Dan White, communications research director at market research company Millward Brown, looks at the dilemna of pre-testing in the 'age of exchange'.
Fifteen or 20 years ago, most brands had something that differentiated them from competitors. Usually some unique benefit or a perceptible, tangible advantage that was unequivocally relevant to its customers could be leveraged in communications campaigns.
Advertising was fairly straightforward too. It is likely that the brand may have been the only one available and so many brands were happy to just tell people about the benefit! OK, there was a risk that people wouldn’t notice the advertising, but there were plenty of ways of fixing that. Making it very bright and brash and hard to ignore was one way. It didn’t matter if the advertising was a bit irritating so long as people got the message. Another solution was to make it interesting or entertaining so people had an incentive to give it their attention. Either way, the role of pre-testing was clear: to find out if the idea will work in the way it was meant to.
The situation has changed significantly for brands today. Few brands are lucky enough to have a good, old-fashioned ‘USP’. And virtually all have plenty of branded competition. Brands can’t rely on forcing their message through, knowing they have something unique to say because, in most cases, they haven’t.
Brands adapted by ensuring their communication offered something else of value in order to seduce customers - something fun, interesting or useful, something that helps customers express their identity or makes them seem cool to their friends. Associating your brand with something customers value can create interest and loyalty.
Brands are no strangers to this sort of added-value communication: diet food brands giving calorie-counting tools and fitness-related brands providing cheap pedometers are just two examples.
But we are entering a new ‘age of exchange’ thanks to the opportunities provided by digital technologies. Branded gadgets (such as desktop clocks and calculators, aquariums on your Facebook page) are used to gain attention and connect with customers. The exchange is very simple – the brand provides something fun, interesting, useful or cool and in return the customer happily spends time in the company of the brand (and, quite often, will pass the widget on to like-minded friends).
Pre-testing
still plays an important role in helping brands develop ideas that
genuinely appeal to their customers. Finding out all about the target
customer is still a good starting point: what they like to do, where
they go, what they’re into, what defines them. Then it’s a matter of
exploring the potential ideas to find the ones that really hit the
spot. The earlier on in the creative process pre-testing is involved,
the more it can quantify which ideas have greatest breadth and depth of
appeal before investing too much time, and budget, in creative themes.
The way pre-tests are conducted though is changing with the times. Round-table discussions within workshop-style debriefs
are preferred to the traditional show and tell approach, which almost
invariably, improves the quality of the campaign. As well as looking at
impact, message take-out and persuasion, pre-tests also now gauge the
emotions elicited, the degree of personal relevance and distinctiveness
as well as the potential for social currency.
Despite a subtle evolution, the role of pre-testing is as clear as it has always been: to find out if the idea will work in the way it is meant to and clarify something viewers might miss or misunderstand.
