Putting Market Research at the Heart Of the Media Planning Process

Transcription

1 ESOMAR Marketing in Latin America, Santiago, April Putting Market Research at the Heart Of the Media Planning Process Scott Spence Cadem Advertising, Chile and Aurora Yasuda IBOPE AdHoc, Brazil. WHAT IS ADVERTISING EFFICIENCY? The basic objective for advertising is to sell products/services. To measure advertising efficiency we must measure the sales effect from that advertising. The most efficient executions in terms of generating a noticeable effect for the brand/service are those that have the following qualities (see figure 1). These ads show the consumer a memorable creative idea that will create a lasting impression. This 'idea' will in some way link to the brand that is being advertised and tell the consumer something about that brand. This concept, which will hereafter be referred to as the Creative Magnifier, is the basis for building strong advertising memories for the brand and driving sales in both the long and short term. If one of these three creative magnifier elements is weak, then the efficiency of the advertising is also weakened. If the execution is not memorable then it will not get peoples attention when on air. If the memorable idea is not linked to the brand then we are simply building awareness of creative images, not building an advertised presence for our brand. And, if the images left are associated to the brand but do not leave the consumer with some information/impression (rational or emotional) about the brand, they have no reason to change the way they feel about the brand which could lead to a future change in purchase behaviour. HOW TO MEASURE ADVERTISING EFFICIENCY? Obviously the most actionable time to measure advertising efficiency is in the pretest situation before the execution airs, to make sure we have the most efficient execution against the strategy set by the brand team. We can break executional efficiency down into three areas: 1. impact 2. communication 3. persuasion In other words, we need to get peoples attention, tell them what we have to say and thereby convince them to make a difference to their brand choice. IMPACT To measure impact we use the Awareness Index measure, which is a score that represents the percent increase per 100 GRPs in advertising awareness for the brand. This figure comes from real life tracking data, which has been modelled. We take data from the question 'have you seen brand X advertised on TV recently?' and model it against the GRPs achieved for the brand. See figure 2. We can reliably predict this score at the pretest stage through a statistical algorithm based on four key measures: whether the ad is enjoyable, involving, easy to understand and linked to the brand. In all countries where we have been able to correlate the predicted pretest score against the achieved tracked score we have a high correlation result. This is the Brazilian data, which is in line with other global standards with a correlation of See figure 3. You can look at this another way. In this example from Chile we tested two ads for the same brand and both ads were aired. The second ad had an Awareness Index prediction three times the efficiency of the first ad and achieved three times as much recall in the post tracking data. See figure 4. Communication This is taken as the percent of people who can recall the correct brand message from the advertising in a spontaneous manner. Typically the question would be 'what do you think the advertising was trying to tell you about brand X?'.

