How Brands Can Build a Successful App Strategy

12 Lessons From Benjamin Moore, Bank of America, Kraft and Others

by Kunur Patel
Published: September 23, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- More than a year into the age of the iPhone app, brands are starting to get on board -- and best practices are emerging. At Wednesday's Apps for Brands event in New York, marketers taught other marketers what's worked for them. Here are 12 lessons culled from the day, during which MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman and marketers from Kraft, Bank of America, Benjamin Moore and AKQA convened to talk about what they've learned from their early, successful forays into the space.

Apps must be real-time
People's expectations of apps, especially paid ones, are high. When it comes to streaming video or stats, don't provide content on mobile that's inferior to what the web or TV offers. It must update in real time. "The notion of the one-minute delay is unacceptable," said Bob Bowman, president-CEO, MLB.com. "If you don't have real-time content, you're dead."

Make it easy for consumers to pay
Take advantage of properties such as iTunes and mobile providers such as Verizon that have the infrastructure and back-end know-how to take payments from app users. When it comes to MLB.com's paid app, the vast majority of purchases come through tried-and-true mobile-commerce providers instead of directly through MLB.com. "Partner with people who know how to collect money," said Mr. Bowman. And when it comes to figuring out how much to charge, it's easier to drop the price than to increase it, or move from free to paid. "If it doesn't work, take it down, rework it, try it again," he said.

Integrate feedback quickly
People will point out flaws in your app on the web. That feedback is an asset. Adjust your app as quickly as possible and send through an update. "All feedback is important, but on our app it's especially valuable," said Mr. Bowman. "When we went from offering two free [live-streamed] games to one, we heard about it immediately. We went back to two games the next day."

'This is not the wired web'
Mr. Bowman urges that marketers and publishers to not make the same mistakes in mobile that have been made on the internet -- and that means forcing ads into every spot they can. On mobile, click-through isn't the only metric that matters. Are people recommending your app? Or trashing it on Twitter? "We measure click-throughs, but we don't measure pissed off," said Mr. Bowman, referring to when MLB put an intrusive ad into its At Bat app.

People will pay for value...
Zagat's iPhone app is the 77th top-grossing app in the Apps Store, out of 58,000. MLB charges $9.99 to download the At Bat app, 99 cents to watch streaming video of games; it has 400,000 users. And Kraft charged 99 cents for its iFood app, promoting the notion that what it's offering was something of value. Additionally, pointed out Ed Kaczmarek, Kraft's director of innovation and new services, making an app paid allows you to offer future in-app commerce and subscription opportunities that just aren't available in a free app.

...But free works to drives sales for your endemic product
Benjamin Moore's Ben Color Capture app was built to build brand awareness for its subbrand Ben, as well as to drive traffic to stores. "We haven't accomplished anything until we sell paint," said Carl Minchew, director of product development, Benjamin Moore. The app lets users snap a photo of something in the world and than matches colors in the photo to paint shades in the brand's library. If that inspires a paint purchase, the app uses GPS to direct users to the nearest retailer.

Apps need to be part of an integrated message
AKQA, a digital agency that has created apps for clients such as Gap, Nike and Smirnoff, sells apps as part of marketing ideas and integrated campaigns, instead of as one-off projects, said Rei Inamoto, the agency's chief creative officer. The app then becomes integrated with the agency's thinking or larger programs, instead of something a freelancer or developer could do cheaper.

Utility, frequency and viral distinguish long-term success
They are the qualities that get an app noticed in the new app economy, said Aileen Lee, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Partner, who works with the firm's $100 million iFund. For apps to become a sustainable business, they need to provide instant utility, have a high frequency of use and encourage word of mouth and network pass-along. How rare these qualities? IFund has funded only seven mobile ideas out of more than 3,300 proposals. Kraft's Mr. Kaczmarek is also valuing frequency: "Engagement is better than downloads," he said. "I'd rather have 100 engaged consumers than 1,000 downloads."

