Doug Schumacher broaches the first of several creative tests within the IAB rectangle format.
Welcome to the sixth week in the Sugarshots case study, our maiden voyage to the world of open source marketing.
We launched this effort to showcase online marketing’s remarkably broad testing applications, and structured the tests to be in phases, with each phase covering a different group of related tests. Phase one, the Strategic Foundation, addressed fundamental questions like, who is the most responsive audience, and what strategic directions most resonate with them?
Phase Two, Tactical Drivers, explored several simple but highly influential tactical decisions, like the cost-value of a media unit, and whether or not the common practice of adding a button contributes to the performance.
I recap, because we’re now heading into Phase Three, the Emotional Drivers part. This is where we take our hands off the steering wheel. In past tests, we put an emphasis on controlling the variables to the point of handicapping the ads creatively. We kept the visuals simple and avoided animation to focus on issues in which creative flair would have simply added noise to the data.
This approach uses the online medium as a research tool as much as a marketing vehicle. It places the focus on the relative performance of the data, not the absolute performance. That’s a key principle in most of the tests we’re conducting.
Phase Three is where we’re going to start exploring a broad range of creative directions. The only variables we’ll be controlling will be ad size and media plan. Everything else is open.
Testing Strategy
I’m a staunch believer that online advertising can be used for testing concepts that may not even run online. Depending on the creative, it may not always be the case, but in many situations, it is. Furthermore, I think the simplicity and speed with which online ads need to operate are traits that ads in other media could use a dose of. The world is spinning faster than it used to.
Sugarshots is a small startup. Its goals at this point are to build a brand and to drive distribution, not to start an ecommerce monster. So if that’s the case, why bother testing Sugarshots ads online? Regardless of how many purchases visitors make, or how many page views they log, we’re still able to determine a great deal about which traits and qualities of the brand and the product will appeal to them.
Additionally, Sugarshots is involved with event marketing and various promotions, which almost always require printed and display materials. Being able to go into those situations with creative assets it knows will have a big impact is of significant value.
And what are the options if Sugarshots wants to test its messages before pouring money into marketing assets? Focus groups is the obvious answer. A company can bet the company farm in the hope that it can pinpoint the sentiments of a general target audience of 50 or so million people by finding six of them willing to donate an entire evening to baring their souls about what a meaningful part of their lives a drink sweetener is. All for $50 and some free M&Ms. If that didn’t dissuade you from choosing focus groups for creative concept testing, then I’ll refer you to a book I reviewed here.
However, as an alternative to concept testing with focus groups, Sugarshots can run the same ads it would show to those focus groups, only these ads will be in a real marketing environment, and get real reactions, from hundreds, thousands, or even millions of consumers, and evaluate them based on interests and behaviors, no demographics.
The question isn’t whether online testing of creative concepts is a perfect scenario. The question is, what’s the alternative?
Testing Construct
For this test, we’re simply going to take our best performing creative to date, which features the product bottle without the call-to-action button and the headline ‘Liquid Sugar. Tastes better because it mixes better.’ This is a straight-forward ad that grew out of applying the knowledge gained in previous tests.
We’ll run that ad side by side with two other ads completely unrelated to it. You can see the three concepts we’re testing over on the right column.
You’ll notice the Lincoln and Rasputin concepts are closely related. When possible, I try to test similar pairs because in case one performs quite well and the other not, it makes it clear which elements are driving the response.
In this new creative direction featuring Lincoln and Rasputin, we’re exploring an unexpected and alternative approach. There are a lot of images I might expect to see in an ad from a premium liquid sugar, but a dead President and odd-ball Russian mystic aren’t on the list. How will this direction play out? I’m sure some readers will think the ads are confusing. And confusion is generally not an ally of performance. The response rates will give us some answers here.
Others may think the ads will generate intrigue, but only in the form of simple curiosity, and as such the people responding to the ad will drop in to see what’s on the other side of the banner, and quickly leave. The average page views each ad generates will help us identify the curious from the genuinely interested.
The point is there’s often a tradeoff between different ads. Here, it’s less product information for a more unique and compelling message. We’ll be testing several new directions over the next few weeks, each approaching the product from a different angle.
Goals & Objectives
I think the approach to this test represents a fundamental shift from traditional media, in which ads are often conceived and then developed in a highly controlled environment. With online, creatives are freer to take risks because we can hedge those risks with the technical capabilities of the online medium.
Most online ads don’t cost that much to produce. And if anything tanks, we can pull it in a few days. And of course, if we hit gold, we can run it for months or years. From my experience, the winners rise to the top pretty quickly.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring several creative approaches for the Sugarshots campaign. The objective is to open ourselves to a broad and explorative testing environment to increase our odds of hitting the performance sweet spot.
So, will Lincoln and Rasputin come back to life, or will they both die second deaths at the hands of a bottle of liquid sugar? Tune in this Thursday for the results.