I’ve blogged recently about the market reception to the Apple Watch, which seemed to be somewhat less “ecstatic” compared with previous Apple product introductions — at least in the first few weeks after its unveiling.
Now we have several months behind us — as well as some field research that suggests that the Apple Watch is being very well-received by early adopters.
The findings come courtesy of a research panel of 145 Apple Watch owners who were contacted in late July and early August 2015 by consumer market research company 451 Research. The research sample was drawn from the company’s ChangeWave network of ~25,000 business and technology professionals.
The overall satisfaction level with the Apple Watch among these respondents is ~83%, with ~54% stating that they are “very satisfied” with the product.
In terms of how well the watch is performing in relation to owners’ expectations, almost the same percentage (~79%) state that the Apple Watch is meeting them.
The three attributes of the Apple Watch that are most well-liked are these:
Notifications/alerts: ~49% mentioned
Health and fitness monitoring: ~41%
Design aesthetics of the product: ~30%
The three concerns about the Apple Watch mentioned most frequently are these:
Not surprisingly, the Apple Watch poses a competitive threat to more traditional digital watches, as more than four in five respondents report that the Apple Watch has replaced the traditional watches if they had worn one earlier. (On the other hand, about one third of owners didn’t wear anything on their wrist at all before acquiring their Apple Watch.)
Fitness monitors: Odd man out?
The popularity of the Apple Watch’s health and fitness monitoring capabilities portends problems for competing monitors as well. Nearly half of the Apple Watch owners surveyed by 451 Research reported that they have previously planned on purchasing a monitor, but have since decided not to, thanks to the Apple Watch’s functionality.
As for whether the Apple Watch is becoming an indispensible part of the fabric of daily life with these users as compared to being more of a novelty gadget, the behavior is looking a lot more like the former:
Use daily for health and fitness monitoring: ~79% of respondents reported
Send and receive text messages daily: ~63%
Check weather information daily: ~52%
Perhaps the best indication of how satisfied these early adopters are with the Apple Watch is how they responded to the question, “Would you recommend the Apple Watch to a friend or colleague?”
The answer? More than four in five respondents (~83%) answered in the affirmative: ~55% reported “very likely” and ~28% reported “somewhat likely.”
If consumer response continues along the same lines in the upcoming months, it may well mean that the Apple Watch is on the path to gaining impressive adoption figures — and proving the naysayers wrong.
The real proof will be in the sales figures, of course. But seeing these indications of early adopters being quite satisfied ith the product’s performance — and willing to recommend it to friends and colleagues — is a very good first step.
If you have begun using an Apple Watch, I’m sure other readers would be interested to know what appeals to you most about it — and what attributes might not be living up your expectations. Please share your experiences here.
Two reports from advertising research sources released in the past month reveal that the advertising field doesn’t appear to be rebounding in strongly – at least not to same degree as the economy as a whole.
One report, from U.S. Ad Market Tracker, is an index that pools electronic media buys processed by major agency holding companies and their brand marketers.
It’s true that this report shows an increase in the overall ad activity index year-over-year of about 18 points (it’s 184 today … 166 a year ago … and 100 back in the recession year of 2009).
But when we look at the breakdown where most of the advertising growth is coming from, it’s nearly all from a handful of categories: social media advertising, advertising on video, Internet radio, plus ad network marketplaces.
By contrast, search advertising is growing at a much slower rate, and the most “commoditized” segments – particularly online display advertising – are doing little better than treading water.
This isn’t the robust rebound that many business and ad industry observers were expecting to see by 2015.
Over at Kantar Media, the statistics are even less encouraging.
Considering how lethargic in general the U.S. economy has been over that period, to be growing at less than the average is almost an indictment of the industry.
That’s what Kantar Media Chief Research Officer Jon Swallen suggests: a “streak that might have once seemed unimaginable, but now would seem par for the course.”
Second-quarter 2015 data released by Kantar estimates annualized measured media ad spending declines in the neighborhood of 4%.
More to the point, Kantar is seeing increases in just 7 of the 22 individual ad media categories it tracks, led by the same categories U.S. Ad Market Tracker identifies as the most healthy ones.
Perhaps a surprise — considering the overall disappointing numbers — is that Kantar has tracked two analogue categories as experiencing growth: radio and out-of-home advertising.
