burst on the scene and became an overnight mega celebrity, especially online (see Google Search Volume chart). If you look at Ford’s search volume during the same period, there was NO lift in search that was detectable — there probably was some lift, but it is simply not detectable.
So Megan Fox went from very very little awareness to not only massive awareness, but also massive demand — people remembered her name and even took action (performed searches on her name). If some product placements would have had only 10% of the success of the “megan fox” product placement, they might actually justify the immense cost a bit better (millions of dollars paid by the advertiser to the movie makers to place products into the storyline of the movie).
And why is she “perfect,” in the marketing sense, of course? Her search volume has not only sustained but also continued to grow. She was not a flash in the pan that went away after the advertising/media dollars stopped or the public interest died off (see the snuggie and etrade search volume charts below).
transformer girl, second girl in transformers, other girl in transformers – Isabel Lucas
About Me
Tags
advertisers
advertising
amp
brand
business
click
com
company
content
cost
day
example
Facebook
gawker
google
information
interest
link
marketing
mdash
number
online
page
post
print
Product
search
search volume
site
social marketing
social networks
something
Source
thing
time
tmpPost
traffic
twitter
use
user
video
volume
way
Web
year
Recent Posts
- iPad on Sale today – only 24% will buy, 76% will wait and see
- Change or Die [Music]
- A Predictable Failure: Kimberly-Clark Offering Kleenex Hand Towels
- 1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity
- 975
- Apple vs Microsoft vs Sony [Graphs]
- This Is Why that Amazing NASA Earth Image Looked So Familiar
- 972
- Please Euthanize This Big Boy Already – How Lack of Innovation Killed Another Giant
- 969
Popular Posts
- HP Mini 311 Nvidia ION Netbook Hackintosh'ed
- Facebook advertising metrics and benchmarks
- What is Web 3.0? Characteristics of Web 3.0
- Samsung 52 inch HDTV $9.99 at BestBuy - purchase receipt below (6:21a eastern time August 12, 2009)
- social media benchmarks
- The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED - Post 1 of 2
- How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits - Post 2 of 2
- Evian baby viral video has much higher ROI than Etrade baby superbowl ad
- The Grand Unified Theory of Marketing(tm) - Digital String Theory
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) - A Metrics "Sacred Cow" That Should be Slaughtered?
Recent Articles by Dr. Augustine Fou
- The ROI for Social Media Is Zero - ClickZ
- What's Wrong With the Net Promoter Score - ClickZ
- How to Do Social Marketing in Heavily Regulated Industries ...
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing No Longer Apply - ClickZ
- ClickZ - News and expert advice for the digital marketer ...
- 11 Most Popular Experts' Columns of 2009 on ClickZ - ClickZ ...
- December 27, 2009 - January 2, 2010 - ClickZ - News and ...
Pages
Archives
- March 2010 (10)
- February 2010 (21)
- January 2010 (12)
- December 2009 (4)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (14)
- September 2009 (6)
- August 2009 (19)
- July 2009 (34)
- June 2009 (11)
- May 2009 (4)
- April 2009 (6)
- March 2009 (13)
- February 2009 (32)
- January 2009 (25)
- December 2008 (1)
- October 2008 (1)
- November 2007 (1)
