Secrets of Advertising

There are no rules or recipes that guarantee the success of an advertisement; the best ads break the rules, and so do the worst. However, we have extracted some lessons learned from our databases, which we call `Secrets of Advertising,' to provide insights into creating more effective ads.

An effective ad generates short-term sales and/or contributes to building brand equity. In order to be effective, an ad needs to reach its audience (recall) and influence purchase behaviour (persuasion), and/or perceptions towards the brand.

The first `Secret of Advertising' is that there are universal rules. We often hear that `everything is different in Europe' and many of our clients have asked us for insights into other markets. While there are differences related to culture and advertising territory, some rules appear to be more universal.

In Europe, as elsewhere, the message is key Indeed, whatever the creative elements used, it is the capacity of the ad to deliver a strong message that is important. For an ad to be persuasive, it is essential that the message be perceived as clear and informative, credible, relevant, and different.

In addition, a strong message is also a driver of recall: that is, what you say triggers the interest of the consumer, making him or her more attentive and thus facilitating the integration of the message and its association with the brand.

This finding also explains one of the pitfalls for global advertising: unless your message is globally relevant and different (unusual), your ads are likely to get different persuasion results in different countries.

Elements of execution play similar roles in Europe The role of execution is to facilitate the delivery of the message to the audience: the execution needs to get noticed and linked to the brand or the message will be lost and/or the brand will not get credit for it.

Ads which achieved strong recall in Europe tended to use one or several of these elements:

• Strong brand presence. Even if it does not help to generate attention, the integration of the brand helps reinforce the link between the message and the brand. Extensive visual brand presence, frequent mentions of the brand, or when the brand is shown/mentioned at the beginning of the ad can each help drive related recall through improved brand linkage.
• Recurring character or music. Brand linkage can also be generated by the presence of a recurring character used in all the brand communications. (A recurring musical theme can also play this role.
• Presence of babies, kids, animals but not presence of stars. Systematic use of babies, kids, or animals would be counter-productive, but when legitimate to the brand, their presence generates empathy, which makes the consumers more attentive to the ad and thus strengthens the brand linkage. On the other hand, we have observed no systematic positive effect from the use of celebrities in Europe. They can even have a negative effect when they attract all of the attention of the consumer, who then forgets both the message and/or the brand. A celebrity's effect can also be detrimental when their illegitimacy is so obvious that the consumer understands that the star is only `in it for the money.'

Drivers of recall have no effect on persuasion. In Europe and around the globe, the elements that are drivers of recall have no effect--possibly even a negative effect--on persuasion.

Entertaining versus irritating. Entertainment is directly correlated with recall but not systematically tied to persuasion. In other words, an ad that people find entertaining has more chance to be seen and recalled by consumers. Nevertheless, it will not necessarily generate more desire to buy the product. On the other hand, an irritating ad can generate average recall, but it can also have a disastrous effect on persuasion.

Mood and/or sensuality . Ads using an emotional tone or a sensual style tend to be very persuasive but often have brand linkage difficulties. The analysis shows that in these ads, the brand tends to be shown or mentioned less often. This relative absence of the brand should be counter-balanced by a more suggestive presence of the brand (using character or music, for example).

To sum up, similarly to findings in North America, in Europe advertising is a balancing act between message quality and execution, entertainment, and branding. The ingredients for success will not always be the same; they will depend on culture and advertising heritage.