But print continues to decline at pronounced rates, and Internet display advertising has also officially joined the ranks of media segments that are contracting.
Is the disappointing performance of advertising a function of a weak market overall? Or is it the result of structural changes and the reallocation of promo dollars into different, in some cases non-advertising MarComm vehicles?
I’m not completely sure. It’s true that certain advertising categories that are “newer” ones are attracting more attention (and more dollars). But Kantar’s 2nd Quarter reporting of advertising expenditures by major industry category finds just one – one – segment that has experienced an overall increase year-over-year — pharmaceuticals:
When just one industry segment out of ten is showing an increase, it suggests more than just some restructuring or re-jiggering is going on. Instead, it’s just as likely that the U.S. advertising economy remains stuck in a recession, even if the overall economy has finally emerged from it.
What are your thoughts on the tepid advertising results? Please share your views with other readers.
It’s human nature for people to strive for the most flattering public persona … while confining the “true reality” only to those who have the opportunity (or misfortune) to see them in their most private moments.
It goes far beyond just the closed doors of a family’s household. I know a recording producer who speaks about having to “wipe the bottoms” of music stars — an unpleasant thought if ever there was one.
In today’s world of interactivity and social platforms, things are amplified even more — and it’s a lot more public.
Accordingly, there are more granular data than ever about people, their interests and their proclivities.
The opportunities for marketers seem almost endless. At last we’re able to go beyond basic demographics and other conventional classifications, to now pinpoint and target marketing messages based on psychographics.
And to do so using the very terms and phrases people are using in their own social interactions.
The problem is … a good deal of social media is one giant head-fake.
Don’t just take my word for it. Consider remarks made recently by Rudi Anggono, one of Google’s senior creative staff leaders. He refers to data collected in the social media space as “a two-faced, insincere, duplicitous, lying sack of sh*t.”
Anggono is talking about information he dubs “declared data.” It isn’t information that’s factual and vetted, but rather data that’s influenced by people’s moods, insecurities, social agenda … and any other set of factors that shape someone’s carefully crafted public image.
In other words, it’s information that’s made up of half-truths.
This is nothing new, actually. It’s been going on forever. Cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell put her finger on it years ago when she observed that people lie because they want to tell better stories and to project better versions of themselves.
What’s changed in the past decade is social media, of course. What better way to “tell better stories and project better versions of ourselves” than through social media platforms?
Instead of the once-a-year Holiday Letter of yore, any of us can now provide an endless parade of breathless superlatives about our great, wonderful lives and the equally fabulous experiences of our families, children, parents, A-list friends, and whoever else we wish to associate with our excellent selves.
Between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and even LinkedIn, reams of granular data are being collected on individuals — data which these platforms then seek to monetize by selling access to advertisers.
In theory, it’s a whole lot better-targeted than the frumpy, old fashioned demographic selects like location, age, income level and ethnicity.
But in reality, the information extracted from social is suspect data.
This has set up a big debate between Google — which promotes its search engine marketing and advertising programs based on the “intent” of people searching for information online — and Facebook and others who are promoting their robust repositories of psychographic and attitudinal data.
There are clear signs that some of the social platforms recognize the drawbacks of the ad programs they’re promoting — to the extent that they’re now trying to convince advertisers that they deserve consideration for search advertising dollars, not just social.
In an article published this week in The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today blog, Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s head of monetization, contends that far from being merely a place where people connect with friends and family, Pinterest is more like a “catalogue of ideas,” where people “go through the catalogue and do searches.”
Pinterest has every monetary reason to present itself in this manner, of course. According to eMarketer, in 2014 search advertising accounted for more than 45% of all digital ad spending — far more than ad spending on social media.
This year, the projections are for more than $26 billion to be spent on U.S. search ads, compared to only about $10 billion in the social sphere.
The sweet spot, of course, is being able to use declared data in concert with intent and behavior. And that’s why there’s so much effort and energy going into developing improved algorithms for generating data-driven predictive information than can accomplish those twin goals.
Rudi Anggono
In the meantime, Anggono’s admonition about data mined from social media is worth repeating:
“You have to prod, extrapolate, look for the intent, play good-cop/bad-cop, get the full story, get the context, get the real insights. Use all the available analytical tools at your disposal. Or if not, get access to those tools. Only then can you trust this data.”
