Too Many Messages in one TVC, Nothing understood

This comes from my experienced this week. I did a TVC pre testing. When I look at the TVC material .... wouw there are a lot of messages that delivered.
We conduct the TVC testing using a qualitative FGD method combine with and IDI (In Depth Interview). At first, the respondent was invited to the IDI room, where she/he exposed to the TVC. Then we asked several questions such as overall liking, ask the respondent to tell the story of TVC, what scene of the TVC that she/he most remembered, message delivered, believability, uniqueness of the TVC, relevance of the TVC to respondent and also we put some questions regarding to talent evaluation and some image of that TVC. After all respondent finish with the IDI, we put respondents in a group, to just quick evaluate again the TVC together and compare to competitor and previous TVC from the brand.

Back to the TVC that I tested this week, there are 3 intended messages to deliver. Unfortunately respondents confused and the response varies among could not recall the message, only remember 1 message at the end or at the beginning and few respondents could recall 2 messages and non could recall 3 messages. In general, this TVC is not interesting because the story became too fast. We can understand this because in 30 second, there are 3 messages that should be delivered. In order to deliver each message there will be a bit story to wrap it.... and the story should be made just in a few second.
From the marketing point of view, they only have a limited budget to make a TVC and they think it will be efficient if with a limited budget they can convey many messages.
Once again, it is true that consumers have limitation in receiving message from a TVC. One message in one TVC is still the best because the story build is only to deliver one message and it is clearly understood by the consumers.
2 messages in one TVC only understood by some consumers but 3 messages in one TVC is definitely to much. None could remember all.
Finally it was just a waste in production cost, because if nobody understand the message why it should be aired?

Using celebrities in TVC?

I attended one marketing research seminar this morning, one thing that I am really interested is when the speaker told the research findings. He said that using celebrities in the advertising is not the key success. The important thing is how to use the celebrity successfully in endorsing a brand and a brand is not diluted because of consumers focus to the celebrity.
Many studies shows that a good advertising can be built of several factors such as uniqueness of the ad, relevant to consumer's life, the message contains new information, evoke consumer's emotional feeling (e.g. proud, sympathy, cute etc.), humorous, and use celebrity. So celebrity is just one factor (out of the others) that make the advertising success.

Can a pre test ad indicate a success of the ad

TVC advertising needs a huge amount of money. In a very clutter advertising on TV nowadays and the increase of CPRP (Cost Per Rating Point), definitely company have to spend such huge amount of money for placement the TVC, not to mention the cost for making the TVC material or the production cost itself. Therefore it is important to make sure the TVC material that is aired, grab the attention of the audience or reach the objective that is set for the campaign. In theory, to save the huge budget placement, you have to do a pre-test for the concept of the material. So if the pre-test failed then there is still a chance to revise the concept or make a certain adjustment so we place the material that is proved to be good for the brand or reach the campaign objective.

How far an advertising pre-test predict the post evaluation of the TVC or in other word how far the pre-test predict the success of a TVC. Here I tried to compare the result of pre-test and post-ad test , I eliminate the weight of placement in this analysis. All TVCs have been aired for about 3 months.

The pre-test was conducted using a qualitative method, combining the in depth interview and focus group discussion. Consumers was exposed to the stylomatic ad and measured their response individually, then consumers again were exposed to the stylomatic ad in a group and discussed the ad together in order to confirm the individual responses.

While the post ad was conducted quantitatively using a random survey 3 months after the ad has been aired. A structure questionnaire was developed to measure the Empathy, Persuasion, Impact and Communication of the ad.

The result as you can see at the table.

We can see from both tables that the pre-ad test is good enough in predicting the advertising post evaluation. So once again it is wort to conduct a pre test ad to save the big amount of advertising placement budget.

Consumers did change!

There is always a new learning when I attend result presentation. Yesterday, I attended a presentation for our product test result.... And one thing that I learn that consumers did change.
We have product let's say A. A is the pioneer in the category. Before we launched product A 5 years ago, I got a result that product A failed in the test because consumers did not like the smell .... The active ingredient for product A smell different with existing product that consumers used at that time. Actually That smell was the reason for product A to be categorized in a new product category .... Because it has 'that active ingredient'. Though from the research we know that kind of product was needed by consumers. They just did not use to the smell of that 'active ingredient'.

