As football season draws to an end and reports abound about $2
million price tags for 30 seconds of "Super Advertising," a new
survey shows that consumers have short memories when it comes to
product launches and the advertising that surrounds them. Instead,
the product launches that were most successful in 2002 used a
combination of traditional marketing and advertising, as well as
PR, event marketing, sampling and other tactics. Harris Interactive
and Schneider & Associates (a Boston-based PR firm) surveyed
4,214 adults about the most memorable new products of 2002. One
third of respondents couldn't name any. When given a little
prompting with 25 products launched last year, respondents ranked
Vanilla Coke, Cool Mint Listerine PocketPaks (winner of the 2002
Platinum PR Award for Best Product Launch) and Pepsi Blue as the
top three they remembered clearly.
Only 46 percent of respondents noted advertising as a factor in
their decision to buy any of the products launched in '02. Other
factors that ranked highly were recommendations from family and
friends and a need for the product. (Schneider: Amy Whiteside,
617/536-3300)