For years, advertisers have been lamenting the slow demise of print as a viable way to reach a target audience, but a deeper look into the media channel reveals that magazines still offer some excellent advertising opportunities. Why am I so bullish on print? Primarily because although today’s publications may be thinner, this new size gives your ad a bigger and brighter opportunity to shine among readers – and not just any reader – today’s magazine buyers and subscribers are true loyalists.
Think of print advertising as a beautiful, small pond chock-full of juicy fish and you are one of a handful of fishermen permitted to use the pond. However, to make good use of this unique opportunity, ensuring high copy readership and overall engagement is critical. It’s important to note that not all print copy testing methods use the same success criteria. Here are a few cautionary tales.
Watch Out #1: Relying on noting heat maps to make your decisions could get you in hot water.
In the ads below all three performed well on being noted; however, only one of the three scored above average engagement, key copy readership and real-world gain in competitive persuasion. Which one would you want to green light? PTG could tell you.
Similarly, in the ads below, while both scored above average on noting, one execution contains a Visual Vampire and takes away attention from the product and message. Do you know which one?
In the three pharmaceutical ads below, the ad that tested strongest using PTG’s truReader real world copy testing methodology is not the ad overwhelmingly selected in forced exposure. How comfortable would you be in choosing the right ad?
Watch Out #2: How well do you understand the impact of size, environment and frequency on your print ad placement?
Is this double page ad on the left more effective in the real world as compared to the product placement and single page ad combination on right?
Or are these two single ads in a Hispanic publication the better bet?
In order to comfortably answer these questions, you need to rely upon a robust research solution that captures the critical context needed to accurately assess the advertising by capturing involvement, engagement and persuasion in a natural environment. To learn more about PTG’s truReader technology, feel free to reach me at lee.weinblatt@pretesting.com.
In today’s economy, if your research expenditures are not adding to your bottom line, you’re wasting money. Eye movement noting, brand recall and expressed purchase intent are tools from the 1960’s and 1970’s that are meant to protect research departments from catastrophic failure, not provide tactical approaches for how packaging, ads and video content can better connect and influence target audiences. These legacy approaches were never designed for today’s new world of mobile platforms, millions of pre-roll ads, a digital economy, mega-supermarkets, television commercial avoidance, and small, yet valuable, magazine audiences.
Here are a few facts we have uncovered as part of our brand communications research:
• While magazine audiences have shrunk, highly engaging print ads are working better than ever in this medium.
• A pre-roll ad with high engagement during the first 5 seconds can persuade over 400% better than one that doesn’t capture attention.
• Display advertising is not as dependent upon viewability as it is on engagement. Most “in your face” banner ads are being completely ignored.
• What does it take to get a shopper to stop and consider your product when shopping an Amazon, Walmart or Target shopping site? Hint: It’s not what you think. Rather it is the engagement with your product’s picture in the posting. The higher the engagement level, the more copy readership and consideration to purchase.
• Do TV ad GRPs make a difference in persuasion? Not as much as you might think. Some of the most repeated commercials on air quickly lose engagement and their zapping (or ignoring) skyrockets. The right balance of reach and engagement is critical.
Given these realities it’s high time for research technology to address today’s world of binge viewing, mobile advertising, streaming videos, e-commerce and mega shopping stores. At PTG we have moved well beyond eye movement noting, brand recall scores and expressed purchase intent to give our clients an objective measure of engagement that leads to increased purchase behavior.
PTG incorporates a non-invasive biometric indicator called Saccadic Eye Movement into our copy testing and package testing methodologies. In simple terms, saccadic eye movement reflects the cognitive processes the brain uses to capture visual information.
More specifically, in order for the brain to gain a visual picture of a stimulus, the eye must vibrate and provide constant streams of information to the center of the retina called the fovea. The more visual information the brain wants, the more actively the eye vibrates. These mini-movements are known as macro-saccades. In order for the brain to remember a specific visual, the eye fixates and stops moving for a fraction of a second. These macro-saccades and fixations reflect an objective level of respondent behavioral engagement that is uniquely recorded by PTG’s patented Saccadic Eye Movement Recorder.
Saccadic e-Motion, as we fondly refer to the technology, measures second-by-second visual engagement as well as element-by-element eye tracking and allows us to pinpoint specific areas where our clients can make small changes to their advertising that make a big impact in sales performance.
Pick up a copy of the WSJ, Fortune or Bloomberg Businessweek and you will see how things are dramatically changing for the research, marketing and advertising departments at some of the largest CPG companies. The new corporate mandate slashes costs by requiring all expenditures to help the bottom line. What does this mean for our industry? It means that research can no longer exist to mitigate risk; research needs to earn its seat at the table by paying for its own dinner.