Therefore, at that time the R&D person tried to reduce the 'active ingredient' in order to adjust with the consumers' expectation and with the understanding that actually consumers needed this kind of product we launched product A.
After we launched for some years, many brand follow and enter the category ...... They also use the same 'active ingredient'. So after 5 years in the market there are some brands already in that category and consumers seems to accept that kind of product and it should smell like that.

Last month, we did another product test in that category, and the result was presented yesterday. We all amazed that it seems the consumers are happy with the smell. If it does not smell like that, it was not that kind of product...... The smell become a proved of product benefit ..... Which 5 years ago, they didn't like the smell at all.

Well consumers did change their behaviour.

Measuring digital media

As we had known that digital media grows very fast. By the end of the day, after we decided to use digital media, management will ask questions how effective digital media is? Whether the money which was spent in digital media bring advantage to the brand? And so many questions about that.

Some research agency, nowadays, developed some tools to do some measurement on digital media. The measurement covers the quantitative part as well as the qualitative part.
Some measurement are:
- measure the statistics such as ad clicks, page view, ad view, link from which site etc.
- survey among those expose to the net and control (who don't expose to the net). Compare their awareness, ad recall, message recognition, brand purchase etc.
- evaluate what consumers say: analyze all discussion, brand mentioned in blogs, social media, forum etc.

Digital marketing, action now

Last week, April 7-8 I had a chance to join a seminar about digital marketing. From all speakers, I can take some important points that I would like to share here.
- First, nowadays internet and mobile device grow quite significant. Computers become faster and cheaper. On the other hand, cellphone is now transfroming into smart phone furthermore tablet become more and more popular.
- People/ consumers are evolved. They behaviour drastically changed in the past decade. Technology become part of their life. Almost all people carry at least one cellphone nowadays. They have internet access at home, office, school or through their smartphone. And they belongs to Social Networking Community
- Marketers should catch this phenomena. It's time to take action to utilize all that tecnologies provide for the benefit of the brand.

In the past marketers focus on how to grab consumer's awareness, then convert it into trial and BUMO. The communication is one way, from brand to consumers. With all those technologies that changed consumer's behaviour, now marketers should listen to consumers. Listen to what discuss through blogs, social networking site ... positively or negatively. Consumers are the power. Consumer's involvement is really important, it is beyond consumer's loyalty.

Marketer's should really know who are their consumers and try to understand, where to reach them, what they like to do.... etc.

Of course digital marketing could not apply to every brand or product. In our company for example, there are some brands which have core consumers as those who live in remote area, modest people who are not touched by technology yet. For these consumers, the use of digital marketing is not priority but we should anticipate the change of their behaviour. Who knows in the near future, as the cost for buying smart phone decreasing, these consumers become the users.

Brand extension, nice to have vs needed

Today I learn a very good lesson. We discussed about a brand during the media meeting. Say that our brand is A. Brand A is targetted to mid low SES level and very modest people who are strongly sensitive with price. Our brand growth nicely among it target market and has a very strong image about "the grassroot"/ modesty. So this is a brand for people in the grassroot. It is good but with a very reasonable price.
Until early last year the management think that Brand A needs to be extended. So we launch brand A1 in a new category. The problem is the category where brand A1 enter is for a spesific needs. For those people who are well educated and it seems to have higher purchasing power. Therefore after 1 year launched, brand A1 did not move as expected. It seems that brand A is not strong enough in the different target market, among those people who really have that specific needs, while on the other hand, brand A consumers do not have need yet for product like brand A1 offer. Brand A1 needs to first educate the market and it needs time and money. So we learn that in order to make a brand extension we have to learn whether the mother brand is strong enough among the new target market ( where the extension is) , especially when it is targetted to different kind of people. Not just because the manufacture is able to make that kind of product.