• Report 127
• May 2024

Not all Category Entry Points (CEPs) are equally valuable. The more often a CEP occurs, the greater the likelihood that category buyers will use this cue to think of brands in buying contexts. However, commonality has two dimensions: how many category buyers experience the CEP at all (CEP penetration) and how often the CEP is experienced (CEP frequency). Which matters most? In general the penetration of CEP usage among the wider category buyer market can be used to determine the attractiveness of a CEP for a brand to message and product portfolio development.

• Beyond :30 Study 89
• May 2024

Key Question: How does eyes on screen vary across media?

Advertisers make media decisions based on reach data (e.g., ratings, impressions) and performance data (e.g., clicks). But little is known about how media and devices differ in how long viewers look at ads. Eye-tracking results compare eyes on screen across media on different devices.

• Report 126
• February 2024

The most frequent reason marketers give for a pack re-design is the need to modernise or update. In this report, we examine what modernisation looks like, and how consumers react to modernised packs in comparison to the prior, presumably outdated versions.

• Report 125
• November 2023

We investigate how operating within service categories affects Distinctive Asset building. We find 88% of assets used by service brands fall into existing asset type classifications developed for packaged goods brands. The remaining 12% of assets have not been previously documented and we describe them as: Access assets, Promotion asset, App Icons. We identify the service brand asset types with the highest brand ownership, and the types with the most competition in memory.

• Beyond :30 Study 88
• October 2023

Key Question: Is news a good context for advertising?

Previous research has revealed mixed effects of a news context on advertising effectiveness, such as brand recall. The effects of news may vary depending on the medium and device used. This study compared matched ads for the same brands in traditional and digital news media, using a field experiment to manipulate ad exposure, and measure its effects on various ad-effectiveness measures.

• Report 124
• September 2023

In this report we investigate the idea of CEP ownership. We find that unique links between a brand and a CEP in category buyer memory are rare as most category buyers link multiple brands to each CEP. There is no evidence that owning or strong positioning on CEPs is linked to brand success.

• Report 123
• August 2023

We explored the primary objectives of targeted advertising and found that brand growth and equity were the most paramount to marketers. Analysis of 40 target markets and brand and category buying data indicates that, on average, target markets only encompass half of a brand’s existing buyer base. Actionable recommendations to improve targeted advertising decisions are provided.

• Report 121
• July 2023

For seven different types of co-advertising including advertising with another portfolio variant, retailer, non-profit, bundle partner, sporting event, and competitor, we find no evidence that co-advertising with another brand automatically leads to greater advertising memory and that category buyers rarely remember both brands.

• Report 122
• August 2023

While colour is often used on pack to distinguish different variants (e.g., red for cherry flavour, gold for premium), this research shows that the colours used by brands rarely match the colours expected by consumers.

• Report 120
• July 2023

This report examines whether the famous ‘Net Promoter Score’ can predict revenue growth. Our evidence and a review of 20 past studies suggests NPS is not a leading indicator of growth, and managers should be cautious about spending on lifting NPS scores, and avoid over-reacting to changes in NPS scores.