People find apps through other people
"Word of mouth is powerful in the app world," said Matt Galligan, CEO and co-founder of SimpleGeo, formerly CrashCorp. "If you talk to someone with similar interests, you can find the right app for you." Similarly, Mr. Kaczmarek said that word of mouth, social media and PR made up the most successful marketing for the brand's iFood app. Kraft also used e-mail, traditional print and online banners to drive app downloads. "Your point of differentiation is so important to cut through the clutter," he said. "No matter how small that point may be, it's important to highlight it."

Use existing assets to market your app
Reach out to your existing customers to trial your app using proprietary media, as both Kraft and Bank of America did. The latter promotes its iPhone app on BankofAmerica.com and via its phone-based customer service force, which advises callers to use the app to access 24/7 information on their accounts.

App marketing needs to be targeted
"We're not doing big blowout campaigns for our app," said Jen McDonald, digitial marketing exec, Bank of America. "We're being very targeted on mobile." And that kind of advertising -- such as targeting mobile ads to particular types of handset users -- has resulted in at least 50,000 downloads of Bank of Amercia's mobile app, she said. As the number of apps in the App store has grown, that strategy won't change. And rather than spread the ad dollars allocated to promoting an app out over a longer period of time, do shorter marketing blitzes, advised Tony Nethercutt, VP-sales at AdMob. That will create surges in downloads. "Getting ranked in the app store is critical -- it's the No. 1 way people discover new apps, but that ranking is based on downloads," he said.

Don't discount the iPod Touch
"It's a sleeping giant," said Kraft's Mr. Kaczmarek. According to AdMob metrics, for example, iPod Touch users download 16.4 free apps and two paid apps per month; the average iPhone user downloads 7.6 free and 2.6 paid apps.

~ ~ ~
Abbey Klaassen contributed to this report.

Want Responses? Try SMS-Based Calls to Action

Chicago's Shedd Aquarium Finds Texting Beat Out Web in Direct-TV Spot

by Rita Chang
Published: September 21, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- SMS may lack sizzle, but it can deliver the goods if provoking your audience to action is the goal, as Chicago's Shedd Aquarium recently discovered from its summer test campaigns.

To herd visitors to its new Fantasea aquatic show, Shedd Aquarium put a couple of direct-response tactics to the test to see if consumers preferred SMS or web-based calls to action.

At the end of 30-second spots that aired on Chicago's NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates, the aquarium announced a contest with prizes that included a hotel stay and VIP seats for the Fantasea premiere. The commercials were identical across the networks except for the calls to action: All the ads directed viewers to a website to register for the contest, except one spot, which gave viewers an additional mobile option to enter the contest by sending a text message to a special code.

The SMS call to action generated 325% more entries than the web-based call-to-action, making up 52% of the total entries, though it ran in only 25% of the ads.

To Shedd's assistant marketing director, Jay Geneske, the results show that the "phone is always with you, it's nearby and immediate," even when you're watching TV. Shedd also ran a one-day print campaign in a local paper with a text call-to-action, yielding the highest or near highest number of responses for a single-day print piece, Mr. Geneske said.

"SMS reveals a greater sense of urgency," said Jed Alpert, founder of Mobile Commons, the marketing agency that managed the campaign's SMS piece. "It's more actionable and convenient, and people have a more direct connection with their phones."

Additionally, when people are watching TV, they're more likely to have their cellphones near them than a computer.

Fresh impressions
"The mobile phone gives the consumer the ability to respond to the advertisement in real time, while the impression is still fresh in their heads," said Aaron Watkins, a former mobile-marketing agency executive turned independent consultant.

To get consumers to respond via the web, on the other hand, means they not only have to be interested in the ad but need to recall the website address later if they were not near a computer when the ad ran. The likelihood that they will remember the address drops "exponentially," given the nonstop barrage of messages and media that hit people every day, Mr. Watkins said.

Mobile works best when overlaid with mass media such as TV and radio, because they radiate that much more reach, compared to, say, mobile apps or display banners, Mr. Alpert said.

More than 90% of U.S. handsets are SMS-capable, with the number of text messages starting to outpace voice calls in 2007, according to Nielsen.