2 Persuasion Persuasion in a pretest situation is typically measured by a pre/post persuasion shift or intention to buy question. We use an intention to buy question, which is correlated against sales data and against persuasion shift methodologies. This gives us the luxury in the pretest situation of not having to waste energy and expense on creating an unnatural viewing environment in a theatre etc., also allowing us rich diagnostic information. The overall 'Persuasion Score' is an adjusted score against the country average of the percent of people with strong intentions to act in favour to the brand as a result of seeing the ad. This is an example from Chile. See figure 5. BUT SURELY NOT ALL ADS ARE THE SAME? All ads have these three elements in common, but depending on the advertising strategy the relative importance of these measures changes. Different sorts of executions are used tactically to achieve different goals. We categorise advertising into three different types. 1. Immediate challenge New news As the name explains, the objectives for such an execution are to change the way people think about the brand in the short term. This is typically a new product launch or a brand relaunch, adding some new benefit to an existing product. In these cases, the communication is very important, as people have to understand the new news for us to expect it to work and a high score on persuasion is to be expected if the news gets through and interests the consumers. But we do not always have news to say. Much advertising is dedicated to building brands in the longer term, sustaining their presence. We divide these executions into two types the second and third advertising option. 2. Enhancement This is advertising which sustains a brand claim over time. It does not offer new information but offers instead a new way of looking at the same information. The most stereotypical example is of a soap powder that continues telling you it 'cleans whites whiter'. The brand is likely to have had this claim for years and constantly comes up with a new way of showing it. When you next need a powder that outperforms the rest on whiteness you will have this claim logged in your brain and know which one to choose. In these types of advertising communication is allimportant, as you have to remind as many people as possible of what the brand stands for and register the claim. The higher the impact, the more people you will reach. 3. Interest status In interest status advertising we are selling images and talking about the brand in a way that leaves you with an impression that it is the brand to be using. Good examples of this are advertising for cigarettes, alcohol and fashion. Very rarely will ads in these categories give you factual information about the brand. They are much more likely to show you stylish images in the hope that they will fit with your view of the things you aspire to. Here impact is the most important element, as the creativity of the advertising will be representing the status of the brand. This is what Levis and CocaCola aim to achieve. These categories are not necessarily exclusive. An ad can be enhancing the perceptions of a brand user and giving new news to a nonuser for example. However advertising efficiency is measured it must acknowledge these differences. DOES ADVERTISING EFFICIENCY REALLY VARY? Quite simply the answer is yes. In the databases available in Brazil and Argentina, for example, we see a huge variation on the three key elements we have established as the main variables in advertising efficiency. TABLE 1: SIGNIFICANT VARIATION OF EFFICIENCY ON KEY MEASURES Highest Average Lowest Argentina Impact (AI) Communication Persuasion Brazil Impact (AI) Communication Persuasion What this data says is that the ability of an execution to generate a branded advertising presence can vary to the power of around 20. You could have an ad with an Awareness Index score of 1 or an ad with a 19 that makes a massive difference on the results in terms of ad

3 awareness. When we look at communication, the Brazilian database shows that there are some ads which have achieved spontaneous recall of their intended message (according to the clients objectives in the brief) among 94% of those interviewed almost everybody. It also shows that there are some ads where nobody has recalled the intended message. Persuasion also varies enormously from as low as 7% up to 50% in Argentina and all the way up to 84% in Brazil. With such significant variance on these three vitally important key measures we can not assume the ad will work and have to make sure we are airing the most efficient ad possible before it goes out. What are then the implications for media planning The impact factor has an important role to play in the media planning process. Quite simply the higher the Awareness Index, the ads efficiency at driving advertising awareness for the brand, the harder your advertising dollar is working for you. Figure 6 shows the resulting ad awareness from ads with an Awareness Index of 2, 4 or 6, assuming the same spend pattern. The area of awareness improves as the Awareness Index improves, without spending any extra GRPs. So understanding the power of the executions efficiency beforehand will have a direct impact on the media plan. An execution with a low efficiency will require a heavy and more concentrated spend pattern to achieve a decent level of awareness. A highly efficient execution will require much less because awareness will build very quickly. In these cases the GRPs are probably better spent in several smaller flights rather than one heavy burst, maintaining brand presence over a larger period of time. It is not necessarily a case of spending less but spending the budget more wisely. A case in point In Argentina we were asked to analyse the efficiency of spend patterns between our client and their main competitor. The information we used was the percent of people who recognised an execution on air, via the use of a photoboard of the execution. The scenes we chose tell the story of the creative idea, without showing the name or the pack. We find out if people have seen them before and if they have, which brand was been advertised. This is a useful diagnostic in that it separates issues of creative impact and branding. Figure 7 shows what we consider an efficient spend pattern. Each bar shows the percent of people who have seen the ad in question and represents four weeks of rolling data, so the first column shows the results from weeks one to four of us asking about this ad. The second column shows the results from weeks two to five and so on. What we see in this pattern is that with extra spend we get extra awareness. Advertising recognition reaches 85% after only 322 GRPs, which clearly shows this was an impactful execution. What is more interesting is that as we reach 85% recognition the investment in the execution stops. The actual peak in visibility comes just after the end of investment with a score of 90% recognition. This seems optimal in that no GRPs were spent after we reached maximum coverage. This is not always the case, however. In a second example, we see a different picture (figure 8). Here we are seeing the end of a flight. Visibility has reached 65% when we start this period. This 65% after 366 GRPs does not compare favourably to the first example where 322 GRPs reached 85% of the sample. In this case visibility seems to have already peaked at 65% given that it starts to fall after then. But, here the advertiser spends another 54 GRPs, which achieve no extra awareness. They can not have shown the ad to any new people, but simply repeated viewings for people who had already seen it. In this particular category these extra GRPs are in effect overspend because this is a category with lots of ads on air, with a short life span. There is normally a rotation of shortterm executions on air used tactically. In another markets it could be argued that these extra GRPs are not inefficient as they are maintaining the presence of the execution in the mind of the consumer. But that is not the case here. In this instance it is only fiftyfour GRPS that have been overspent. In other cases this can be more serious. See figure 9. We found in general that our client was spending on average 20% of their advertising budget after the execution had achieved maximum reach. This 20% represents 160 GRPs on average, but can be as much as 338 GRPs. For a brand with many executions in the year, 20% of the annual investment is a significant amount of money. Through a more efficient spend pattern the competition was achieving maximum reach with 100% of their spend, not 'overspending' a single GRP. What about cluttered markets? Many Latin American markets are seen as 'cluttered' advertising environments. This is measured by the number of advertisements the average person is exposed to in an average week. In Brazil the average person in an average week is exposed to around 400 commercials (Ibope Mdia, Brasil). The higher the number of ads, the more cluttered the market. In a high clutter market the concept of 'cutting through the clutter' becomes a real concern. And, when you have more limited budgets than your competitors, the need for more efficient executions and spend patterns becomes all the more important. A case in point This is one of many Brazilian cases that show the difference between 'buying awareness' with increased GRPs weights and achieving awareness with efficient communication (figure 10).