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Anggono’s position? Please share your perspectives with other readers here.
According to poll of consumers conducted for Google, more people are concerned about their identity being stolen or their accounts being hacked than someone breaking into their home.
Clearly, people are highly sensitized to the issue of identity theft and various forms of online mischief. The question is, how good are we in protecting ourselves against these threats?
Further Google analysis has determined that the biggest threats come from so-called “manual hijacking,” in which nefarious attackers spend significant time exploiting a single victim, with the near-inevitable result of financial losses.
The incidence of manual hijacking is rare — about nine incidences per million users per day. But the damage can be severe.
The most common way attackers gain illicit access to online accounts is through phishing — sending deceptive e-messages designed to trick recipients into divulging their user names, passwords, and related personal information.
Unfortunately, phishing attacks are working more effectively than people would care to admit.
The most effective attacks — the ones that “look and feel” legitimate — are successful in getting people to act about 45% of the time — typically going to a fake but all-too-genuine-looking web page impersonating a “real” vendor, where the unsuspecting “phishee” is asked to provide personal information.
Incredibly, Google finds that nearly 15% of the people who go to those sites actually end up divulging their personal information.
Then it’s off to the races for the bad guys. Google’s findings show that approximately 20% of the compromised accounts are accessed within 30 minutes of the login information being nabbed.
And the breach isn’t for a just a few seconds, as some people erroneously believe. In actuality, the average amount of time spent trolling around inside an unsuspecting owner’s account is more than 20 minutes. You can bet that those 20 minutes aren’t being spent wandering around “just looking”!
The kinds of things happening inside of those 20 minutes include changing passwords to lock true owners out of the site, searching for pertinent information such as credit card data, SSNs, bank relationships data including account numbers and balances — and even social media account data.
Not only is this information used to fleece the target individual in question, but also to launch new attacks against other people who are discovered within the compromised individual’s own sphere of contacts.
These subsequent phishing attacks are often successful because they appear to be completely legitimate — communications coming from friends or relatives.
Not just successful, but really successful: Google estimates that people targeted from the contact lists of hijacked accounts are more than three times more likely to be successfully hacked themselves.
Keeping a healthy vigilance is what’s required to stymie these “manual hijacking” efforts. My own approach is to delete anything that comes from a purported “known” source if I’m not expecting the e-mail beforehand, without opening it. I figure if it’s important enough, the sender will get in touch with me a second time or in some other fashion.
If I’m particularly suspicious, I might also visit the sender’s website directly (through the web address I already have on file) to see if there’s any corroborating evidence that there is a legitimate attempt to get in touch with me.
The way I figure it, the minor inconvenience and/or delay in conducting business in this fashion is far less problematic than the potentially disastrous consequences associated with identity theft or account hijacking.
Unfortunately, there’s no indication at all that these kinds of “manual hijacking” activities will start declining anytime soon. It’s a very lucrative business for the perpetrators, because even a very small percentage of accounts compromised in this manner represents significant dollars when you consider how many millions of phishing messages are being sent out by these hijackers on the front end.
What are your strategies for counteracting phishing attempts? Please share your thoughts with other readers.
Over the years, I’ve noticed how signature blocks at the bottom of business e-mails have been getting longer and more elaborate.
Remember the days of simply showing an office address, phone, FAX and e-mail? That disappeared a long time ago.
Why it’s happened is all a function of the many ways people can and do choose to communicate today.
For folks in the marketing and sales field, sometimes the contact options go overboard. Not long ago, I received an e-mail pertaining to a business service pitch. Here’s what the sender had included in the signature area at the bottom of his e-mail message:
If you’re a phone person, here’s my mobile number:
If you’re a text person, send a message to my cell:
If you’re an email person, here’s my address:
If you’re an instant message person, here’s my Google ID:
If you’re a Skype person, here’s my handle:
If you’re a Twitter person, here’s my username:
If you’re a Facebook person, here’s my page:
If you’re a face-to-face person, here’s my office location:
The only thing missing was Pinterest, and a FAX number …
Seeing this signature block was a stark reminder of the myriad ways people are connecting with their business and personal contacts.
