How can we properly test sales and brand building campaigns?

Blog Jori van de Spijker – Practice Lead Brand & Comms

Where should we start? Recently I got this interesting question from an advertiser who hasn’t done much research yet. Quite a difficult question, because it is difficult to choose. Campaign effects, advertisements, the brand, everything is important, and the budget doesn’t always allow you to research everything.

The first step I advised was to start testing the creatives. Time and time again we see that having a strong creative is the most important reason for successful campaigns. Our annual Brand Growth Study among marketers revealed that pretesting has the most impact during the development phase, Figure 1 shows the differences between winners (companies that perform better than competitors) and losers (companies that perform worse than competitors) in pretesting creatives. A recent study on our own database showed us that only 20% of campaigns can break through the clutter. And I’m not even talking about realising impact, but purely whether they manage to win the attention of the consumer in the competitive media landscape. This says a lot about the creatives we work with. You can think endlessly about the best media strategy, the ideal targeting, the optimum number of contacts, the right number of creatives. But when your creatives aren’t strong enough, you will never realise impact.

Figure 1 Difference testing in phases of creative development between winners and losers

The right balance

It is one of the reasons why ‘Creative Development’ was chosen as the central theme within our Brand Growth platform in 2020. This year I spoke with 10 CMOs about creatives, and Mark Ritson and Les Binet shared their take on the subject during the Brand Growth Event. Creative is ranked second in Ritson’s Top 10 most important factors for marketing effectiveness, and Binet once again reiterated that creativity is key to a higher share of mind.

Next to that, Binet is one of the founders of the now famous ’60:40’ rule: for the most effective strategy, 60% of marketing activities should focus on brand building, and 40% on sales activation. We see from the market that brands are adopting this strategy more and more often. On the one hand, campaigns are about realising short term effects and sales, on the other hand, it is about the long term and building the brand. In my opinion, a good campaign covers both fields, but it is good to look at your media input in this way and to think about the right balance within, and between campaigns.

how do you translate that into RESEARCH?

As advertisers think more emphatically in terms of sales and branding goals, it is important to take these goals into account when pretesting campaign creatives. However, we don’t really see that happening yet. Almost all commonly used pretest solutions in the market don’t take these different objectives into account. In pretesting, there is no distinction between sales activation and brand building. A creative simply scores well, or it doesn’t. And that is too short-sighted.

“In pretesting, there is no distinction between sales activation and brand building. A creative simply scores well, or it doesn’t.”

Which led us to look closely at our own database. Based on over 1,000 tested creatives we have analysed which KPIs are important for branding and which are important for sales activation. And the differences were clear as day. Long term branding is determined by the emotional processing of the creative, where factors such as building positive associations and excitement are the most important ingredients. For short term sales activation we see more rational elements; it is crucial to convey the product or message in such a way where it is instantly clear for consumers how it can help them in their day to day life.

the right choice

Perhaps even more important than the conversations around sales and branding, is that it forces marketers to think about both the short and the long term. It would be beneficial if researchers could also increasingly look through those same glasses. All creatives should convey the brand and the message. But you cannot score a branding campaign on a simple question around purchase intention, and a creative more focused on sales activation does not have to have the same emotional impact. Winning brands keep an eye on the balance between both aspects, and only by connecting to this in pretesting, can we ensure more success in the short and long term.