Advertising Research - Criteria
Advertising Research
Roger is the product manager for King Cola, a product with a $22 million media budget. Last year half was spent on television, 30 percent in magazines and the rest was used to support retailer newspaper advertising. Roger, like most product managers, will need research help to set advertising objectives and to make three types of tactical advertising decisions that are the focus of this chapter: the creative decision, the budget decision, and the media decision.
Setting advertising objectives involves a host of questions. How should the brand be positioned? Should taste or a fun, active use experience be emphasized? What should the target audience be? Should the focus be on attracting new customers or keeping old ones? Is there a brand awareness problem? Almost any research that provides insights into the market, customer motivation, and brand performance will help to set objectives.
Much of advertising research is termed copy-testing and is directed at the creative decision—whether an advertisement should be run and, if not, how it should be changed. It involves exposing an audience to the advertisement and observing their response. The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to describing this type of research. A key issue introduced in the first sec-
tion of the chapter is how advertising should be evaluated. In the four sections that follow, four criteria will be introduced and research approaches based on each criteria will be examined. An overview of copy test validity will then be provided. Tracking studies, where the impact of advertising campaigns are monitored continuously over time are then described and discussed. A description of diagnostic research that provides detailed information for the creative team as to how the audience is reacting and the underlying reason follows.
The budget decision relates to how many exposures over what time period is needed to achieve the objectives. Roger, of course, can consider increasing or decreasing the advertising budget, or perhaps shifting some portion of it to promotions. The media decision involves the selection of the media class (i.e., television vs. magazines vs. radio vs. billboards) and the media vehicle (i.e., "60 Minutes" vs. "Cagney and Lacey," or Vogue vs. New Yorker). Research approaches to address budget and media decisions will be presented in the final two sections of the chapter.
Criteria
What separates an effective advertisement from a dud? The criteria will depend, of course, on the brand involved and its advertising objective. However, there are four basic categories of responses that are used in advertising research in general and copy testing in particular: (1) advertisement recognition, (2) recall of the commercial and its contents, (3) the measure of commercial persuasion, and (4) impact on purchase behavior. Each of these measures will be illustrated and discussed.
It is useful to distinguish between the pretesting of mock-ups of proposed advertisements, pretests of finished advertisements, and posttests of running advertisements or campaigns. Each has a role to play in the process. Pretesting helps advertisers make judgments as to whether the advertisement should be used and, if not, how it might be improved. Posttests, which measure the actual performance of a placed advertisement, can help determine whether to continue with the commercial type being run or, if not, what types of changes are needed. Some of the following copy test procedures will be more suitable to posttesting of running advertisements, but most can be adapted to the pretesting context as well. Others are designed to be used as pretests.
Roger is the product manager for King Cola, a product with a $22 million media budget. Last year half was spent on television, 30 percent in magazines and the rest was used to support retailer newspaper advertising. Roger, like most product managers, will need research help to set advertising objectives and to make three types of tactical advertising decisions that are the focus of this chapter: the creative decision, the budget decision, and the media decision.
Setting advertising objectives involves a host of questions. How should the brand be positioned? Should taste or a fun, active use experience be emphasized? What should the target audience be? Should the focus be on attracting new customers or keeping old ones? Is there a brand awareness problem? Almost any research that provides insights into the market, customer motivation, and brand performance will help to set objectives.
Much of advertising research is termed copy-testing and is directed at the creative decision—whether an advertisement should be run and, if not, how it should be changed. It involves exposing an audience to the advertisement and observing their response. The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to describing this type of research. A key issue introduced in the first sec-
tion of the chapter is how advertising should be evaluated. In the four sections that follow, four criteria will be introduced and research approaches based on each criteria will be examined. An overview of copy test validity will then be provided. Tracking studies, where the impact of advertising campaigns are monitored continuously over time are then described and discussed. A description of diagnostic research that provides detailed information for the creative team as to how the audience is reacting and the underlying reason follows.
The budget decision relates to how many exposures over what time period is needed to achieve the objectives. Roger, of course, can consider increasing or decreasing the advertising budget, or perhaps shifting some portion of it to promotions. The media decision involves the selection of the media class (i.e., television vs. magazines vs. radio vs. billboards) and the media vehicle (i.e., "60 Minutes" vs. "Cagney and Lacey," or Vogue vs. New Yorker). Research approaches to address budget and media decisions will be presented in the final two sections of the chapter.
Criteria
What separates an effective advertisement from a dud? The criteria will depend, of course, on the brand involved and its advertising objective. However, there are four basic categories of responses that are used in advertising research in general and copy testing in particular: (1) advertisement recognition, (2) recall of the commercial and its contents, (3) the measure of commercial persuasion, and (4) impact on purchase behavior. Each of these measures will be illustrated and discussed.
It is useful to distinguish between the pretesting of mock-ups of proposed advertisements, pretests of finished advertisements, and posttests of running advertisements or campaigns. Each has a role to play in the process. Pretesting helps advertisers make judgments as to whether the advertisement should be used and, if not, how it might be improved. Posttests, which measure the actual performance of a placed advertisement, can help determine whether to continue with the commercial type being run or, if not, what types of changes are needed. Some of the following copy test procedures will be more suitable to posttesting of running advertisements, but most can be adapted to the pretesting context as well. Others are designed to be used as pretests.
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