In today’s world there is an unlimited potential for creative advertising campaigns. For example, I know that most people in the UK will instantly think of Cadbury’s when I mention a chocolate brand that had two children with dancing eyebrows. If I quote ‘washing machines live longer with…?’ Does Calgon instantly spring to mind? (I think many of you readers will be humming the tune).
Great campaigns are long lasting, iconic and can bring so much value to a brand. Unfortunately, with an oversaturated industry a lot of campaigns are missed, or don’t always have the results you and your team were expecting. Here are five reasons why measuring every campaign can bring refinement and lessons which can hit the mark every time!
1. Cost: Measure Ad Effectiveness to Get the Most from Your Budget
You’ve heard it a million times, you’ve got to spend money to make money. For ad campaign measurement, it is no different. By using a media measurement solution to see the impact your ad campaign is having, you can identify the areas of your campaign that are performing or maybe are not performing and you can respond accordingly.
For example you may notice that your entire campaign budget has been spent on one website, indicating you may not be grabbing your relevant audience. Whereas another website may be performing better than expected, signifying the need to focus more attention there. You also have the data to back up as to why one website was a more effective medium than another.
2. Consumer: Ensure Ad Messaging, Creatives, and Placement Are Appropriate for Your Audience
There is a perfect consumer for every brand out in the world. Let’s say mine is a 35 year old woman from London. If I create a campaign with her in mind and analyse the effectiveness of this active campaign, I may notice that based on the creatives and the lingo used, I am actually attracting a much younger demographic. Or perhaps I’ve noticed that my wording is subconsciously male-biased and therefore not only turning away women, the very audience I’m hoping to reach, but actually engaging men. That’s not a problem if I’m intending to advertise to a very broad audience, but what if my product can only be used by a specific segment?
Measuring your campaigns can also provide insight into the interests and behaviours of your ideal consumer. It keeps your messaging aligned with your consumers’ values and can even open up a completely new audience you may not have considered!
3. Calamities: Use Advertising Measurement to Recover from Missteps
By calamities, I’m talking about notable mistakes with your campaign; it could be a small mistake, such as a misspelled word or badly punctuated sentence. Or perhaps there’s a much bigger problem like an unconscious bias that filters into a campaign, or glaring mistakes that are only discovered once a campaign has been exposed enough times.
For example, Ford India had a massive error in messaging in one of their campaigns which resulted in a print ad that was instantly pulled. The ill-conceived ad featured women who were tied up, gagged and squashed into the boot of their new hatchback range. Not only was the ad immediately pulled, but Ford India also had to issue a public apology for obvious reasons.
If only Ford had tested out their creatives ahead of launch. They could have created a soft launch, seen the results almost instantly and realised with a pre-campaign measurement solution that they were sharing the wrong message. So instead of issuing a public apology, spending even more money pulling a campaign or damaging their brand reputation, why not simply measure ad effectiveness to avoid all the drama!
4. Coordination: Fuse Campaigns with Your Brand Identity
I really wanted to write alignment, as opposed to coordination but I hope by now you can see what I’m trying to achieve here! It’s important for brands to align and fuse their advertising efforts with their brand identity. It can take many years for brands to establish themselves, not just in their field of expertise but also within a specific environment. If I put this into an example, Abercrombie & Fitch is a brand that is strongly associated with understated, expensive young adult clothing. Mike Jeffries, the CEO, built an image that would warrant the higher price tag and even went as far as to pay a celebrity on Jersey Shore $10,000 to NOT wear Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.
This shows the lengths some brands will go to keep their identity secure. By measuring a media project, you can gain a thorough understanding of how audiences respond to your campaign. These insights can help to refine your messaging or prompt a deeper discussion around your brand’s messaging. Aligning your brand to a consumer’s values is such a strong way to make your brand memorable and iconic. Let a measurement solution provide you with that support. Also, just because I think they are a great example of a company with a strong brand identity – Nike. ‘Just Do It’ is synonymous with motivation and having the drive to keep going or even just get started. They have diverse campaigns and creatives with a consistent theme and message.
5. Cultivate: Improve Your Strategy with Each Campaign
“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” B.B. King.
Learning and developing is an ongoing process and unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your outlook, it’s not something you can perfect. Campaign measurement can help teach you and your team ways to create a brilliant advertising campaign. It can be a tool to share with new starters, experienced creatives and everyone in between to highlight consumers changes, needs and wants. I think that a media measurement solution is almost like having a teacher marking my work; they will help find my mistakes and show me how to correct them, encourage me to run with a great thought or idea and also help me teach my peers.
There you have it. The five reasons why it is so important to measure your ad campaigns and because they all start with C, hopefully that’ll make it easier to remember. Cost, Consumer, Calamities, Coordination and Cultivate.
To find out how Cint can support your next ad campaign in EMEA, contact our team.
