The full interview can be found here.

Can you briefly describe, for those listening to the podcast, your role and your responsibilities at Facebook?

Fred: Thanks for having me. Nice to meet your virtually, as well. I lead the Partner Measurement Group here at Facebook. What we are is a group that is focused on working with top clients that Facebook has and really helping them capture and measure all of the value that they are creating with their marketing through Facebook.

Some marketers who may be are naysayers will say that people are not so willing to welcome brands into their world in Facebook. What would your response be to that?

Fred Leach: We have lots of evidence that shows that people really want brands in their lives and they use brands to describe themselves. So, we see people connecting to lots and lots of pages on Facebook every single day. It’s about 100 million people connecting to a page on a given day. I think the other thing here is that a lot of brands are on Facebook. We’ve got just over 2.5 million websites that are integrating with Facebook. So, users are really connecting with lots of different things and they really want a rich social world. Brands are part of that rich social world.

That suggests that, over time, marketers are getting more and more sophisticated at leveraging all the ways in which they can connect their marketing efforts and goals to their Facebook presence. Can you describe briefly how you’d paint the timeline of how marketers have evolved in their use of Facebook?

Fred Leach: Definitely. I think initially marketers really thought just to build up their fan bases on Facebook and so they were focused on building lots of connections. Lots of people liking their brands and they are really evolving more into engaging their fans and influencing them to think about new things about their brand to represent their brands in a new way. A lot of them have really focused on the changing way in which they have to communicate with social media, which is to say that where there used to be a standard one-to-many messaging strategy, now brands are having conversations with people who really like them and they learning from those conversations. So, they are doing things differently based on those conversations and taking marketing in a different direction or creating a new product based on input from fans. So, we are really seeing — whereas it used to be that it was just about counting likes and getting people connected,marketers are really evolving into having more of that two-way dialogue with their customers.

Are there any generalizations yet on what kinds of messages do work better? Or is it very particular brand-by-brand?

Fred: It definitely does vary brand-by-brand. There are a couple of things that definitely work. One is really nice, rich photos – to have the ability to display beautiful photos on Facebook. We see that users generally like cool photography or great images from brands. And they like videos, as well.

The other thing is back to what I mentioned earlier about brands finding their voice and talking not just about themselves, but about topics in which they have credibility. We see that posts that are centered around things that a brand is credible on get more people to share them. They tend to have more of that viral reach.

The last piece I would say that is related to that, brands that are talking about what is relevant right now, what’s actually happening in the world today in a way that works for them or is consistent with their brands, that’s another thing that people really like and it resonates. It’s just a more natural and authentic way of communicating.

Rubinson Partners, Inc., a marketing and research consulting firm that specializes in leveraging digital and social media understanding to transform marketing and research processes, announced that Judah Phillips has joined its advisory team.  Judah is the former head global analytics for Monster Worldwide and Reed Elsevier as well as the founder of DIS Corporation, ARO (Analytics Research Organization), and Digital Analytics Thursdays (DATA).

“The rules for brand growth in a digital age have changed and no marketer can succeed without understanding how traditional, digital, and social media marketing amplify one another to form brand preferences and influence shopping approaches. In turn, research approaches must be re-invented around the synthesis of all insights-rich data streams from online surveys to mobile surveys, digital behaviors, social media listening, and shopper data”, Rubinson said. “These are core principles of research transformation, where we start with the digital river of information and add in surveys as needed (rather than the traditional other way around), an initiative I started while at the ARF, now put into practice”, he added.

“Joel is one of the pioneers in research and analytics who understands the critical business requirement to unify digital data, analytics, and research with proven, rigorous, and grounded research methods. By taking the first advisory role at Rubinson Partners I look forward to continuing to work on transformative analytics and research innovations that generate new or incremental profitable revenue or reduce cost for the world’s leading global brands, vendors, and agencies,” said Phillips.

Rubinson Partners expects to take on an expanded scope of assignments with Judah’s involvement that will include evaluating and improving marketer, insights team, and digital analytics team practices across multiple channels including mobile, social, search, online advertising, shopper, and existing and new offline channels across the several industries, including Internet, food and beverage, retail, media, software, technology, pharmaceutical, music, and finance.

About Rubinson Partners, Inc.

Founded in 2010 by Joel Rubinson, former Chief Research Officer of the Advertising Research Foundation, Rubinson Partners leverages measurement approaches and models to understand the emerging roles of digital, social, mobile, and traditional media in the marketing mix and in innovation processes. Clients include leading CPG firms such as Unilever and General Mills, digital marketers such as ShareThis, Moat, Appnation, and research firms such as The NPD Group and InsightsNow. Rubinson Partners’ results have impacted marketing strategy by revealing surprises in how people share, the role of digital in shopper planning, the size of the app-economy, and the relative importance of owned vs. social vs. traditional media. Rubinson Partners was also the architect for Unilever of one of the largest platforms for listening and digital sensing regarding CPG shopping behaviors in use today.

