Critical First Steps to Advertising Success

The first step of advertising development is crucial. This is the stage where creative ideas are reviewed, revised, evaluated, and many are discarded. Decisions are then made to pursue production--often with little or no consumer feedback to understand the potential power of the creative ideas. Development tools can play a key role at the early stages of advertising development, allowing you to evaluate the potential of the advertisement quickly and efficiently, to understand the potential the idea has to impact sales and brand equity, and to deliver on your brand strategy or message. Ipsos-ASI's screening product, Next*Idea, is designed to be used at these very early stages of advertising development to identify the truly strong creative ideas and provide feedback to enhance them further.

To validate if screening at this early stage does in fact provide the expected improvements in advertising development, Ipsos-ASI conducted an analysis of Next*TV results for cases initially tested in Next*Idea. Results for the ads previously tested in Next*Idea were compared to executions that were developed without using the screening process. The objective was to determine whether commercials that have been through Next*Idea screening perform better when tested in Next*TV than if they had not used Next*Idea screening first.

Next*Idea and Next*TV represent distinct milestones in the commercial development process, working in a complementary way. Next*Idea testing is performed entirely via the Internet where the respondent views a creative execution (typically in the form of a "videoboard" or animatic) and answers evaluative and diagnostic questions.160The measures used in Next*Idea reflect the same dimensions of ad performance as our validated Next*TV methodology, and thus help increase the chances of producing successful ads.

The analysis shows that Next*TV results line up with Next*Idea findings.

• Recall
  • 73% of results were the same, within one quintile (chart 2)
  • 87% of results were the same, within one quintile, or better (chart 3)
• Persuasion
  • 53% or results were the same (chart 6)
  • 77% of results were the same or better (chart 7)

In the majority of cases, executions are changed after screening in Next*Idea. In some instances, Next*TV results are lower than Next*Idea. However, on average, changes to executions screened in Next*Idea have a positive effect. The rich diagnostic component of Next*Idea offers insights for these improvements.

Next*Idea screening has enabled an overall improvement in recall and persuasion scores for ads tested in Next*TV .

• Related Recall increased by 21% (4 points) on average (chart 4)
• PPS difference from PAR increased by more than 2 points (chart 8)
• Copy Effect Index increased on average by over 40 points (chart 9)

Effective research can greatly enhance the quality of your advertising, but it is a process, not a single step. The most productive use of research is an integrated approach, beginning with brand strategy development and with learning and insights transferred from one step to the next. The best learning often happens early in the process.