Not another marketing body, surely?!

Raymond Snoddy on FaceTime, the newly launched marketing body for the ‘multi-billion pound live events industry’ that has “been born into an overcrowded world of media marketing agencies with multi-million research budgets and all saying Me, Me, Me simultaneously”…

There is only one rational response to today’s news that another marketing body has been created to plump up their particular media as the best thing since sliced bread. A long groan – followed by the words: “Not another one.”

You know just what they will do. There will be yet another piece of ground-breaking research, which proves comprehensively that their medium is better, most cost-effective than television, radio, newspapers and outdoor combined. And if the research can’t be plausibly pushed far enough in the required direction then there is the combination ploy.

Our splendid medium in combination with television, radio, newspapers or outdoor boosts reach much more than you would have expected and provides quite exceptional ROI. And here’s the absolute proof.

So welcome then to FaceTime, the newly launched marketing body for the “multi-billion pound live events industry”.

Naturally it bursts into the world fully formed with the industry’s “first-ever psychological study of the power of live”, which uses innovative new research methods.

The new marketing baby has been born into an overcrowded world of media marketing agencies with multi-million research budgets and all saying Me, Me, Me simultaneously.

Recent activity from Thinkbox, the television marketing body, includes a study showing that internet-based businesses represent the fastest growing TV advertising category. They have apparently increased their “TV advertising investment” by £170 million in five years.

Then the Newspaper Marketing Agency made their big splash in recent weeks with the ANNAs, the awards for creative newspaper advertising – £65,000 in prize money to be spread around with the Winners of Winners going to the Honda “Back to Work” ad.

FaceTime will fight to get shelf-space but its first effort involving research into “implicit” and “explicit” feelings of both trade buyers and consumers to shows such Masterchef Live, World Travel Market and The Boat Show is at least intriguing.

The work by Cog Research, which uses neuroscience and delves into the subconscious mind, unsurprisingly reveals how attending such events has positive uplift in people’s attitudes towards such events and the brands exhibiting.

If it were not so we would not be hearing too much about said research.

The results are nonetheless worth paying attention to. Before a show 32% of visitors believed events were “the best marketing” because you can interact with the products. This rose dramatically to 74% post show. This included an uplift in positive subconscious feelings for one in five.

This gives rise to a small niggle about what was going on in the subconscious feelings of the rest – four out of five people.

Likewise before an event 36% of visitors say they think attending will make it easier to buy, a percentage that doubles after the event with the same proportion – one fifth – showing an implicit/subconscious gain.

FaceTime can also claim that “Live Competes Hard Against TV”, with one in three people experiencing an uplift in positive attitudes after attending an event versus only one in four after watching a standard 30-second TV advert.

Such an unbalanced comparison and the fact that the difference is not overwhelming represents another niggle.  But perhaps the biggest niggle of all represents the self-selected nature of the raw material – the audience.

It may be a variant of the marriage statistics conundrum.  Parents who are married are 10 times more likely to stay together than those who are not. Whoopee. Society is saved. All you have to do is bribe, brow-beat or cajole everyone to get married.

Except that the research is meaningless because it deals in self-selected samples. Those who chose to marry are, almost by definition, more committed to staying together and therefore there is a higher chance that they will.

Not everyone goes to trade shows. It requires cost and effort and they may be implicitly different from those who chose not to go and subconsciously more willing to be impressed by what they have seen.

But what the hell. FaceTime is well up to the usual standard of media marketing bodies.

And as Jayne Stephens, sponsorship director of Starcom Mediavest, who might be implicitly, subconsciously well disposed to events, put it: “The power of face to face engagement cannot be underestimated.”

She added: “This research reinforces our belief that experiential solutions should not be silo-ed as a stand-alone communication, but instead form an integral and valuable delivery component within a brand’s broader communication plan.”

Indeed.  But you still have to be a little bit cautious of all this research.

The Times was happy to print a story recently about a Microsoft study that showed print advertising was more than twice as effective for large retailers as television.

Unfortunately, a much larger Pricewaterhousecoopers study conducted over 10 years showed that television advertising delivered £4.50 for every pound spent and that campaigns that used TV were 25% more effective than those which did not.

The great thing about research is you pay your money and can prove almost anything you want to.