Study: New Brand, Upper Hand

Online advertising may have the biggest branding impact for new product launches, according to cumulative data from independent research firm Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms database.

Dynamic Logic reported yesterday that, while interactive is an effective medium for both existing and new products, better branding results are consistently achieved by campaigns for products that are just hitting the market. The advantage of new launches was highest in the “aided brand awareness” metric, but it was also present in the other three standard metrics the company measures: message association, brand favorabilty, and purchase intent.

The assessment was based on accumulated research conducted and compiled over the course of five years by Dynamic Logic. During that time, approximately 1,200 campaigns were logged in a database and flagged as either new or existing products (among various other attributes). Total respondents number approximately 1.25 million. This is the first time the company has explicitly broken out the numbers based on that sorting mechanism.

“A lot of traditional marketers are still, despite how much information is out there, timid,” said Dynamic Logic Marketing Manager Christina Goodman. “I think this is another point that could help them take a look at the Web for new product launches.”

Among Dynamic Logic’s four metrics, new products had the greatest upper hand in the area of aided brand awareness. In that measurement category, lift for brands just being launched came in at 7.1 percent on average, compared to 3.4 percent for an existing product. The brand favorability metric offered the least benefit to newly launched products, with a mere .4 percent boost over incumbent brands. The other two metrics, message association and purchase intent, gave new products .8 percent and .5 percent advantages respectively.

The firm offered several tempered explanations for the findings. Top among them was that it’s simply not as hard to positively impact awareness for a spanking new offering.

“It is easier to ‘move the needle’ with lower baselines than higher ones,” the company said.

Dynamic Logic also said new product advertising may be more likely to focus on brand and message, whereas existing products tend presume awareness and focus instead on “lower funnel” persuasion metrics such as purchase intent. The firm also suggested new launches are more liberal in their use of rich media.

Dynamic Logic said results were not adjusted for exposure frequency, demographics, ad size, ad sector or other factors that may contribute to brand lift.