Nothing new in that, of course — but seeing it presented in one big bundle really drove the point home.
Scott Ginsberg
Later, I discovered that this litany of contact options was first popularized four or five years ago by the business author and blogger Scott Ginsberg. Evidently, others have now picked up and run with the same concept.
Taken together, it’s no wonder people feel busier today than ever before, despite all of the ways in which digital technology purports to simplify communication and make it more efficient.
I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days … but at times, there’s a certain attraction to the idea of not having to be “always on” in “so many places,” no?
It’s only natural for Americans to be somewhat spooked about what’s happening in the financial markets, what with thousand-point drops on the stock exchanges and all.
It’s even more disconcerting to realize that the forces in play are ones that have little to do with the American economy and a lot more to do with Europe and China. (China in particular, where bubbles seem to be bursting all over the place with the fallout being felt everywhere else.)
In times like this, I seek out the thoughts and perspectives of my brother, Nelson Nones, an IT specialist and business owner who has lived and worked outside the United States for nearly 20 years — much of that time spend in the Far East.
To me, Nelson’s thoughts on world economic matters are always worth hearing because he has the benefit of weighing issues from a global perspective instead of simply a more parochial one (like mine).
Nelson Nones
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to ask Nelson a few questions about what’s happening in the Chinese economy, how it is affecting the U.S. economy, and what he sees coming down the road. Here are his perspectives:
PLN: What is your view of the Chinese economy — and what does the future portend?
NMN: I’m a real pessimist when it comes to the current state of the Chinese economy. I also think the Chinese will turn on themselves politically as their economic house of cards is collapsing — so look for a sharp upturn in political and social turmoil as well.
Just as the bubble burst in the U.S. and Europe in 2007-08, it’s bursting now in China — and the rest of East Asia (South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Singapore) are going to get caught in the fallout because of the extent to which their economies are reliant on trade with China.
PLN: What do you look at, specifically, for clues as to future economic movements?
NMN: The barometer to watch is the price of oil. It plummeted in 2007, presaging the “great recession” in the West.
Oil prices began to drop again in 2014. The U.S. oil benchmark fell below $40 per barrel on August 24, 2015, a level not seen since 2009. I believe the underlying root cause is a sharp contraction of East Asian demand due to the economic bubbles bursting over here, coupled with persistently high supply as Middle Eastern oil exporters compete against American producers to protect market share.
PLN: How will these developments affect the U.S. economy?
NMN: The oil bust will continue in the U.S., dragging the economy down. But energy prices will be lower, buoying other parts of the American economy. For instance, the domestic airline sector will benefit and consequential demand for Boeing jets will grow.
U.S. imports — specifically, imports from China and the rest of East Asia — will become cheaper as China and other countries allow their currencies to fall in order to protect their exports.
This is probably a “net-neutral” for the US economy in that American exports will be hurt due to the relatively stronger U.S. Dollar, but American consumers will benefit from lower prices. So, the direct economic impact is likely to be mixed.
PLN: So, why worry?
NMN: The real risk, in my opinion, is a global liquidity crisis. Over the past quarter-century, China and other East Asian countries have accrued enormous wealth. But they didn’t hoard their newfound wealth; they invested it both domestically and overseas.
China has invested ginormous amounts of cash in domestic infrastructure and housing. That money is already spent, and a sizeable part of the investment has already gone to waste in the form of corruption, new housing that nobody wants, underutilized transport infrastructure and non-performing loans made to inefficient state-owned enterprises.
All of this will eventually need to be written off (that’s why their bubble is bursting).
But China has also invested lots of money in overseas financial instruments. Think of the Chinese as the folks who financed the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing program as well as Federal debt in the U.S. But as the Chinese run out of cash at home, they will increasingly need to liquidate their overseas investments just to pay their bills.
This poses a very real threat to the fiscal stability of U.S. and European governments, and to the supply of capital in U.S. and European financial markets.
The Federal Reserve is likely to be caught in a double-bind. On the one hand, if the Fed raises interest rates in response to the reduced supply of capital (as it is widely assumed they will, later this year), they risk choking off the tepid U.S. recovery currently underway.
