WEIGHING THE MERITS OF COPY TESTING

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1 WEIGHING THE MERITS OF COPY TESTING Sunday, September 24, 2006 Regardless of your point of view on copy testing, it is here to stay. It appears more and more clients are adopting and relying on it. Moreover, many have instituted performance benchmarks that serve as action standards in determining the eventual airing of the tested advertising. So, contrary to individual opinion, client and/or agency, we need to embrace and learn to make copy testing work harder for us in achieving leadership advertising. This is the first of a series of DISPATCHES articles dealing with copy testing. This article weighs the merits of copy testing and suggests ways in which we may better employ it to manage the development of more effective advertising. Future articles, each to appear over the next few weeks, will tackle: requisites for successful copy testing; prerequisites for ensuring consistent, successful execution; and ways to bring news to your brand to command higher copy test scores and marketplace performance. Weaknesses of Copy Testing Let s start by acknowledging the weaknesses of copy testing. Keep in mind that many of these weaknesses are a function of how copy testing is used, or more accurately stated, abused, by client companies. 1. It doesn t reflect the real world. Test participants future purchase interest ratings, while claimed by testing organizations to correlate with actual purchase interest, is still not the same thing as actual purchase behavior in the marketplace. Moreover, this is further complicated by the fact that these tests represent simulations - people participating in a test versus sitting at home in front of the television which is the ultimate reality. 2. It doesn t discriminate between a spot and campaign. The manager who moves from one unconnected TVC spot to another is not creating the same value for a brand as one who has created a campaign that reflects high copy testing scores for the whole and for individual spots. In other words, a high copy test score on an isolated spot (i.e., one that is not a part of a campaign) is not as valuable to the organization as one for a campaign that lasts many years. 3. It s biased towards new products and news value to existing products such as improvements, line extensions, etc. It s easier to get higher copy testing scores for a new versus existing product. It s also biased towards products that carry important news value to a particular segment of the population (e.g., blood sugar lowering medication for 1

2 people recently diagnosed with diabetes and/or for those whose condition has not been controlled and/or is leading to complications). In other words, it is biased towards high involvement categories and people with high levels of dissatisfaction with their condition or current products. However, the reality is that many marketers work on brands that are, well, parity performers given this age of sameness within which we find ourselves competing. 4. It can, if afforded blind obedience, prematurely kill the emergence of a powerful campaign. This may be attributed to a number of reasons among which are: some commercial test formats such as animatics may lack the added-value of a creative director and subsequent production; organizations tend to kill something that has not achieved action standards versus use learnings to find ways to make the messaging more effective; sometime a campaign just becomes stronger through the continuous improvement that comes from creative insights or merely added exposure; the advertising may serve alternate constituencies who are not addressed by the testing (e.g., it could serve to transform the organization to achieve greater results); etc. The highly successful MasterCard ad campaign performed poorly in early copy testing yet has been highly successful in growing the brand over the past ten years. It has not only changed customer perceptions and behavior but has reinvigorated the sales organization leading to surpassing VISA for the leadership position in the category. 5. It leads to a focus on execution versus the value of the strategic message or organizational practices. Yes, copy testing is about execution but managers oftentimes overlook the bigger picture regarding the relevance of the message to their target audience. Also, copy testing results are as much an assessment of organizational practices and the client-agency relationship, which need to be addressed in order to ensure successful execution and the development of leadership advertising on a more consistent basis. There are other weaknesses too, among which are: it is most frequently used as pass/fail versus guidance for strengthening ad execution and development; it may not be considered within the context of achieving the Marketing Objective; its meaning is subject to the interpretation of some managers who lack a context for successful communications; it focuses on too many points treating each with equal weight versus addressing the big picture of successful communications; it is an after-the-fact (i.e., production in some form) form of assessment; etc. Again, many of the weaknesses relate to how a given client organization will abuse the copy testing as opposed to make it work more effectively for them. Merits of Copy Testing On the other hand, there are many merits to copy testing that we cannot ignore. Copy testing has its place. Here are some of the key ones: 1. Strong copy test scores are correlated to increases in sales and market share. If we accept that higher copy test scores are linked with more effective advertising then it only stands to reason that it should correlate with increases in business results. Our goal is to grow sales and build long-term equity with advertising. So, we should strive to achieve high copy test scores. 2

