Published: 9/30/2024
Emily Higgins
Vice President, Ad Solutions
I have one of the best jobs in market research. Every day, I partner with brands across a variety of industries to design research that helps them understand the effectiveness of their creative campaigns. Often, as we discuss the campaign’s goals, objectives, and timing, barriers to the actual process of testing the ideas surface: There isn’t time to test. Budgets are tight. Testing could kill a great idea. Predicting an ad’s effectiveness in a lab environment is impossible. Brands can use in market digital metrics to measure success.
But it’s important to consider that the quality of your creative content plays a pivotal role in the success of your advertising, more so than media weight, targeting, or placement. As consumers, we are bombarded with brand messages daily. Our minds naturally filter these messages, retaining what’s meaningful and discarding the rest. In this cluttered landscape, high-quality creative ideas stand out and leave a lasting impression with consumers. These lasting impressions, or branded memories, influence our purchasing decisions. And that is where creative research comes in. Research with your target audience is the key to understanding the quality of your campaign and measuring what will stick.
Testing helps you understand the brand-building potential of your advertising in a way that impressions, clicks, and short-term sales can’t. When evaluating creative quality, two of the two most important questions to ask are if the ad will capture the audience’s attention and if it will be remembered. At Dynata, we address these questions through measures of ad performance and, more importantly, a deep evaluation of why an ad works (or does not work). Our approach provides a deep understanding of the campaign’s storytelling and visual language and how memories that will drive future behavior are created. Our clients use learnings to optimize campaigns before going live and improve future creative campaigns.
Regardless of where you are in the creative development process, testing your creative ideas will provide meaningful learning on how the consumer views your ads. Creative research will provide guidance and optimization opportunities before investing resources in the live campaign, giving your brand the best opportunity to leave a lasting impression.