This would also cause the U.S. Dollar to strengthen further, thereby exacerbating the negative impact of the Chinese bust by making U.S. exports less competitive in global markets.
On the other hand, if the Fed leaves interest rates where they are (basically zero), then they won’t be able to attract enough capital to roll over the public debt that the Chinese are trying to liquidate. In other words, the Fed risks a “run on the bank.”
The Fed can deal with this by printing more money (more or less what the Chinese did in 2007-8), but this would inevitably introduce inflationary pressures in the U.S. It would also lengthen the time it takes for the Chinese to right their ship, because it will put downward pressure on the U.S. Dollar, thereby constraining whatever the East Asians can do to boost exports.
My guess is that the Federal Reserve will “blink” and keep interest rates at zero (and also print more money to pay off the Chinese) in hopes that (somewhat) cheaper imports will offset (some of) the inflationary impact of printing more money.
This is equivalent to kicking the can down the road.
PLN: Do you see any impact on the 2016 Presidential race in the United States?
NMN: As a result of kicking the can down the road, I foresee little impact on the 2016 U.S. Presidential race — but watch out in 2020 when the hangover is well underway.
Alternatively if the Fed raises interest rates, I suspect the Democratic Party candidate will be more vulnerable because the short-term economic pain will be much higher in the U.S. The incumbent party will get most of the blame. Fair or not, that’s just the way bread-and-butter issues play out in American politics.
PLN: What about unrest in China — might that have political repercussions in America?
NMN: The way I see it, political or social turmoil in China will have zero impact on the U.S. Presidential race. Americans of nearly every political stripe or ideology dislike or distrust Chinese governance, yet unlike the “China lobby” of the Cold War era, they have no appetite to intervene in what they rightly perceive to be internal Chinese affairs.
Or they’re clueless about events in East Asia. Or they just don’t care.
So there you have it — a view from the Far East. If you have other perspectives, please share them with our readers here.
______________
Update (8/28/15): A few days after this post was uploaded, I received this follow-up from Nelson:
Just as I had predicted, check out this link. Federal debt is getting more expensive to finance, because the drop in demand for U.S. Treasury bonds (caused by the Chinese liquidation apparently underway) is driving yields up. According to the article, “The liquidation of such a large position, if it continues, could wreak havoc on the Treasuries market.”
Now look here: http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/federal-reserve-quantitative-easing-tape. It’s an easily understandable explanation of how the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) program worked. Essentially the Fed, like China, stepped in to buy Treasuries also. The Fed also bought mortgage-backed securities.
The Fed’s purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities now make up ~85% of the Fed’s assets. The Fed hasn’t indicated what it will do when these assets mature, but if it doesn’t roll over this debt (or a portion thereof) then we can expect Treasury yields to rise yet again. Even if the Fed decides to keep interest rates where they are, at near-zero, rising Treasury yields could bring on a liquidity crunch within the private sector as capital is increasingly drawn away from private investments (loans, corporate bonds and equities) to government-issued bonds paying higher yields with little risk.
Facing the Chinese liquidation, this is why I suspect the Fed will opt to roll over its holdings of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, and keep interest rates at near-zero, at least through the 2016 Presidential election cycle. The Bloomberg article cited above describes QE as an alternative to printing more money, but in the end it’s really the same thing.
Public colleges and universities (out-of-state residents): ~$23,000
Public colleges and universities (in-state residents): ~$9,100
Community colleges: ~$3,300
In fact, the difference between the highest and lowest cost averages comes out to a factor of ten.
Averages are more difficult to calculate for online college institutions, where the annual cost ranges widely from as low as $5,000 all the way up to $25,000 or so, according to The Guide to Online Schools.
With such a disparity in college education costs, one might think that public perceptions of the value of the degrees granted by them would likewise show differences based on the type of institution.
But a recently completed national opinion study tells us otherwise. A telephone research survey conducted in June 2015 by the Gallup organization queried ~1,500 Americans age 18 or over about their attitudes toward college education.
Among the most interesting findings is the perception of community colleges: Two-thirds of the respondents rate the quality of education that community colleges offer as “excellent” or “good.”
For four-year colleges, the percentage figure for excellent/good quality was only slightly higher: ~70%.
Considering the vast difference in the financial outlay required to attend a four-year school, community college education is looking mighty attractive, indeed.
