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| We’ve had a drink-fuelled brainstorming session and have come up with 20 different advertising concepts - which concepts should we develop further? | Advertising screening study
[For radio, TV, print, press, online] | Screening is a way to rapidly (but somewhat superficially) cycle through a largeish number of concepts. It’s not so good at picking winners, but it’s pretty good at removing losers so that you can focus on a short list of options to develop. The more concepts you include, the more superficial the feedback on each one – possibly just an overall appeal score with 20 or more concepts. Beyond 30 concepts, it gets a bit impractical – and (generally) you shouldn’t be so lazy and put in so many concepts. |
| We’ve developed 3 concepts further. Which of these is best? | Advertising screening study
[For radio, TV, print, press, online]
| With just 2-5 concepts, a more diagnostic approach is possible. Each concept can be screened for credibility, fit with current brand positioning, impact, relevance and purchase intent (for example). |
We’re fine-tuning now - is the script or copy communicating as well as it could?
Do customers (and potential customers) understand my ad?
| Copy testing / “Comm. check”
[Focus groups may also be useful]
| Your advertising will be attempting to achieve a change in attitude (and possibly claimed behaviour too) – copy testing can determine what impact different scripts or different wording has on both attitudes, perceived brand attributes and purchase intent. Typically, the most effective copy would be chosen or else useful learning would be generated about which phrases created the biggest uplift on the metrics you were trying to influence.
As with many of these advertising test, this study is best designed as a monadic test (meaning that a specific sample cell sees only one execution and comments on it). To stretch a budget a semi monadic test can be designed where each cell is also shown other concepts after seeing and being questioned on the original concept. The information gained on concepts shown second (and third) is slightly less “pure”, being slightly sullied by having already shown a concept but it’s incremental and so only a bonus.
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| We’ve developed a couple of animatics / storyboards. Which is the most persuasive, most credible, most likely to position us as trustworthy? | Standard advertising test Streamed ad test (for TV clips) | We can very easily show images, storyboards or stills ranging from quite finished versions to very rough sketches. The rise of broadband connectivity has also made streaming radio or TV ads a very realistic possibility and we can deliver TV quality adverts by hosting them on specialist video servers for maximum performance. The main benefit of this approach is that the low cost of the internet means that we can execute quantitative studies for the price of a qualitative focus group. |
| Does this ad have breakthrough? Is it high impact? | Standard advertising test in “clutter” Streamed ad test (for TV clips) | It can make sense to show the ad in “clutter” – surrounded by other current adverts. This ensures that the user sees the ad in a realistic setting – with other ads being shown and so recall and impact measures are more “honest”. They are also likely to be lower.. Another benefit of this approach is that it provides instant benchmarking because you can see how your ad performed to 3 or 4 other adverts. |
| Am I spending enough? How much do I need to spend? | Advertising spend data
Econometric modelling | You definitely need to think of this BEFORE your advertising is developed – probably before you start developing advertising really. Certain companies (not us) will estimate competitor ad spend for you (for a reasonable fee of course). A related and more thorough course of action, might be to employ econometric modelling (which we can do) to crunch through your marketing stats on sales, spend, campaigns and so on for as many years as you have the data. This can drill into what are you most effective activities and provide recommendations on absolute spending levels. Because it is very data hungry as an approach however, it tends to only work for the best organised marketing departments. The one caveat – if you’ve been ‘told’ what your budget is already then it may not be worth spending research money to uncover a figure that’s not going to change anyway - far better to invest it in making the ad more effective. |
| We just want to put something in front of consumers and get a reaction… | Focus groups
Depth interviews
Controversially worded, open ended questions in quant surveys | Focus groups can be very useful for face to face interaction with customers. Whilst they sometimes struggle at picking winning ideas, they are very good at removing the turkeys and a well moderated group will generate useful feedback that can further strengthen the process. Groups are a very flexible tool and therein lies there strength and weakness. Depth interviews can be a useful alternative or complement when you want to dig deeper into an issue – perhaps with an influencer group like doctors. We’ve had a lot of success with open ended questions in quant surveys for getting similar “pulse” type feedback. It doesn’t have the richness of groups, but it’s not half bad and a lot cheaper. |
| Is this the best ad concept in history? Exactly HOW good is this ad compared to previously tested ads? | Benchmarked pre-testing | All the work MyVoice does is bespoke, custom research tailored to your advertising needs. We can tell you whether an ad is good or bad – however sometimes, it is interesting to know, quantitatively, how your ad performed compared to previously tested adverts on various metrics (eg 73% of tested ads are more credible than your ad). In this case it may be worth launching a very structured pre-testing survey to gain these benchmarks. We would recommend Millward Brown or Hall & Partners. The only downside it the cost is relatively more expensive. |
| What impact will this ad have on sales? | Forecasting study | A survey of this type effectively gathers the data required to put in to a model of advertising impact and then predicts what the likely effect will be, based also on distribution assumptions (if relevant). The detail can really be very much dependent on situation and need. If a rough steer is needed then it could be completed possibly by tagging questions on to a standard ad test study. If more variables need to be included then an entire econometric framework could be required. We’d be happy to advise on either approach or find something suited just to your requirements. |
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| How good is this ad compared to other ads? | Benchmarked advertising evaluation | In the same way that concepts can be benchmarked, finished adverts can be too. Usually this is a piece of marketing “house-keeping”. You’ve developed the ad and you’re not going to change it now but it’s useful to know it was a “73% for persuasion” so that you can compare it’s performance in market to other adverts you’ve completed that had similar scores. Some marketing teams consider this overkill, but if you have the budget it can be useful. Again, if you are keen on this Millward Brown and Hall & Partners are recommended. |
| What impact did my ad have on brand awareness? | Pre and post awareness testing Ad tracking | This is more of a question (or four) than a whole study really. As such it can be incorporated within a full ad evaluation study or thinking creatively, it could even be done as a low cost omnibus question on a monthly basis as an opinion tracker. Improving unprompted spontaneous awareness is the hardest task (and therefore the most impressive to achieve). Improving prompted awareness is easier. It’s quite useful doing prompted awareness testing online because reading out long lists of brand names over the telephone is quite time consuming – people can read them themselves much quicker in an online survey. |
| Did my advertising change customers’ (or potential customers’) perception of my brand strengths? | Pre and post evaluation
Ad tracking
Omnibus | Similar in format and content to a standard advertising test study. Attribute scores, brand descriptors and metrics such as purchase intent, credibility, trust etc are measured before and after a wave of advertising with a controlled sample specification but different actual people. Any difference is deemed to be the impact of the advertising as all other variables are static (one hopes!). |
| Has my advertising increased sales? | Volume tracking | To be honest you should be able to work this out yourself without us…check monthly sales reports. If sales are static, imagine how low they would have been if you hadn’t advertised.. If you have many activities going on at once, then you may be interested in learning more about econometric modelling, to try and discern what activity is driving what – this does depend on you having a lot of information ideally going back for some years on spend, volume, advertising, awareness and so on. |
