With content production exploding and channel and format variety spiralling, you are probably wondering how to ensure your campaigns stand up against the barrage of noise and choice. The art of great advertising is, to a large degree, the same as that of great art itself. As American painter Keneth Noland famously commented, context is the key- from that comes understanding of everything. If you fail to consider context in any of your creative endeavours, you are far less likely to have the insight to produce something that deeply resonates with your audience.
Most advertisers are clear on the importance of ad insights that are rooted in the context the audience will experience their ads. In fact, nearly 9 out of 10 of the global marketers we surveyed in the latest Media Reactions study agreed that it is essential that their creative testing accounts for the different media channels and formatswhere the ads will run. Meanwhile, 40% of marketers are still not confident that their organisation properly tailors’ content to contexts. The problem that many brands face is the speed of change in the media landscape is out pacing the development of tools which consistently measure creative effectiveness across the ever-increasing variety of channels and formats people see them.
The dividend of receptive audiences
There is huge danger and potential loss of opportunity in accepting this status quo because if your competitors are able to get the synergies of channel and content right, they are likely to benefit from a huge receptivity dividend, with campaigns being up to 7X more impactful among a receptive audience.
The days of good marketers naively throwing cut downs of their TV ads online and hoping for the best are long gone. Kantar data shows that even if you have a high performing TV ad, a third of those ads won’t replicate the same high creative impact if they are transferred directly to on digital channels without any contextual optimisation. Even for major brands with very generous marketing budgets, why would you run the risk of potentially squandering a third of your media investments when the latest agile solution can deliver fast contextually nuanced creative optimisation insights?
Going beyond digital advertising
Given the huge and continuous year on year growth in global digital investment, most marketers are understandably preoccupied with the digital elements of their campaigns. However, to achieve the very best campaigns, it is not only about digital transference, we also know that a campaign’s success relies heavily on the interaction and integration of content across a wide range media channels. Digital is the backbone of most campaigns and TV has an enduring importance but if you disregard print and out of home, you are missing out on significant opportunity. Newspapers, magazines, digital and non-digital out of home ads sit in a sweet spot of the advertising opportunity quadrant. Meaning consumers are not only more receptive to these ad channels but also spend more time with them on an average day.
Consumer insight on everything, everywhere
In an ideal world you’d know if every part of your campaign was going to land with your intended audience before you spend any of your media budget. It might sound like an unrealistic ambition, but given the right creative effectiveness solution and partner, it is attainable. We have recently expanded the LINK creative effectiveness portfolio on Kantar Marketplace to cover nearly every possible advertising context. That means agile in-context creative testing across digital including the ability to customise in-context tests, so they faithfully reflect your audience’s true experience. In line with growing demand, a specific audio ad testing solution is also now available as well as everything from influencer content to gaming ads and much more.
To help ease the universal pressure on budgets and timeframes, you can now use LINK AI to get fast predictions on all your print and outdoor ads alongside the existing provision for large scale TV and digital insights.
Shedding light on award winning campaigns
One early adopter of the new brand experience approach is Coca-Cola, who was also this year’s winner of the Kantar Creative Effectiveness awards, in the out-of-home category for their incredible “Pick up a Coke, light up the dark” campaign.
In a recent Kantar podcast, Grant McKenzie, Creative Strategy Director at Coca-Cola Europe explained that the campaign was about more than just the print and outdoor elements. He said it was a ‘fully integrated campaign that was completely centered around experience. We brought all of these epic live moments to cities across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, that blended the idea of music and light to create a really uplifting and unexpected experience during the darker months of Scandinavian winter’.
He asserts that the out-of-home elements of the campaign were pivotal, functioning as a "creative honesty test" due to their necessity to capture people's attention within seconds. These elements of the campaign serve as a proving ground for both the concept and the creative execution. McKenzie said, ‘I think, honestly, that's why pre-testing has been so important to us and probably a fundamental part of the success of this campaign, particularly when we're trying to strike the right tone in that specific cultural moment. ‘
Unlock your own award-winning campaign
To create impactful advertising campaigns, understanding the nuances of how ads perform across various contexts is essential. Many marketers recognise the importance of tailoring content for specific media channels, but challenges persist due to the rapid evolution of the media landscape.
If you want to unlock your own creative brilliance with nuanced agile insight that illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of your ads in every context, get in touch for a demo of the latest context specific creative effectiveness capabilities on LINK.