Tempering this finding are the Gallup survey’s respondents who possessed advanced degrees themselves. They’re more likely to rate four-year institutions higher than community colleges on quality (a nine percentage point difference).
And of course, community colleges do face challenges such as their track record on lower graduation rates, plus the sometimes challenging process and procedures in successfully transitioning students from two-year to four-year schools.
Still, the perception of near-parity in education quality is striking — and it’s not very different from the findings Gallup has observed since beginning to survey the American public on this topic two years ago.
I don’t doubt that some families will be sharpening their pencils and doing new cost/benefit calculations based on the results of this Gallup survey.
But where a perceived difference in quality continues to persist is in online education. Survey respondents were about half as likely to rate the quality of Internet-based college programs as “excellent” or “good.”
While respondents don’t fault online programs for lacking a broad curriculum, or even for the value provided for the cost of enrolling, online education is seen as lacking strength in three key areas:
Reliable testing and grading
The quality of instruction
The value of the degree to prospective employers
But there’s another way to look at it. Internet-based higher education is slipping through the door and becoming “mainstream” not just because of the online programs such as those offered by Capella University and the University of Phoenix, but because of the burgeoning online coursework being offered by traditionally brick-and-mortar institutions.
With that growing practice, I predict it’s only a matter of time before the perception of online higher learning will match the higher ratings that are already being given to community colleges, public and private institutions.
It’s the strongest signal yet that Google’s vaunted business model is spectacularly successful for its core business … but that it’s as ineffective as most other companies when it comes to building the next silver-bullet product or service.
Even Google’s YouTube business unit is likely only a break-even proposition, despite years of concentrated attention, enhancements and tweaking. According to Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak:
“We estimate YouTube runs at a 0% profit margin … YouTube’s profitability could [actually] be lower than we estimate, but since it likely varies significantly from quarter to quarter, and until we have more visibility into the business, we believe break-even is a safe assumption.”
It’s likely we wouldn’t have even these clues were it not for the recently announced creation of Alphabet, a new umbrella structure for Google’s various business segments: search, which is an estimated 96%+ of its business volume, and then everything else.
This development is providing more “transparency” that enables investment houses like Morgan Stanley to come up with back-of-the-napkin rough figures like this:
As time goes on, it will be interesting to see if Alphabet can demonstrate that the corporation is more than a one-trick pony.
Regardless of that outcome, the way that Google has cornered a ginormous $60 billion+ chunk of the advertising business is amazing – and laudable. Fair dues on that.
If you think your airline or hotel rewards program is “merely mediocre” … you’re likely not alone.
U.S. News & World Report’s just-published annual listing of the best and worst rewards programs in the airline and hotel industries is confirming what many people already suspect: some of America’s biggest loyalty programs are also some of the least liked.
Let’s start with the airlines. USN&WR ranked the ten largest programs on a variety of attributes including the ease of redeeming points for free flights and hotel stays.
The three best performing airline rewards programs do include two with high participation rates — American and Southwest:
#1: Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
#2: American Airlines AAdvantage
#3: Southwest Rapids Rewards
But three other programs, including two of the biggest ones — United and Delta — bring up the rear:
#8: United MileagePlus
#9: Delta SkyMiles
#10: FREE SPIRIT
Ranked in between are four other airline rewards programs, generally ones with fewer participants because of the smaller size and narrower geographic reach of the airlines involved:
#4: JetBlue TrueBlue
#5: HawaiianMiles
#6: Virgin America Elevate
#7: Frontier EarlyReturns
As for which airline rewards programs experienced significant changes in their rankings between this report and last year’s, the biggest shift was JetBlue, which fell from the top-ranked position in 2014 to fourth place in the latest ranking.
Hotel Rewards Programs
USN&WR took the same approach with hotel rewards programs, but evaluated a larger group of 18 programs. The five best-ranked hotel programs are the following ones:
#1: Marriott Rewards
#2: Wyndham Rewards
#3 (tie): Best Western Rewards and Club Carlson
#5: IHG Rewards Club
Marriott’s top ranking is a repeat from the 2014 USN&WR rankings, and it’s due to maintaining high strength in the three-legged stool of critical factors: having an extensive hotel network; a relatively lower requirement for earning and redeeming free hotel stays; and generous “extras” as part of its membership perks.