4 Figure 11 shows the levels of advertising awareness for one of our clients in Brazil and one of their main competitors. As the chart shows, the levels of advertising awareness associated to the brand are very similar sometimes our client wins and sometimes the competition takes the lead. What is interesting about this is that our client achieves this with just over 20,000 GRPs in this period and the competition has had to spend almost five times that amount, nearly 100,000 GRPs. This is a huge difference in financial terms and clearly shows that the competition has either an inefficient media plan or is using inefficient executions or potentially a combination of both. This is the modelled data for the competition showing the Awareness Index results. The range of efficiencies is from 0.1 to 1.2, with most ads scoring around a 0.4. This 0.4 compares very poorly to the Brazilian national average of 2, showing only a fifth of the average efficiency in Brazil. When we look at our clients performance on this measure we see Awareness Index scores that range from 0.5 to 4. On average the client achieves almost a 2, in line with the Brazilian average. The Awareness Index of 4 is the highest recorded in this category. From diagnostic data from the tracking study we know that this huge difference between the competition and our client is partly due to execution efficiency and partly due to media lay down. See figure 12. On the executional front, our client has a differentiated advertising style in its category and has built some genuine brand properties over the years which are automatically linked to the brand creativity working on behalf of the brand. In the case of the competitor, a lot of their executions are seen as generic to the category and lack branding low creative impact that does not work as hard for the brand. On the media lay down front, our client bought on average about 225 GRPs a week across this period. The competition bought over 1,000 GRPs a week. To achieve such a high number of GRPs per week the competitions media plan must be hitting some incredibly high frequencies, showing the same execution to the same person time and time again. We sometimes refer to this as preaching to the converted. The implications of this are quite significant. The major savings our client achieves with more efficient advertising allows them to invest in other media and alternative marketing activities. FREQUENCY AND COVERAGE Over the years media planning has become more sophisticated in its ability to buy exactly the GRPs it needs for the brand and its target. This has meant that one set of 100 GRPs no longer necessarily has the same 'make up' as the next set of 100 GRPs. By 'make up' we refer to the levels of frequency and coverage. Coverage means the percent of people 'reached' by the commercial at least once and Frequency represents the number of times they were reached. Each exposure to the execution, referred to as an OTS (Opportunity To See), counts as a GRP measure. So sometimes 100 GRPs can be comprised of showing the ad to a high proportion of the sample (high Coverage) only a few times (low Frequency). But, on other occasions, the same amount of GRPs can be achieved by reaching fewer people (low Coverage) and showing them the ad repeatedly (high Frequency). We have discussed earlier that quite clearly executions do vary in their ability to raise advertising awareness the difference can be up to twenty fold. With executions that are highly impactful, the build in advertising awareness is more rapid and with low impact executions the build is slower. Figure 13 shows how advertising awareness builds for two different executions as the number of exposures is increased. Ad A reaches about 80% recall after a few OTS (exposures) and Ad B is only reaching 80% after a considerably higher number of OTS. This means that Ad A is more impactful, raising awareness more quickly. In our Frequency and Coverage analysis we have established that the percent response in ad awareness to the first OTS (the first time the execution is shown) is all that is needed to predict how the rest of the curve will grow. We can calculate this response to the first OTS by modelling achieved frequency and coverage information against advertising awareness. An added complication to the modelling approach is the need to allow for the fact that people forget advertising over time. In other words, a person may see an ad for the fifth time, but if they have forgotten the first four exposures, they are effectively a first OTS (coverage). This is taken account of in the model itself by applying a decay factor to the actual coverage and frequency data giving us remembered OTS rather than just OTS. We refer to the results of the model as the force of the commercial how much extra awareness it will generate from the first OTS which in turn determines how much extra awareness is generated for the second and subsequent OTS. This force score represents the potential efficiency of the execution if we were to buy the 'perfect' media plan and show the ad to 100% of the sample just once, with no repeated viewings. We have now taken out the effects of how the media was bought and have isolated the genuine contribution from the creative. Force scores can be calculated from modelling historical tracking data as described above and once this is available force can also be predicted in the pretest situation. This information compliments the results we have against GRPs and provides our clients with an input in the decision on frequency and coverage, which is most often how the media plan is actually bought. In the post test tracking situation we can compare the achieved Awareness Index, which is a combination of the creative efficiency of the ad itself and the media plan to the force score, which is the potential the execution had. In the United Kingdom the average is about 75% efficiency in the way the media is bought, because some repetition is almost inevitable. Some clients, however, can be as efficient as 90% but we have seen patterns as low as only 40% efficiency. This means that the media plan for a high impact and a low impact execution need to achieve different patterns in terms of Frequency and Coverage as well as GRP levels (as discussed earlier). If an execution is highly impactful, then there is no need to hit high levels of frequency people are more likely to notice this ad first time round and the advertising awareness curve will grow sharply. With a low impact ad a higher average frequency score will be necessary to help build awareness, as it will take more viewings of the execution before people notice it. This has proven to be an issue for clients with highly efficient executions in many parts of the world, including countries with lower clutter levels. There are many cases where the client 'overspent' in terms of Frequency levels and was simply repeating showing of the execution to people who had already seen it without raising awareness. In Brazil we have a couple of cases where we have predicted a higher Awareness Index in the pretest situation than was achieved in the

