Brands can avoid ‘boiling the ocean’ but still ensure a creative idea is right before commiting to a media plan, writes Nigel Hollis, executive vice president and chief global analyst at Millward Brown.
However well-optimised it is, a great media plan can never make good on weak creative. Money invested in delivery is wasted if an advertisement fails to deliver a memorable impression that will influence the consumer’s purchase behaviour.
Pre-testing helps demonstrate whether investment in creative will pay off with increased sales, weeds out the least effective ideas and allows the best to be taken forward and optimised. In fact, Millward Brown’s analysis finds that consistent pre-testing of ads improves their effectiveness by at least 20% compared to ads launched by brands that don’t test.
If pre-testing is proven to improve effectiveness why are so many untested, poor, ineffective ads being run? Ultimately the answer comes down to time and money.
Complex campaigns that run across a diverse set of media channels mean there are more executions to test. Creative must be optimised for environments where ad format, consumer mind-set and expected response differ dramatically. Tighter budgets and development timelines mean there’s less time and resource to test.
However, a new breed of automated pre-tests can help remove the barriers of cost and speed and allow a wider range of content to be tested. These tests, which can be accessed and used on an on-demand basis, ask just enough questions to establish whether an ad will engage and build brand predisposition with consumers ahead of launch, and can produce the answers in as little as six hours.
Critical questions
To make best use of innovations like these marketers must identify when a full evaluation is not necessary, and select the level of test that will answer their most critical questions – and only those questions. Using the test that delivers ‘just enough’ depth of insight will make it possible to cover a wider range of creative formats across more media types, quickly and cost effectively. However, using an on-demand solution when deeper diagnosis and interpretation are required will only lead to frustration.
When all you need to know is whether the creative is strong enough to run, then self-service tests that offer minimal metrics, fast turnaround and low cost are the right choice. After all, sometimes you simply need a red or green light, or to be able to justify media and production spend.
When it comes to creative destined for outdoor, digital or mobile, for example, the media budget may not justify more than a disaster check. This kind of test will provide sufficient information to answer questions such as: Will new executions of a successful, established campaign meet the action standard? Will this creative work across different cultures? Which executions should be up weighted within a rotation? Did the changes made to the execution improve its likely effectiveness?
If risky decisions need to be made, or you need to understand what is driving performance and how an ad might be made more effective, a more in-depth assessment will be worth the investment of extra time and budget.
In cases like these, the focus needs to shift from go/no go to one of diagnosis and ensuring the copy used is as effective as possible. This is the time to opt for a higher level of test that will tell you how and why the creative will work, with a detailed read of its strengths and weaknesses, and insight into how it could be improved to ensure effectiveness.
Feedback from pre-testing of the target audience can be used to improve and refine executions, particularly if ads are tested in a rough form before final development. Their instinctive reactions can be assessed using non-verbal, neuroscience based methods – and if this is the case then it’s probably a good idea to invest in a proper interpretation of the results. Taken at face value key metrics might suggest failure, when some fine-tuning may be all that’s required to realise the campaign’s full potential.
Predictive pre-testing pays its way by making sure an ad will do the best possible job of delivering against the task. It ensures that media choices are optimised, and ROI will be maximised. If marketers avoid ‘boiling the ocean’ when they don’t need the full depth of diagnosis, and evaluate only the measures that matter the most, they can get the data they need to make decisions on a higher number of executions more rapidly and at less cost.