For consumers to text in, however, the offer has to be compelling and valuable, whether it's entertainment, information or access to something special. Shedd's campaign worked well because the short code was part of the narrative and script, rather than an afterthought of just slapping a code at the end of the commercial.

Mr. Alpert said it cost Shedd less than $10,000 to trial SMS in its TV campaigns. Given the relatively low outlay, marketers may want to consider SMS trials in their out-of-home and broadcast campaigns if for nothing else than to capture users for their mobile-marketing database. Mr. Alpert said over the hundreds of mobile campaigns his agency has managed, an average 85% of those who opt into a campaign will respond to more requests for information, such as age and ZIP code.

Long Live Corporate Social Responsibility

Posted by Tim Sanders on 09.17.09 @ 02:04 PM

Tim Sanders

Tim Sanders, author of the book "Saving the World at Work," argues that social responsibility should be viewed as a corporate opportunity. Here's why.

Corporate social responsibility is a hybrid PR/branding program that attempts to convert compliance into goodwill. Often CSR lives outside the marketing function, somewhere deep in the bowels of legal or operations. Once a year, the company's varied social achievements are collected by the investor relations department for the now-compulsory CSR addendum to the annual report.

CSR attempts to align corporate needs (profits, revenue, growth) with social needs (people, community, planet). Themes such as "we're being less bad" or "we're trying to give back" dominate the subtext and water down the potential marketing value of the exercise. In the end, CSR is a compulsory exercise designed to limit liability, boost morale and add to the branding story of the company.

From 2003 to 2008, CSR grew along with other nice-to-haves such as corporate meetings, green buildings and skunkworks programs. When the recession slammed the economy last fall, only the profit center programs survived. As a movement, CSR is either dead or on life support.

This is sad, actually. Companies can partner with nonprofits and government groups to help solve many of society's problems today -- and into the future. For the short term, however, we need to rethink how this can be as good for the bottom line as it is for corporate karma.

Picking the right walk, then talking about it (strategy plus marketing) is the key. Long live CSO: corporate social opportunities. CSO should be a marketing function, designed to seek out the cutting edge of brand innovation -- where a company's assets intersect with the greater community's needs. When you find this match, you can produce a sustainable program that inspires sales while it makes a difference.

Aveda Corp.'s joint venture with the Yawanawa tribe in Brazil is one example. The company's founder, Horst Rechelbacher, heard a speech by a tribesman from Yawanawa at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro about the group's struggle to resist clear-cutting of their forests. Meanwhile, Aveda's chemists in Minnesota discovered that uruku, a rain forest plant grown by the Yawanawa, provided a rich red-brown pigment for Aveda's growing makeup product line. Inspired by the social opportunity, Mr. Rechelbacher fast-tracked an alliance with the Yawanawa and invested in a new city in Brazil called Nova Esperanca (New Hope) that would focus on producing a sustainable supply of uruku.

The venture produced revenue for both parties and had marketing power in the advertising, labeling and merchandise areas. Customers responded, often buying more products than they actually needed at the time (called by buycott).

At Office Depot, the social opportunity came in a different arena: small-business development. The company has a practice of seeking out product suppliers that are historically underutilized businesses, or HUBs, for its customers. The company operates in tandem with the National Minority Supplier Development Council in picking HUBs to buy from and feature in the company's product catalogs.

Cleveland inner-city office chair parts manufacturer Master Manufacturing is one of Office Depot's HUBS, and another example of a corporate social opportunity. Master Manufacturing is run by Iris Rubinfield, who founded the company with her husband in 1951. She has her own CSO program, hiring underemployed people, such as single mothers. Her workers are loyal to the opportunity and make some of the finest chair casters in the country.

Office Depot was inspired by Master Manufacturing's hiring practices, so it features the company prominently in its product catalogs and in promotions. Customers have responded to those placements, giving high share to Master Manufacturing over much larger (and cheaper) competitors. Over the last decade, the company's business has grown exponentially, helping the company delve into new areas such as chair cushions and door stoppers.

