Chapter 8: Measuring the Ad Success

Transcription

1 Chapter 8: Measuring the Ad Success In this chapter we have seen that after an ad is released, the next question that arises is whether the ad has been able to achieve its objectives. Right from the client to the creative team, everyone is eager to know the outcome.everyone wants to analyze the consumer s reaction, the ad cost and its effectiveness. With social media coming into the picture, the scenario has become more complicated. Do clicks, likes and share mean that the act is successful? This many a times leads to the selection of wrong parameters to measure success.every individual has his own definition of Success. In the world of business, the marketing manager would define success as Increase in sales, the R and D colleague would feel successful when the product s accepted in the market and so on.advertising effectiveness should also be measured to avoid costly mistakes, evaluate alternate strategies and increase the efficiency of advertising. An effective ad results when the right advertising objectives are set. Should the ad sell the company image or a product? Is it expected to bring the reader to the point of purchase or just present an idea for consideration? For what audience is the product intended? Some of the specific advertising objectives can be - To make attitudes more favorable to a particular product. To build an image for the product. To get across the idea of a unique product. To reduce existing negative attitudes. To keep building loyalty. To establish the brand and position it in a particular way, e.g. as warm and friendly. Behind all effective advertising there lies a lot of careful thought and planning, and much of it goes into ensuring that the advertising objectives are the right ones. If these are wrong, everything else which follows is doomed to failure. There is no exact way to measure the success of an ad campaign. It is next to impossible to conclude revenue generated per rupee of advertising spend.more than 80% of advertisers and agencies pretest television commercials before airing them on a national basis. This shows that how important message research is to both the client and the agency.message research involves - To test effectiveness of messages Pretesting ads during developmental stages

2 Post testing to determine if messages achieve their established objectives The Bruzzone test - Advertising Response Model (ARM) links responses to the 27 descriptive adjectives to consumers attitudes toward both the ad and the advertised brand and to purchase interest. It provides valid prediction of actual marketplace performance along with being relatively inexpensive, it offers important information for evaluating a commercial s effectiveness and whether it should continue to run. The Burke Day-After Recall Testing - It is used to assess the effectiveness of test commercials and to identify strengths and weaknesses The Claimed-recall scores indicate the percentage of respondents who recall seeing the ad and Related-recall scores indicate the percentage of respondents who accurately describe specific advertising elements. One of the biggest debateis whether the ad should be rational or emotional. While emotions drive behavior, logic and emotion are somehow mutually exclusive. Emotion and logic are intertwined. Advertisers have various choices relative to advertising appeals and execution style.advertising appeal - the approach used to attract the attention of consumers and/or influence their feelings toward the product, service, or cause. Execution style - the way the particular appeal is turned into an advertising message presented to the consumer. Rational appeals focus on the consumer s practical, functional, or utilitarian need for using the product or service.there are several types of rational appeals like - Feature - focus on dominant feature of the product Competitive - make comparisons to different brands Price -makes price the dominant point News- announcement about the product Popularity -stress the brand popularity Pre-campaign - Pre-tests are those measures taken prior to the implementation of the campaign. Mid - campaign - Once the advertising creative is developed (either rough or finished), it s really important to pretest the advertising. Post campaign -Post-tests occur after the ad or commercial has been in the field. They are used to determine the effectiveness of the ads once the campaign has been implemented.

3 A pre/post research design, with one wave of research prior to the start of advertising and another after a campaign has ended, can be used to measure changes in awareness, attitudes, and intended behaviors that can be attributed to a specific campaign.it is sometimes called as Awareness, Attitude and Usage (AA&U) study. It helps to provide strategic advice to guide the development of brands and businesses by identifying opportunities to expand reach, attract new consumers, improve product positioning, and product and service features. We have also seen that the sample needs to be broad, as inclusive as possible. The broader sample helps because the demographics of a market can change over time.also define the product category to be tracked as broadly as possible. Also, always set quotas for gender, so that you do not under represent men. The study can then be conducted in two ways -continuous or pulsed study. Pulsed method can be concentrated into a short time interval to provide highly precise before-after measurements for specific flights of media advertising, and the waves of interviewing can be precisely timed to coincide with media schedules.continuous tracking method was started in 1976, Maurice Millward and Gordon Brown set up their first continuous tracking study, now named Dynamic Tracking, for Cadbury Schweppes with the objective to explore the issue of ad wear-out over time. The term marketing mix modelling is widely used and applied indiscriminately to a broad range of marketing models used to evaluate different components of marketing plans, such as advertising, promotion packaging, media weight levels, sales force numbers, etc. These models can be of many types, but multiple regression are the workhorse of most marketing mix modelling.marketing mix modelling is an analytical approach that uses historic information, such as syndicated point-of-sale data and companies internal data, to quantify the sales impact of various marketing activities. Copy testing consists of the Before and After Tests: The Before Tests consist of: 1. Consumer jury -In this method, a sizeable number of consumers from the target audience are shown a set of rough and unfinished advertisements. 2. Rating Scales - This method involves the use of certain standards against which a copy is tested. It may be added that weights may be assigned to different factors or items on the basis of which a copy is to be tested 3. Portfolio tests - According to this method, a number of alternative copies that are to be tested are placed in a portfolio.

4 The After Tests consist of: There are three methods that are frequently used to test an advertisement after it is formally released- 1. Recognition tests- These tests are carried out with respect to a printed advertisement and commonly referred to as a readership study. 2. Recall tests- In these method respondents are asked to recall specifics of the advertisement. To begin with, copies of test magazines are sent to a sample of respondents who are asked to read them n a normal manner. 3. Sales test - This method measures the effect of an advertisement on the sale of the product. The assumption is that changes in sales are as a result of the advertisement. A set of nine principles, called positioning Advertising Copy Testing (PACT) is designed to establish guidelines for good copy testing research.the nine PACT principles are shown here - Provide measurements relevant to objectives of advertising Require agreement on how results will be used Provide multiple measures Be based on a model of human response to communications Consider multiple versus single exposure to the stimulus Require alternative executions to have same degree of finish Provide controls to avoid biasing effects of exposure context Take into account basic considerations of sample definition Demonstrate reliability and validity The client, agency, research company and the account planner need to work together to create effective advertising. The client must craft a sound strategy for its brand, based on facts. The client must carefully define the role of advertising in the marketing plan and set precise communication objectives for the advertising. Once strategy and positioning alternatives are identified and tested, the strategy should be locked down and rarely changed thereafter.the ultimate goal of testing is an advertising success formula that works. That is, the goal of advertising creative development, and the goal of advertising testing, is to identify the elements/ideas essential to advertising effectiveness, and then to make sure that those elements/ideas are consistently communicated by all advertising executions.

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