IAB FMCG brand engagement studies

IAB Brand Engagement Studies in Haircare and Soft Drinks

Online can drive engagement at a very deep level, giving users fun and engaging things to do while getting the brand message across. The IAB have done four studies in to brand engagement with the market research agency Aevolve. Two of these were in the FMCG market, one looked at haircare and the other at soft drinks. The studies used qualitative and quantitative research to find out what online contributed to the brand engagement mix. Brand engagement is defined as the combined effect of communications engagement (engaging with the advertising and what it is saying) and media engagement (engaging with the media that you are watching, for example TV or the internet).

Mary Jeffries, Aevolve explains the studies in the following way:

“Other studies had focused on online display advertising in isolation, rather than as part of the total media mix. What was missing was an evaluation of how online display advertising works as part of an overall communications plan to affect how people engage with brands: was it capable of changing measures such as consideration, preference, intention and advocacy or was it just an efficient means of eliciting responses? Using our unique approach we measure the impact of both online and other marketing ‘contact points’ on consumers’ brand engagement directly and indirectly through key brand associations.”

The following is a snapshot of what we found:

Haircare

• Display advertising contributed 8.5% to the communications effect on brand engagement

• Websites contributed to 26.5% of the communications effect on brand engagement

• Those who saw the brands’ display advertising were 3.5 times more likely to visit the brands’ website

Soft Drinks

• Online contributed 24% of the total communications effect to brand engagement

• Taking into account the average % of spend that is allocated to online for soft drinks media spend we found that online advertising was 3 times as effective per £ of spend against the average

Ultimately the aim of all brand communications and marketing investment is to drive interaction with the brand and influence sales. There are a number of different things that can affect the engagement a consumer has with a brand – including communications such as advertising, point of sales communication and PR as well as product service, product quality, performance, experience, heritage, trust etc. What these studies did was put a benchmark value against the way that online can work with other media and other engagement drivers to influence people’s awareness and perception of FMCG brands.