Attribute THIS!

Here’s the scenario –  Ben gets up in the morning and switches on the television.  He sees an advert on the goodness of milk.  The music in the background of the advert reminds him of an old advert from years ago about baked beans.  He now wants baked beans. Then he remembers that it’s 6am and he doesn’t eat breakfast so he showers crossly, dresses grumpily and begins his day faceitiously (he’s not a morning person).

At lunchtime, he runs into an old friend – let’s call him Jerry.  They pop into a café where Jerry orders a venti soy caramel frappichino extra whip and Ben has a coffee (He’s old-fashioned).  When they sit down at a table, Ben notices a poster advertising milk from the same campaign as the advert he saw in the morning.  As he has just discovered that Jerry and he have little left in common after all these years, Ben mentions that the milk campaign is using the music from the old baked beans advert from years ago.  This leads them to discuss the terrible music (“it’s just noise”) being used in the current baked bean advert.

They don’t stay in the café for long – they both realise that the friendship has run its course.

On the way home from the café, Jerry pops into a shop for a loaf of bread.  He spies a tin of baked beans.  He remembers the old advert from years ago and smiles.  He buys the tin of baked beans.  He hates baked beans – but he’ll only remember this later when he discovers that there’s nothing else to eat in the house.

So, the question is – how do you attribute the sale of this tin of baked beans?  Who or what should ultimately get credit?  Is it the producers of the milk campaign?  Is it Ben?  Is it whoever came up with the original baked beans campaign that made the link between product and music so enduring?  Is it all of the above?  And if so, how do you weight one against the other?

If I was monitoring the baked beans campaign, I would no doubt pat myself on the back for the current advert, even though it in no way contributed to this sale – and in fact, as a stand-alone advert, is only hurting the brand.

Traffic attribution can be an art of lateral thinking – how do you do it?