In both situations CSR objectives (community, supplier development) are met but with a different frame of reference: Do some good. As long as marketing is involved on the back end, a positive feedback loop can be created where the company connects with cause, which inspires customers to connect with company. This is likely the future of corporate social opportunity, from taking care of employees (think health care coverage as a CSO) to boosting local communities (think sharing education resources as a CSO) to helping save the planet (think recycling as a CSO). In the end, the business value aligns with the do-gooder in people -- helping to create a new breed of sustainability that won't be canceled or cut to the bone the next time the economy swoons.

Also check out new social e-commerce site for artists: www.artistsforartists.com

The 7 Biggest Legal Risks to Your Company When Using Social Media

How to Avoid Draconian Rules and Keep the FTC Off Your Back at the Same Time

by Brian Heidelberger
Published: September 15, 2009

Brian Heidelberger

As an advertising lawyer, I know that times are tight and marketing budgets have been slashed. (Heck, I've had to go from triple-billing my clients to only double-billing them.) So, in the hopes of single-handedly lifting our nation out of this recession, I am providing my own mini stimulus package: a list of the seven biggest risks to your company when using social media.

1. Employees
So your CMO likes to keep his "followers" in the loop about the company's latest product introductions. Or your newest assistant-assistant account executive likes to gossip to her "friends" about the love lives of her co-workers. Bad news, dude. Your company may be liable for these "personal" social-networking messages, regardless of whether you even knew your employee was posting them.

2. Mothers
Yes, I said it. Mothers are a huge social-media risk. Listen, I have nothing against mothers. Even a lawyer like me loves his mother. (Hi Mom!) But your idea to send moms free stuff in the hopes that they will blog about it has legal implications. So, before you ship out a pallet of your latest soy-acacia-berry juice box, realize that the FTC requires that you make sure that moms disclose the free swag in their reviews.

3. Creativity
You're right, your product will probably sell better if you make up fake reviews and post them on fake blogs. But for some crazy reason the New York attorney general takes issue with this million-dollar idea, and he has brought two false-advertising claims in the past several months against advertisers for this practice -- one for $765,000 and the other for $300,000.

Even if the New York attorney general doesn't catch your fake blog, internet geeks probably will. Remember, your kids are much cleverer than you are and spend way too much time on the internet due to your poor parenting skills. They will figure out that your blog is fake, and they will embarrass you and your company. Just ask the advertiser and its agency that created the fake blog "All I Want For Christmas," purportedly written by two tweens on a quest to convince their parents to buy them the latest video-game player. In no time, internet geeks found out that the website was actually owned by the advertiser's agency, and the online torture of the two companies began. They don't call it "flogging" for nothing.

4. Enthusiasm
I know, your product is great, and if the world just knew it too, you'd be a millionaire. But try to resist the temptation to go out and pepper message boards with anonymous praise for your products. First off, it's pretty obvious when there are only three reviews for your product on Amazon and they each end with five exclamation points. Second, the FTC has recently indicated that it is illegal for an employee to endorse its own company's product on a message board without the employee disclosing that she works for the company.

5. Bureaucracy
Eighty-seven percent of companies still do not have a social-media policy. Why so many? Well, some don't realize they need one. Other companies' policies are still stuck in committee. My advice is to get on the ball and put one together ASAP. I know, this probably means that you will have to interact with both your advertising lawyer and your labor lawyer on the same day. But trust me, right now your employees are Linking In, Friending and Twittering without any regard for the fact that they may be putting your company at risk. Get some control over these people, pronto.

6. Your Draconian rules
So yours is one of the few companies that actually got it together and developed a social-media policy. Good for you. But please tell me that you resisted the temptation to ban your employees from doing everything under the sun. My advice? Be realistic and try to protect your company without forming rules that you know your employees can't and won't comply with. Take heed from the Associated Press, which created a firestorm among its own employees when this bastion of the First Amendment took the oppressive stand that its own employees could never mention the company when using social media. Or learn from the Southeast Conference (SEC), which had to turn a 180 just a week after announcing its ridiculously broad policy that fans can't Twitter during football games.