Joel is also on the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches social media strategy. Joel is formerly the head of advanced analytics for Synovate in North America, Vivaldi Consulting, and was the Chief Research Officer for the NPD Group for many years.  Joel started his career at Unilever after receiving his MBA from the University of Chicago in Economics and Business Statistics.

About Judah Phillips

Judah creates economic value from data, analytics, and research. Judah is founder DIS Corporation – a provider of Digital Insights Services for global companies; and the non-profit Analytics Research Organization (ARO, pronounced “Arrow’) and Digital Analytics Thursdays. He contributes to the conversation about the Internet and has spoken at events across Earth, such as I-COM, eTail, X Change, eMetrics, and Adobe MAX. For several years he has emceed and programmed Mediapost’s OMMA Metrics and Research conferences in both NYC and SF.

Judah has guest lectured at business schools, including NYU, Babson College, Northeastern, Baruch College, Bentley College, and Boston College. Judah currently advises several companies, including YieldBot, Localytics, Glib.ly, Webtrends, Observepoint, and, now, Rubinson Partners.

Judah has also worked globally managing business, digital, and web analytics teams in the Internet and software industries since ’90’s including Sun Microsystems, Reed Elsevier, and Monster Worldwide. He has an MBA and MS.

Joel:  Catherine, in our last two interviews, you dropped two bombshells saying that searches on Google.com related to recipes are up 38% in 2011 over 2010 to 7.8 billion. Then you gave CPG marketers a failing grade of 3 on a scale of 0-10

Catherine: Yes, a lot of it is cultural. They still fall back on what they know. They don’t want to crash the plane or sink the ship.

Joel: someone in media once said, “If we can’t measure it we can’t sell it”.  In the first interview you talked about the importance of digital to the CPG path to purchase.  How should this be measured?

Catherine: It’s funny you say that, quite honestly Joel, because that has been the biggest challenge. Marketers for years have been able to associate or correlate the value of traditional media such as their GRP or their TRP or their TV spot and model out the sales lift, even though there’s not a direct linear equation that she saw the Downey TV commercial on TV on Monday night and when she shopped on Wednesday she bought Downey because of the TV commercial. But, the fortunate thing is that marketers have figured out that correlation. Then you start throwing digital and all these additional touch points that I talked about into the mix and it’s not as easy because they don’t necessarily measure and correlate exactly the same as a TV TRP.

Joel: so what do you do about that?

Catherine: The way we like to coach our advertisers through it is to think about what all these moments that matter are on the way to the path to purchase and think about them as KVTs or “key value tasks”. To be able to associate a value to every one of those tasks that hits her in the path to purchase. So, as one example, I work with an advertiser that leverages a lot of online recipes as far as a way to engage consumers because they know that if their ingredients are used in a recipe, then that consumer is much more apt to go to the store and purchase that specific ingredient for their recipe. And through this key value task type of thought process, they’ve equated and they’ve modeled out for their group that one out of every ten recipe views correlates to an actual purchase in the store. So, by doing that they are able to back into the math that says: “Okay, if I get ten visits to my site and they view a recipe, then the value of that is X because the value of a purchase of one of these ingredients in a store is X”.

That’s what advertisers need to do today to say: “What is the value if somebody visits my website?” “What is the value if somebody downloads a coupon off of my website?” “What is the value if someone downloads a recipe?” “What is the value equation if somebody clicks on a click-to-call type of advertisement on mobile?” So, being able to identify along the path to purchase is not as simple as the TV commercial and the offline media and then jump to the store shelf. There are media points all along the way and it’s translating the value of each one of those points.

Joel: if we can think into the future, let’s say three years, what is the one demonstrable proof point that says: “They were listening. They got it.”

Catherine: I think the biggest challenge to not getting it today is that CPG companies for the most part use some type of media mix modeling and they try to use a square peg/round hole effect of just applying the same media mix modeling that they’ve used on TV, print, radio and their historical, traditional advertising. (In digital) But, what would be different in three years is that the CPG companies, coupled with the measurement companies (whether that’s the Nielsen’s of the world, the comScores) have to figure out which is the right way to measure these media and what is the ROI that I’m getting out of my digital dollar in comparison to my TV.  If and when they do figure it out, they will actually put enough media (spend) in there to warrant a test.

Joel: Catherine, in our last interview, you dropped a bombshell saying that searches on Google.com related to recipes are up 38% in 2011 over 2010 to 7.8 billion.

Catherine: Yes, there are more searches around food and recipes than there is travel, beauty, and luxury.

Joel: How sophisticated are CPG marketers when it comes to digital on a scale of 0-10?

Catherine: I give them a 3.