5 tracking data. This goes against the high correlation we have between predicted and achieved scores on other tests. On examining these cases we have found that in most instances the levels of spend were higher than average and we have already found some incidences of inefficient media lay down significantly reducing the potential of the execution. WHAT ABOUT OTHER MEDIA THAN TELEVISION? Television is not the only way to reach an audience. There are many other media at the disposal of agencies and advertisers to use as channels to communicate through. Recent studies into the efficiency of magazines as a medium in the United States has proven that dollar for dollar or GRP for GRP magazines deliver more advertising awareness than television and that a combination of television plus magazines results in the highest relationship between ad awareness and purchase intent. Magazines generate more advertising awareness than television The data used for this analysis comes from two years of tracking data from the United States and isolates 113 brands from many different product fields that used a mix of magazine and television in their media spend. The base for this analysis comes from over half a million interviews conducted over a twoyear period. The top line results from this analysis are shown in figure 14. When we asked respondents who recalled having seen advertising for the brand where they saw that advertising, 36% of respondents remembered have seen advertising on television only, 35% remembered the brand in both magazines and television, with the remaining 29% remembering only magazines. This means that 71% remembered something on television in total and 64% remembered something in magazines. These levels are very similar. And, when we compare these similar levels to the share of advertising spend (in U.S. dollars) we see that television has a disproportional amount of spend compared to the levels of awareness it has generated. Seventyseven percent of advertising budgets were spent on television versus only 23% on magazines, yet they generate around the same amount of advertising awareness for their media. We can then divide the percent of total awareness attributed to each medium, by the percent of spend, to come up with an overall effectiveness measure based on a dollar for dollar comparison. This can be referred to as the awareness to cost index. See figure 15. This index reveals that, dollar for dollar, magazines deliver significantly higher advertising awareness levels than television. In fact the relationship is about three to one, three times as efficient per dollar invested. A mix of television and magazine advertising correlates more highly to purchase intent In this analysis we compared positive changes in advertising awareness with changes in claimed purchase intent. In 61% of cases we found that there was a direct relationship between these two measures building ad awareness builds purchase intent. What were most interesting were the characteristics of these cases where a correlation was found. It was found that in 65% of the cases where there was a significant relationship between advertising awareness and purchase intent the advertising spend was a mix of both television and magazine (see figure 16). Nineteen percent of cases were magazine advertised (without television) and only 16% were television advertised only. This type of behaviour is called the 'mediamultiplier effect' and shows the potential to boost awareness and purchase intent by the combination of media. EVIDENCE OF THE MEDIA MULTIPLIER EFFECT IN LATIN AMERICA? We do not have this same dollar for dollar analysis for television versus magazines available for Latin America and differences in readership levels and market clutter may effect the results, but we have already seen the effects of other media in Latin America. A good example of this is a Brazilian case where the combination was not television and magazines, but television and cinema. In this case we have a tracking study that runs in parallel in So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The exact same measurements were taken in the two cities and we found an interesting difference. In Rio de Janeiro the advertising for the brand was modelled using the system described earlier and the model was a success. The execution was not a huge success, achieving an Awareness Index of only 0.3 and really did not make a significant change to the advertising awareness for the brand. But, the model is a good fit, meaning we are explaining the variation in the ad awareness levels by the GRP investment on television. See figure 17. This was not the case in So Paulo, see figure 18. There are two distinct phenomena at work. Firstly the model undershot the awareness levels and clearly the TV spend does not explain all of the variation in the awareness levels. Secondly the Awareness Index in So Paulo is a 1.5 five times as efficient as the results in Rio de Janeiro. With further examination of the marketing activities we found that the reason for both of these phenomena was the presence of cinema advertising in the media mix. The simultaneous combination of television plus cinema in So Paulo was giving a significantly more efficient performance compared to the purely television spend in Rio de Janeiro. And, in So Paulo the second burst of cinema activity was clearly maintaining advertising levels beyond the results of the television expenditure. In this instance the execution enjoyed highlevel production qualities and the experience of seeing this execution in cinema was highly impactful.