7. E-mail
Advertiser's Standard Playbook, Idea #675: Distribute free samples of your new product to your advertising agency's employees and ask them to send e-mails or direct social-networking messages to their friends sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Hold on marketing maven! Your employees' e-mails and their social-networking messages may very well be subject to the federal law regarding sending unsolicited commercial e-mail (CAN SPAM), which will require both the e-mail and the social-networking messages to include certain disclosures (like the company's physical postal address, an "advertisement" label and a way to opt-out from receiving future commercial messages), and may require you to check the friend's e-mail or social-networking address against your current opt-out list.

Facebook Finds Profitability Despite Nascent Advertising Model

With 300 Million Users, the Social Network Is Making Money

by Michael Learmonth
Published: September 15, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Scratch Facebook from the list of web 2.0 startups that don't make money: The world's largest social network said today it has become profitable.

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook had crossed the 300 million registered-user milestone and that it had become "cash-flow positive" in the second quarter, ahead of schedule. Previously, Facebook had said it was targeting profitability "sometime in 2010."

Facebook's brand pages, such as this one for Pizza Hut, are popular with marketers

This is significant for a number of reasons, but mostly because it has done so without a fully developed advertising business.

Indeed while Facebook pages and groups are popular among brands, Facebook itself is still figuring out the right ad model for social networking, beyond low-cost display ads. Facebook's other revenue models are also nascent, including virtual gifts, commerce and a payments system now in testing phase.

Strong audience growth
The threshold also shows that despite anecdotes of young people abandoning the service as their parents (and grandparents) join, Facebook is still growing at a furious rate. In July, the company said it had 250 million users, meaning it added 50 million users in two months. Facebook had 200 million users in April.

Key to Facebook's profitability has been its ability to keep its headcount low. Mr. Zuckerberg points out in his blog post the company employs one engineer for every million users. The company has only 1,000 employees serving a user base that is quickly surpassing the population of the United States.

Revenue is also accelerating, growing from $150 million in 2007 to about $350 million in 2008 and a predicted $500 million in 2009, according to Facebook board member Marc Andreesen.

Revenue guarantee
Facebook's most solid revenue stream is a guaranteed advertising deal with Microsoft, which is worth an estimated $150 million a year. By comparison, in its best year, News Corp.'s MySpace had about $900 million in revenue. At that site, however, revenue dropped off in the latter half of 2008 and 2009.

The irony of Facebook's model is that there are plenty of applications makers selling ads on Facebook but they don't share revenue with the social network. At least one, Zynga (maker of Texas Hold'em), claims $100 million in revenue.

So, Facebook is profitable, for now. That could change if it decides to staff up, increase spending on technology or infrastructure, or invest in new international territories that are quickly moving online. But it's sign Facebook is, indeed, a business.

CMOs: Don't Neglect Innovation at the Expense of Your Bottom Line

Former Best Buy, eBay CMO Linton Offers Brands 5 Tips to Help Change Consumer Behavior

by Rita Chang
Published: September 10, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Given that innovation is the only sustainable advantage these days, advertisers need to allocate at least 10% of their marketing budget to foster it, even in these economically challenged times, said former eBay and Best Buy CMO Mike Linton, who spoke to an audience at the Aberdeen Group's Chief Marketing Officer Summit here yesterday.

Mike Linton

Innovation, by Mr. Linton's definition, is any action taken by the brand that changes consumer behavior in favor of the company, and that can range from a new product to a new way to service customers. While it's no surprise that Starbucks has managed to build a massive social-media audience, considering that it gives away latte coupons on Twitter and Facebook, innovation is also when a toilet-paper brand can get consumers to tweet about how soft its product is and show brand in a new light.

Any marketer standing still at a time when the consumer is ahead of the brand is bound to lose, said Mr. Linton, now a Forbes columnist. And amid the wide array of choices that consumers have today, fickleness represents a greater challenge than ever and loyalty dissipates that much more quickly. "Without innovation, you end up in a defensive position," he said.

Yet at a time when marketers are challenged to produce immediate returns, how can they balance the need to innovate against the pressure to produce bottom-line quarterly results?