3 2. It represents the voice of the customer. It is feedback from the intended target audience. It does not cater to rank in a given organization or biases that exist within, and between, client and agency organizations. It s about how the customer relates to the communication. Advertising must stimulate customer behaviors (e.g., switching, frequency of purchasing, etc.) that we determine are needed for brand health and growth. Copy testing enables us to hear and learn from the customer whether the advertising being scrutinized is capable of stimulating the desired behavior. 3. It assists in resource allocation and, as such, achieving a higher ROI on marketing support. If you are a General Manager and have only one dollar to spend in growing the business where are you likely to put that dollar? If you have two brands, only one of which is achieving high copy test scores (the other which is not), you will undoubtedly put your one dollar of support against the former brand. If both brands are failing to meet predetermined action standards then you should reconsider advertising and, instead, use that dollar to support a more productive marketing mix element. It is a key way in which we may maximize the ROI on marketing support dollars. 4. It can lead managers and their organizations to achieve advertising excellence. Specifically, the employment of copy testing can contribute to learnings which, in turn, lead to enhancing ad development competency and performance. What we mean here is getting more productive advertising on a more consistent basis through individuals, their companies and agencies, finding ways to achieve new, higher action standards that result in increased sales performance. As learnings from the copy testing are internalized more productive practices and processes should be adopted. The mere act of raising the bar and holding people accountable serves to spur enhanced performance. The learnings and subsequent developments in practices and processes help build a core competency in developing leadership advertising. 5. It can serve to rethinking the strategic message. The execution is the end point in a stream of activities. Foremost is the development of the strategic message, more specifically, the promise (i.e., benefit, single-minded proposition) that we are serving-up to the customer. While the execution and, as such, copy testing get at how the message is served-up it should also serve to get us to reassess what message, or promise, we need to communicate. If we bake a cake that people don t like it could be that we failed in executing the recipe (i.e., how we prepared it) or we chose the wrong kind of cake to satisfy the target audience (i.e., what we offered them). Yes, the strategic message should be checked-out through concept testing, etc., before we develop the Creative Brief. But, all too often things get added to the Creative Brief, or are incorrectly interpreted, such that the wrong message (or multiple messages) is foisted into the execution. Copy testing can be an important check on the strategic message. The merits outweigh the weaknesses, from our perspective, when you consider the potential for transforming the organization and relationship with the agency in developing more effective advertising that leads to creating brand loyalty. However, in order to realize that value, copy testing must be managed skillfully going beyond using it as a report card to determine pass/fail of a specific ad, placing blame for substandard advertising, etc. 3

4 BOATS & HELICOPTERS: Here are some ways to realize the merits of copy testing: 1. Use copy testing as one part, albeit a key one, of assessing the productivity of your advertising. We need to engage customers in a dialogue throughout the ad development process. We should ensure that we have checked that we have the correct message (i.e., the what or strategic benefit) prior to the development of the Creative Brief and development of creative. This message should be the product of a legitimate and productive customer insight and lead to achievement of the Marketing Objective. Also, we think there is value in conducting qualitative following copy testing to gain insights into what the quantitative measures really mean. 2. Agree to specific action standards against achievement of the behaviors identified in the Marketing Objective for the Target Audience. We are more likely to get a positive correlation between test scores and business results (e.g., increase in sales) if the copy testing is measuring the correct criteria. If our Marketing Objective is to increase purchase frequency amongst current customers then the copy testing should give us measures against that specifically. Also, we should track ad results in the marketplace, factoring-out, where possible, other sales drivers such as merchandising, promotion, etc., to establish a correlation between sales and copy testing results for the brand and organization. 3. Discriminate between ad and campaign copy testing. Certainly, meeting action standards for an individual ad is important but it does not carry the same value to an organization as achieving action standards for a campaign that is going to be productive for many years, in many mediums, in many countries. 4. Use copy testing to enhance organizational competency. Determine the causal factors for the copy test results. One part will be to adopt fundamentals of effective advertising execution. But another, larger part, will be to develop practices and processes that lead the organization to more consistently achieve excellence in executing the fundamentals. In other words, get beyond the advertising itself. Build learnings into the organization to transform how it develops advertising. It is also important to determine if it is the execution (i.e., how the message is communicated) or if it is the strategic (i.e., what promise is being proffered) that is resulting in substandard test results. 5. Involve the ad agency in assessing the copy testing results. Don t assess it in a vacuum and use it as a bully-whip against the agency. Collaborate in assessing and developing indicated actions for enhancing the advertising going beyond the specific spot under scrutiny. Copy testing should never be used as a bully-whip to beat the agency but instead as a beacon of light to illuminate shared understanding and eventually the development of more effective advertising. 6. Put your money where your mouth is. What we mean is back-up the copy testing with appropriate behavior. If an ad falls below action standards cut ad spending and find more productive ways to employ your resources until that time it can be demonstrated that you have effective advertising. 4

5 If you are interested in enhancing your skills in managing the development of leadership advertising that commands higher copy test scores and bolsters marketplace performance register now for the Leadership Communications Conference. The conference provides best practices, processes and productive tools for: Discovering Customer Insights; developing a strategically appropriate, single-minded Creative Brief for sure-footed creative; realizing the BIG Idea; and creating advertising with Impact. We ll reserve a place for you. Please call either one of us, or Lori Vandervoort at , as soon as possible. We hope to see and serve you there! Richard Czerniawski & Mike Maloney Richard Czerniawski Abbotsford Road Kenilworth, Illinois tel fax reply to Richard: rdczerniawski@cs.com or richardcz@bdn-intl.com Mike Maloney West 13th Street, #17 Austin, Texas tel fax reply to Mike: mikewmaloney@cs.com or mikemaloney@bdn-intl.com Please forward any comments regarding the newsletter to Lori Vandervoort at our Central Division Offices of BDN International, or loriv@bdn-intl.com Registration is filling up quickly and time is running out to take advantage of early registration discounts (up to $1400 per person). Call today or to register for the upcoming Leadership Communications College which begins Tuesday, October 31 st through Friday, November 3 rd, 2006 just go to our website and click on the blue registration at the bottom left of the page. You may also call Lori Vandervoort at for additional help in registering. Have you visited us on our new blog site yet? Let us know what you think. We welcome your comments. International 2003 Brand Development Network (BDN) International. All rights reserved. 5