6 How do we know which other media to use? For many of our clients within the tracking study we monitor claimed media consumption. This data can show trends in media behaviour and more importantly allows us to understand who is exposed to which type of media and provides our clients with valuable media planning inputs. There are often important differences in media consumption between different groups showing alternative, more targeted ways of reaching a particular group. See figure 19. MAKING A DIFFERENCE WITH MEDIA TARGETING This data is taken from a Brazilian tracking study and compares some of the media consumption data we have available for our client and a competitor they are interested in. Quite clearly the client has some interesting options to reach a higher proportion of the competitors customers. A high proportion of them read the Folha de So Paulo and the Estado de So Paulo on a regular basis. Similar levels of them subscribe to a cable or satellite television service. Our client also has a high number of customers with such a service, but not necessarily by the same provider. The clients customers are concentrated on Multicanal and Net, whereas the competitors customers are more disperse, with higher levels of TVA and DirecTV. Another alternative that may be worth pursuing is the use of the Internet as an advertising medium, as 50% of the competitors customers have access to the Internet. This data can be split out anyway necessary, not just looking at customers/consumers of services/brands, but any social class grouping or even attitudinal responses. IN CONCLUSION Research data can put the market researcher at the heart of the media planning process by providing invaluable information at key stages in the process. The first challenge for the advertiser, once the strategy has been agreed, is to come up with the most efficient execution possible. Execution efficiency can vary enormously so we can not assume the ad will perform on strategy. Through a quantified, validated pretest methodology that understands how advertising works, the client can receive a reliable prediction of on air performance, as well as actionable diagnostic information which points to any necessary changes to optimise on air performance before spending any of the precious advertising budget. By improving the ad before it goes on air we improve the end benefits for the brand. Understanding the power of the execution fully has immediate implications for which media is bought and how it is bought. Highly efficient executions can be in danger of overspending by using high frequency rates and therefore lessen the potential efficiency of the advertising. If the budget is limited, the use of an inefficient execution may not generate enough response to justify the advertising expenditure. The clear evidence of an improved efficiency using the media multiplier effect means the combination of media needs to be carefully thought out. Here again respondent level data can point the advertiser in the right direction when it comes to targeting the group they are most interested in, by understanding media consumption patterns linked to brand usage/socioeconomic data. Finally tracking data provides a never ending learning process which completes the cycle of advertising development, by allowing an evaluation of the activities undertaken and a review of strategy which will lead to a more informed next step. REFERENCES Brown, Gordon. How advertising effects the sales of packaged goods brands. The Black Book. Brown, Gordon (1986). Modelling Advertising Awareness. The Statistician, vol. 35, p Dyson, Paul and Jones, Anthony. (1995). Effective Frequency on TV Some Practical Lessons. Proceedings of the MRG Conference, 10 th November. Robinson, Thomas and Scott, Douglas. (1998). Documenting the Role of Magazines in the Media Mix. Proceedings of the ARF, October NOTES & EXHIBITS