Mr. Linton offered a few tips for driving innovation that don't require rich resources:

1. Just go for it.
If it's true innovation, you won't know everything about it, including how to measure it. Don't spend precious resources planning and testing your new approach or product until everything's in perfect alignment, he said. Though it can be a bit scary to navigate in uncharted territory, the price to pay for holding back is that your competitors may be on the verge of launching the next big thing that could render your brand passé.

"You have to keep pace with the market, and [that means] the marketers have to get comfortable with the ambiguity," Mr. Linton said.

2. Give your team incentives to innovate.
One tactic Mr. Linton has leaned on is to compensate his teams not only by how they measure specific functions, but by the totality of the customer experience, such as store sales, customer complaints and other metrics.

"I paid my team on total ROI first," Mr. Linton said.

If you pay your search-engine optimization guru solely by click-throughs or the media buyer strictly on media efficiency, you're encouraging them to think in silos and not outside the box. For example, if you set the success metric for customer-service reps to handle incoming calls within five minutes, you could be compromising their level of care in handling more time-consuming, complex customer-service issues.

3. Make sure you have at least one new thing every year.
As you prepare your annual business plan, ask yourself if you have anything new in the roadmap that wasn't there last year. You have to constantly ask: "Are we on the offensive? Who's our real competition?" Mr. Linton said.

"What are you doing that's new this year? If you don't have something new, someone else will," he said.

4. Use the 70% rule.
If your team feels there's a 70% chance that an out-of-the-box initiative based on rough math and intuition will deliver significant learning and success, you should go for it. "You have to have a belief that it's going to work for you," Mr. Linton said.

5. Don't be blindsided by the competition and get lost in what innovation is.
Record labels still believed they were each other's competition even as they engaged in legal battles with music download, peer-to-peer sites and the consumers who used those sites. They didn't see that consumers were bypassing the $19.99 CD en masse while Apple created a colossal digital-music franchise.

By the way, innovation isn't printing $1 coupons when the 50-cent coupons don't work. "If you temporarily buy your way to greatness, that's a problem and it's not going to solve the long-term problem," Mr. Linton said. "Pricing only solves long-term problems if you only compete on price."

Campbell Soup Roots Around in Home Pantries for Ideas to Help Homemakers Ride Out the Downturn

By Emily Bryson York
Published: September 07, 2009

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Melissa Goida is ground zero for the new austerity. The Marlton, N.J., stay-at-home mother of three used to make big shopping trips, often stocking up on groceries for three weeks at a time. Now she hits the stores weekly, sometimes more frequently if there's a good sale, and tries to cap shopping trips at $100 to make a week's worth of meals.

Up close and personal

"It feels like you're walking under a black cloud," Ms. Goida said. "The unknown could be right around the corner."

For marketers such as Campbell Soup, the current recession is necessitating a deeper understanding of Ms. Goida and consumers like her as they wrestle with a decline in food spending of nearly 4% in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Commerce Department -- the steepest, fastest drop in more than 60 years. "The suddenness of this and the severity of this [downturn] has made them change in ways I don't think we've seen since the Great Depression," said Charles Vila, VP-consumer and customer insights at Campbell.

Ms. Goida is one of a few thousand consumers with whom the company will conduct in-depth market research this year and among the 50,000 consumers it consults with more generally each year. While Campbell hasn't stepped up that research because of the recession, it is monitoring it more closely than ever. "What we like to do is spend a lot of time with people in environments they feel comfortable with -- dinner parties, shop-alongs, in-home," said Mr. Vila, who has been with Campbell for 20 years. "And they start to talk about their lives."

As a result of these meetings, the company has developed recipes to help busy moms get dinner for four on the table within 30 minutes for $10 or less, which is now the benchmark for an affordable dinner at home. Campbell is looking to discover where families are deriving savings and what they might still spend on to pamper themselves.