I would have loved to give them more, but I’m a bit jaded.  Look at how much the consumer has shifted their time off of traditional media and on to online.  I’m correlating my 3 based on what we see as far as shifted media dollars.  I just would have thought that progressive marketers would just say: “We have to follow the consumer.” P&G always talks about the “who” and what the “who” is and what the “who” is doing. I just would have thought that if you start with the “who” and you watched how their habits have changed so dramatically over the past five years that you would naturally lean into this medium and continue to test and shift.

But, if you look at where the dollars are still spent, you’ll see that that isn’t happening. And I’m not just talking Google. I’m talking the whole shift to digital in general. It’s shifting. It’s definitely increasing, but if you asked me three years ago where it would be today, I would have thought it would have been dramatically higher, quite honestly.

A lot of it is cultural. They still fall back on what they know. I don’t want to crash the plane or sink the ship. So, the next plan manager, when I rotate off this team, he can make the decision to jump off the ledge and see if this digital stuff really works. So, right now most of them do enough to say: “Hey, I’m testing in digital”. But, there aren’t too many that have really, in masses, followed that consumer, in my opinion.

Joel: So, if you give manufacturers a 3, what do you give grocery retailers?

Catherine: You know what? I would score them a little bit higher. I would probably put them to a 5, maybe even a 6. Again, it depends on the particular retailer. But at least I do see them doing things such as SMS to the phone from Target for coupon offers. Not fully targeted yet, but at least they’re making an effort there. (Retailers are starting to) understand that even if the vast majority of their sales are still coming at brick and mortar that they are doing more online to stimulate that consumer enthusiasm and do some things in that space. I think the retailers have been pushed harder in a call to action because they are competing with the Amazons and Wal-Mart to a certain extent. If they don’t get into that space then their dollars are going to shift more into an online world. So, I would give the retailers a little bit higher grades and I think a lot of it is just that they have to in order to compete.

Part one of the interview here: For CPG how important is digital in the path to purchase?

Next up, part 3.  What marketers can do to improve their digital marketing practices?

Joel:  Catherine, tell us a little bit about your role at Google, what you do, and your responsibilities.

Catherine: I head up CPG. What that really means is that at Google we are verticalized according to certain sectors. …we look to the experts in a particular field to be able to provide that consultative approach to our advertisers as they continue to develop their marketing…especially as consumers are changing.

Joel: I noticed that that your talk at the upcoming IIR Audience Measurement Event is entitled: “Engaging Your Target Audience throughout the Path to Purchase.” … Can you define to the audience what you mean by “path to purchase” and bring the concept to life?

Catherine: what’s really changed and the reason for this “path to purchase” coming to light is there are so many new stimulations that interrupt today’s consumer before she ever makes a purchase decision, whether that be a purchase decision online or a purchase decision as to even which grocery store she’s going to go to.

The key piece here is that consumer habits have changed so much. We have so much access to new information because of the Web, because of our social mediums that we interact with on a daily basis. Our purchase decisions really are affected by a number of different stimuli and different mediums and it really has changed people’s approach to what they buy. So, a great deal of research is done ahead of time and as consumers have become more sophisticated in this research, it’s translated from big ticket items (such as a computer or a car or a cell phone or even a vacuum) all the way down to everyday products like a $3 bottle of shampoo. “Will it make my hair frizzy?” “How will it affect humidity since I’m going on a trip down to Mexico?”

So, those types of decisions are now being researched ahead of time whereas even as much as 3 or 4 years ago, those types of decisions were made right at store level. Everything that mattered was on the packaging and on the product right there. So, when we talk about the path to purchase, we really talk about all those “moments that matter” as we call them.

Joel: Since the great majority of CPG purchasing occurs in-store, how important is digital in the path to purchase?

Catherine: we know that searches on Google.com related to recipes are up 38% in 2011 over 2010. And it’s a huge number. It’s 7.8 billion recipe-related searches on Google.com.

Joel: Did you say: “billion” with a “b”?

Catherine: Yes. Just to give you a perspective, there are more searches around food and recipes than there is travel, beauty, and luxury. It is absolutely huge. To put it in perspective, the iPad or her computer or her phone has replaced her cookbook. So, she’s doing that research ahead of time on Google and then going to either a recipe site or a food site or whatever it might be to get the tips, to get the health information, to get the ingredients to get everything she needs. in a nutshell we know that the recipe searches and we know that searches are only going up.

Joel: What is the zero moment of truth or Z-MOT that Google has discovered?

Catherine: It is this activity that is done after there is a stimulus, whether it be a TV commercial or some type of offline media. In between that stimulus and in between the store shelf there’s this pre-research that she’s doing and that’s what we call the “zero moment of truth” because it happens before she gets to the shelf and even before she gets to the actual grocery store which is the first moment of truth. And then lastly, what we call the second moment of truth (which is when you got that product home) is “Did it meet your expectations?” …the feedback that we get from consumers is that zero moment is just as important as the other two moments within that cycle.

Next up, part two: On a scale of 0 to 10, how does Google rate CPG marketers and retailers in terms of digital sophistication?