7 FIGURE 1: CREATIVE MAGNIFIER FIGURE 2: BUILDING BRANDED ADVERTISING MEMORIES FIGURE 3: HIGH CORRELATION BETWEEN AWARENESS INDEX: TRACKED VS. LINK PREDICTED BRAZIL

8 FIGURE 4: DIRECT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A1 AND RECALL CHILEAN FOOD EXAMPLE FIGURE 5: THE IMMEDIATE PERSUASION: ADJUSTED

9 FIGURE 6: THE AWARENESS INDEX (AI) IS A GOOD MEASURE OF POTENTIAL MESSAGE REACH FIGURE 7: IDEAL SPEND PATTERN EVERY RATING INCREASES VISIBILITY OF EXECUTION

10 FIGURE 8: LESS OPTIMAL SPEND PATTERN EVERY RATINGS SPENT AFTER MAXIMUM REACH ACHIEVED FIGURE 9: DIFFERENT EFFICIENCIES FIGURE 10: TV ADVERTISING AWARENESS

11 FIGURE 11: TV ADVERTISING AWARENESS COMPETITION FIGURE 12: TV ADVERTISING AWARENESS CLIENT

12 Based on Sao Paulo rolling eight weekly data FIGURE 13: DIFFERENT ADS BUILD AWARENESS DIFFERENTLY DEPENDING ON THEIR EFFICIENCY FIGURE 14: SHARE OF ADVERTISING: AWARENESS AND SPENDING UNITED STATES

13 FIGURE 15: DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR, MAGAZINES DELIVER SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER ADVERTISING AWARENESS FIGURE 16: CASES WITH A SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISING AWARENESS AND PURCHASE INTENT

14 FIGURE 17: CLAIMED TV AD AWARENESS BRAND X Based on Rio de Janeiro rolling eight weekly data FIGURE 18: CLAIMED TV AD AWARENESS BRAND X

15 Based on São Paulo rolling eight weekly data FIGURE 19: MAKING A DIFFERENCE WITH MEDIA TARGETING Copyright ESOMAR 1999 ESOMAR Eurocenter 2, 11th floor, Barbara Strozzilaan 384, 1083 HN Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel: , Fax: All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets or the internet, ed, archived or shared electronically either within the purchaser s organisation or externally without express written permission from Warc.