Also noteworthy was Wyndham Rewards ascent to the #2 position from #7 a year earlier. Its dramatic improvement was attributable to changing its program policies to allow members to redeem a night’s hotel stay for a flat rate of 15,000 points across the board.
At the other end of the scale were these low-ranked rewards programs:
#14: Kimpton Karma Rewards
#15: Le Club Accorhotels
#16: Fairmont President’s Club
#17: iPrefer
#18: Loews YouFirst
The worst programs score that way because in comparative terms, they lack easy ways to earn points. Also, in many cases their geographic coverage and/or property diversity is lacking.
[Perhaps the bottom-ranked program will need to change its name to Loews YouLast …]
For the record, the hotel rewards programs that came in the middle of the pack are these:
What about your personal experience with various airline and hotel programs? Do you have one or two particular favorites? Or ones you’ve decided to stay away from at all costs? Please share your perspectives with other readers.
“I don’t want a ‘relationship’ with my brands. I want the best products at the best price.” — Jane Q. Public
In the era of interactive marketing and social media, there’s often a good deal of talk about how certain brands are successfully engaging their customers and creating an environment of “brand love” — or at least “brand stickiness.”
As a person who’s been involved in marketing and advertising for well over a quarter-century, I tend to treat these pronouncements with a little less open-mouthed awe than others.
I get how when a brand is particularly admired, it becomes the “go-to” one when people are in the market for those particular products and services.
But the idea that there’s real “brand love” going on — in a sense similar to people forging close relationships with the people in their lives — to me that’s more far-fetched.
The marketing research I’ve encountered appears to refute the notion as well.
Case in point: In an annual index of “meaningful brands” published by the Havas MarComm agency, the research finds that very few consumers cite brands they “can’t live without.”
The 2015 edition of the Havas Meaningful Brands Index has now been released … and the results are true to form. Among U.S. consumers, only about 5% of the 1,000 brands evaluated by Havas across a dozen industries would be truly missed if they were no longer available.
It’s a big survey, too: Havas queried ~300,000 people across 34 countries in order to build the 2015 index. Broadly speaking, the strength of brands is higher in countries outside the United States, reflecting the fact that trust levels for leading brands in general are higher elsewhere — very likely because lesser known brands or “generics” have a greater tendency to be subpar in their performance.
But even considering the brand scores globally, three out of four consumers wouldn’t miss any brands if they suddenly disappeared from the market.
What are the exceptions? Looking at the brands that scored highest gives us clues as to what it takes to be a brand that people truly care about in their lives.
Samsung is ranked the #1 brand globally. To me, it makes perfect sense that the manufacturer of the most widely sold mobile device on the planet would generate a strong semblance of “brand love.”
Even in the remotest corners of the world, Samsung has made the lives of countless people easier and better by placing a powerful computer in their pocket. It’s only logical that Samsung is a brand many people would sorely miss if it disappeared tomorrow.
The second strongest brand in the Havis index is Google. No surprise there as well, because Google enables people to research and find answers on pretty much anything that ever crosses their minds. Again, it’s a brand that most people wouldn’t want to do without.
But beyond these, it’s plain to see that nearly all brands just aren’t that consequential to people’s lives.
With this in mind, are companies and brands spending too much energy and resources attempting to get customers to “care” about them more than simply to have a buying preference when the time comes to purchase products and services?
Related to that, is adding more “meaning” to a brand the answer to getting more people to express brand love? Or does it have far more to do with having products that meet a need … work better than competitors’ offerings … and are priced within the means of more people to purchase?
Havas — and common sense — suggests it’s the latter.
Do that stuff right, and a company will earn brand loyalty.
All the rest is just froth on the beer … icing on the cake … good for the psychological bennies.
I’ve blogged recently about the market reception to the Apple Watch, which seemed to be somewhat less “ecstatic” compared with previous Apple product introductions — at least in the first few weeks after its unveiling.
The findings come courtesy of a research panel of 145 Apple Watch owners who were contacted in late July and early August 2015 by consumer market research company 451 Research. The research sample was drawn from the company’s ChangeWave network of ~25,000 business and technology professionals.
Nones Notes 