Changing patterns
In the case of the 30-something Ms. Goida, her shopping patterns have shifted dramatically over the last 18 months. Her husband is a pharmaceutical sales representative, and the pair used to count on a bonus every three months. But Mr. Goida is transitioning into a new position, filling in for more-senior staff on maternity or other medical leave. If they return before 90 days have elapsed, he does not receive the bonus the family once counted on. For each of these Campbell home visits, Ms. Goida earns $150.

Ms. Goida has transitioned to buying private-label paper and household cleaning products at BJ's, saving her name-brand purchases for food products that her kids -- ages 11, 7 and 3 -- care the most about. Campbell Soup and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese are top-of-mind brands. "You'd think all tomato soups would taste the same," she said. "But they don't."

In general, she said, it's not worth buying private-label cereals either. "I don't want to take the chance of buying a big thing of generic cereal if they're not going to eat it," Ms. Goida said of her kids. "I'd rather mealtime be happy, peaceful and quiet."

Ms. Goida's fridge does contain a variety of private-label perishables, such as cheese, milk and yogurt. She buys meat in bulk and stores one-pound servings in a freezer in her garage. She has also cut out bottled water, thanks to a fridge filter, and juice boxes. She now makes her own lemonade. Yet she recently purchased store-brand pudding snacks she'd normally make herself, because they were on sale.

Mr. Vila said Ms. Goida's purchasing patterns indicate that she trades down in areas where she doesn't detect brand differentiation -- an important insight, naturally, for brand marketers.

Recreating restaurant fare
Like many, the Goida family is eating out less. Mr. Vila said one of the biggest problems facing home cooks today is the necessity of creating restaurant-style meals at home. Of course, they don't come right out and say that. "They'll say, 'We used to go out and we used to have some fun meals that I didn't know how to make at home, and now that we're home, we kind of miss some of those meals, but we like being home,'" he said. "So the interpretation is they want to be able to recreate that experience at home."

That shift has led Campbell to focus this fall on marketing ingredients for make-at-home meals that consumers used to go out to Applebee's or T.G.I. Friday's for, such as Alfredo pasta and juicy burgers. The company's tactics will include a slick, seven-day meal plan with a handful of steps.

But all that home cooking does not mean the meals are well-prepared. Jane Freiman, group manager-kitchens at Campbell, has been struggling with the single biggest problem with home cooks today: the near certainty that something will wind up overcooked. In fact, Ms. Freiman said, many people double cooking times on meat just make sure no one gets sick. The result is a very dry dinner.

How her habits have changed SPENDING ON Smart Balance butter Ladies shampoo Chick-fil-A G2 sports drinks Hillshire Farms sausage Local pool membership Team athletics

SAVING ON Cheese Kids shampoo Casual, steakhouse dinners Bottled water Bulk ground turkey and beef Disney vacations Back-to-school clothes

Cheese And so Campbell is introducing the "French Onion Burger." The burger is browned on both sides, removed from the pan, and then steamed in Campbell's French Onion Soup, which will rehydrate the meat if it's overcooked. The leftover soup is used as a dipping sauce.

Ms. Goida said she's trimmed spending in a variety of ways beyond the kitchen. The family hasn't done any work on their home for two years. This spring, they made their first trip to Disney World since their youngest child was born, and were able to use points for some of the hotel and souvenir expenses. Mr. Goida travels anywhere from three to five days every week, but that made a second trip possible, to Virginia Beach, again using points to pay for accommodations with an eat-in kitchen. "And so we only ate out once," Ms. Goida said.

The family is also getting started with back-to-school shopping, but Ms. Goida said that she's told her 11-year-old daughter that clothes shopping will have to wait six weeks. And even for school supplies, she has said, "We'll go out and get it when you need it."

While Ms. Goida said some of these cuts are temporary -- she expects to eat out a little more eventually, and be able to take more vacations -- many of them are probably for the best. Mr. Vila said her view is pretty representative of the population as a whole.

"What's happened in the last 18 months is going to leave us permanently scarred," he said. "Perhaps it's a good scar, but behaviors have changed; there is ruthless value assessment." If products and services can't clearly demonstrate and articulate their proposition to the consumer, he said, "they're going to struggle."