Get details on a test to solve the pressing creative question: Do consumers favor quirky or more sophisticate and stylish messaging?
What motivates people to do something is the basis for TV shows, doctorate degrees, countless books and millions of dollars of research every year. It’s not surprising then that it’s a central point of online advertising, given the industry’s incredible tracking capabilities.
There are certainly a lot of directions a campaign could go in with a company such as Sugarshots; theirs is a new product, in a relatively new category. Additionally, while we’ve found that the Entertainment and Health audiences have proven the most responsive to our initial strategic messages, there is still a lot of wiggle room, especially with something as open-ended as creative execution.
In Phase 3 of our tests we’ll explore a range of emotional drivers. Emotional drivers are not a list of pre-defined characteristics; at least not the way we approach them. They’re an infinitely complex arrangement of words, images, and design elements that even in their final produced state, can still feel abstract and hard to quantify. Evaluating the different creative approaches is a much less definitive process than many of our previous tests.
We strongly believe in the creative process, and feel that creative messaging is vastly underrated in online advertising today. We see remarkably large differences in performance between creatives, with all other factors being equal. These are real increases in performance that lead to real decreases in CPA.
Testing Strategy
Our strategic messaging tests have given us a good direction to work from in terms of which product attributes are more appealing, as well as which ones we shouldn’t emphasize. With the creative messaging tests, our goal is to gain a better understanding of the types of messages our target audience responds to most.
Although less restrictive than previous tests, we still want to structure our creative executions so that we can better evaluate them. To that end, we’re trying to find different attitudes or personalities to project in the ads that may appeal to a consumer's sense of self and style.
Going into creative development, there were two initial directions we pursued. One was a more high-brow, artistic angle. Something with a refined sensibility that could naturally be associated with a premium product. This is the ad titled Café.
To contrast that direction, we wanted a second direction with a little more edge and a little more quirkiness. New products often need to stand out, and sometimes that means doing things a little more unusually than what a more conservative, established product might readily do. This more alternative direction is the Rasputin ad, which emerged from last week’s test as the winner.
You can view both ads over on the right.
At a glance, you may notice another difference between the two creatives. Café doesn’t state as clearly as Rasputin that it’s promoting liquid sugar. This is something that could definitely lead to differences in performance, and makes these less of an apples-to-apples test.
Given that we’ve seen less, not more, information working at several points throughout this test, and Café does state liquid sugar down by the logo, I’m willing to put this out there and see how it does. If it performs equal or better to Rasputin across all the key data points, then that will certainly be a relevant finding. If not, we have several variables to focus on in further tests.
Testing Construct
Our testing construct this week has the same setup as many previous tests. It involves deploying two creatives in the same 300x250 media unit size across the Entertainment and Health content channels on 24/7 RealMedia’s ad network. We’re also distributing impressions across 24/7’s Behavioral Targeting network, OnTarget.
We’ll split the impressions as evenly as we can between the two creatives, and then compare the two across several key performance indicators.
Response data is always central in creative testing like this. This is the short-term view, addressing which ad flagged down the most traffic. We’ll then qualify that with a deeper look at their interest in the product, through the number of page views each ad generates. And lastly, we’ll qualify it all by monitoring purchase intent, through visits to the purchase page, the only place with pricing information.
Goals & Objectives
Our goals for this test include gaining a better understanding of our customers and the messages that motivate them to action. That’s broad territory. In reality, gaining a deeper understanding of our customers is an ongoing pursuit. Insights such as we hope to gain from this test are like pieces to a much larger puzzle. Only through examining the smaller bits of information can we get the big picture.
Making this all the more interesting, or exasperating, depending on your personal masochistic tendencies, the consumers themselves are constantly changing, because the world around them is constantly changing.