Out of the Box

Why Recall is so Important

By Menachem Lubinsky on September 07 2009

Anyone involved in market research or in branding has heard the term recall ad infinitum. It isn’t just a marketing word to be thrown around loosely in a lexicon that is often abused or at least confused. Recall means that your investment in getting a customer to remember your brand has successfully recalled your image or message. Marketers will tell you when there is lapse in recall, it also means that the brand is lagging.

That’s right. That’s why Coca Cola advertises when it is the leading beverage in the world. Since you have many choices, it is important that you remember their messages and how it makes life better for you. Failure means remembering the Coke ad but thinking that it is Pepsi. What waste.

Market researchers have long debated how to achieve the best results for good recall. One researcher actually put a number to the frequency a customer must see an ad to affect a proper recall. It is three. Then they debated whether the ads had to completely be identical or perhaps can be variations of the ad. Obviously there are no perfect answers but they all agreed that the key elements in the graphics have to be the same.

Several years ago a client with a food product who had been in business for nearly 30 years decided to take the plunge into the world of marketing and advertising. He actually spent the money to determine customer perceptions of his brand. No one could remember the color of his logo or the typeface that he used. Why? In the past five years, he had different graphic elements on his packaging. In fact, each of his products had a design that was dissimilar.

The three time recall has support from consumer behavior specialists who have actually studied people reading or viewing ads. They say that that while an ad may penetrate the mind on the first try, in most cases it took them three times and sometimes more to recognize and to recall any elements of the ads.

I read some of those studies years ago, particularly in trying to determine whether a marketer was better off focusing on one product or many. The evidence was clear that if the products came from the same family, the chances for recall were good. But if they were diverse and perhaps unrelated, it only contributed to confusion.

A businessman who was caught flatfooted by the recession asked me recently if adding a new product would hurt him. In other words if you are known for selling cameras, could it hurt the brand if you suddenly started selling air conditioners?. Most marketers will tell you that a business planning such an expansion needs to tread water carefully. Since the entrepreneur would certainly not want to loose his share of the camera business, he would have to find a way to promote his core product and slowly expand to the air conditioners. “The people who brought you cameras are now pleased to bring you air conditioners,” would simply not work.

It triggers all kinds of thoughts in the consumer’s mind. They will worry whether the quality of the cameras will continue to be the same. Will the salespeople now not have enough time to properly explain the cameras? Should they possibly change to someone who still focuses on cameras?

That is not to say that companies have not successfully made the transition and still did not hurt recall. If the business decision is that the air conditioners are necessary to assure profits, then all the promotional material needs to continue to focus on the quality of the cameras and on the air conditioners. The problem is that some businesses often experiment without having firm evidence that they will succeed. In that case they need to continue to promote cameras, so as not to loose their core business.

I have seen very clever ads that are recalled for the wrong reason. People may remember the joke but not the product because somehow there was no connection. Geico has recently resorted to humor, but has kept Geico in the story even if there is no direct link. The age of hoping that the message carries the brand without the brand is over. Sound bites and quick visuals have all but changed that.

Recall is what many used to call a game of associations. If you say fancy cars, the answer is likely to be Cadillac, although the brand is far from the poster care for fancy vehicles and the likelihood is that you may see more Mercedes and Lexus cars nowadays. But somehow this branding has transcended generations because of a strong recall program in the branding campaign of Cadillac.

What this means is that hammering home a message or a visual can have long term recall benefits. If Google decided to open a chain of grocery stores tomorrow, it would be instantly recognized, thanks to its recall success..

If you think that the customer will get bored of the message or visual and therefore suggest change, think recall. It can make you big money!

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.