Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Andrew Scott

Don't get so smug the next time you have a good promotional idea. Chances are consumers won't get it.

A new survey by research firm IMI International reveals that 60% of all promotions result in “insufficient awareness or comprehension,” and that they fail to change attitudes or behavior — a sobering figure for an industry that shelled out $342.2 billion last year to do just that.

Worse yet, consumers indicated that 41% of all marketing campaigns “should never have been launched.”

It's not all bad news. Of the people surveyed, 69% actively participate in promotions, and 88% are searching for them more than they did last year.

These folks not only want added value, “they expect it,” says Dan Dodson, president of Mastermind Marketing, Atlanta.

But are they getting it? That's not as clear.

Of the consumers surveyed in the U.S., 51% purchased an item due to a promotion in the three months prior to the survey.

That may sound pretty good, but the figure is 89% for France, 84% for Ireland, 82% for the U.K. and 70% for Germany.

The problem? U.S. consumers need flashier, more attention-grabbing campaigns to engage them than they did before, experts say.

Some brands have reacted by super-sizing prize offerings, such as McDonald's biggest Monopoly game purse featuring a $5 million grand prize. And others are “creating giveaways and promotions that don't relate to the brand and consumers don't understand why they're doing it,” Dodson says.

And who comes up with these dumb ideas? If you believe IMI, it's certainly not the agencies. Of 7,000 consumer offers studied by the firm, the five worst came from senior executives of the clients.

“Sometimes people in the client organization believe they're the expert,” Dodson explains. “They base their expertise on what they personally like or don't like, rather than what the target audience likes or doesn't like.”

It may be that firms lack “a means to objectively evaluate the potential of marketing and brand activation ideas before they come to market,” Don Mayo, managing partner, IMI, adds.

How do consumers like to get promotional messages? A whopping 89% like to get them online. This was followed by in-store (47%), direct mail (33%), phone (25%) and text/SMS (6%). Respondents could choose more than one medium.

Does that mean you should pick one over the other? Hardly.

“If 89% of all people prefer to go sailing in a boat more than riding in a car, does that mean you should run out and trade in your car for a sailboat?” asks Alex Campbell, CEO of Vibes Media. “No. They're both means of transportation but they do fundamentally different things.”

Meanwhile, consumer participation in SMS- and text-based promotions has risen by 7% this year when the area is broken out, according to the survey.

“Not only are consumers preferring to start a dialogue by texting, but they have shown their desire to continue and interact via text for an extended period of time,” says Campbell.

And what prompts consumers to respond? The combined event/sampling category scores highest, at 52%. It is trailed by TV ads (24%), instant win promotions (20%) and national sponsorships (4%).

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