In light of this new reality, it is incumbent on us to help our clients get the research results they need to prove value, drive more in-store dollars and make budgets work more efficiently. Here’s a sampling of five ways that our patented truVu™ audio and video recording glasses have gone well beyond justifying the expenses of the research.
• We recently helped a global CPG to strategically reduce their on-shelf SKUs by 25% while increasing the frequency of overall product pick-ups. This uptick in product interaction was essential to the increase in purchase activity because simply noting a package on-shelf has little correlation to sales.
• Working on behalf of a leading retailer, we identified how they should rearrange their organic and nonorganic items to give shoppers a full spectrum of available cleaning products which significantly increased sales in both categories.
• A snack food manufacturer asked PTG to help them increase their struggling in-store sales. What we found is the products lacked commonality in their packaging; however, with a strategically placed design element the SKUs blended together to form the equivalent of an on-shelf banner which greatly increased product visibility.
• Since the impact of a well placed and well designed POP display can offer up to a 300% increase in impulse sales, we were contacted by a multinational personal care company to help them to better understand why a recent POP effort wasn’t performing as expected. The video clips that we captured among shoppers quickly showed how the in-store placement of the display was being entirely missed. Once the display was moved to a different location the POP began performing as expected.
• A beauty retailer was struggling to understand why sales in one of their aisles were inexplicably down. Our in-store and exit interview research showed that the aisle in question lacked any compelling merchandise at the end of the aisle which would serve to entice shoppers to walk down the aisle and increase foot traffic. By replacing the end of aisle merchandise the retailer quickly saw sales bounce back.
Stay tuned for my next post where I will share similar bottom line building techniques for the advertising industry.
There are a variety of methodologies available in the marketplace that record eye movement and note when products have been seen on shelf. And, as a result, clients often come to PTG looking for us to assist them in measuring how successful their product is at being distinguished among the competition.
As part of these conversations, we explain to our clients that on average 7,000 packages are noted during a simple supermarket trip, yet only 17 items are actually purchased. Often, noting of a product is just required to find the desired product usually placed alongside it. What this means is capturing noting does offer some valuable information; however, evaluating noting in the absence of actual consumer engagement can lead to false results.
Here’s an example that we often share to illustrate our point. Our research has found that noting increases dramatically when a key brand like Kleenex is removed from the shelves. In the absence of additional data points around consumer behavior, this increase in noting would lead one to believe that there was sustained interest in other facial tissue brands; but the reality is, the uptick in noting was the result of consumers searching the shelf for the missing category leader.
When the same scenario was tested using PTG’s truShelf simulated store environment, our patented Saccadic Eye Movement Recorder measured actual consumer engagement and product interaction which provided a much more comprehensive understanding of respondent involvement. For example, we were able to report the degree to which respondents zoomed in on a product, examined a specific section on a shelf and read ingredients on a package – line by line. This level of information not only provides the tactics and recommendations needed for improvement on the shelf, and at the component level, but it also serves as the critical information needed to prove or disprove the noting data. In the example above, our simulated shopping methodology rightly concluded that something was amiss on the facial tissue shelf when noting was up but consumer engagement was nil.
Why is measuring Saccadic eye movement so important? Saccadic eye movement is a biometric indicator that objectively measures cognitive processing. In order for the brain to gain a visual picture of a stimulus, the eye must vibrate and provide constant streams of information to the center of the retina called the fovea. The more visual information the brain wants, the more actively the eye vibrates. These mini-movements are known as macro-saccades. In order for the brain to remember a specific visual, the eye fixates and stops moving for a fraction of a second. These macro-saccades and fixations reflect an empirical level of respondent behavioral engagement that is uniquely recorded by PTG’s patented Saccadic Eye Movement Recording system.
Interested in learning how measuring engagement with Saccadic eye movement is more effective than noting and more indicative of future sales success? Let’s talk. I can be reached at dan.morris@pretesting.com.
We have all been watching an interesting phenomenon unfold over the years and spoiler alert: it’s not pretty. As a community of researchers, we’re selling our clients, our products and ourselves short. It started slowly, and then it started to snowball. Before we knew it, we were trapped.
Why did we decide it was time to start offering “lite” versions of our products when we know the modified solution comes with significantly less value? Why did we decide that all solutions, regardless of the predictive inappropriateness, require an online option? Why did we decide that forced exposure results alone provide sufficient precision? Why did we decide to make many of our industry’s most trusted solutions available with a credit card number and an expiration date?
Question: If clients are coming to us with many of the same fundamental brand building issues that were previously addressed with more sophisticated tools, regardless of the methodology, – then why did we stop recommending them when we knowingly have better and more thorough solutions to meet their business issues?
My thoughts are not intended to be a slight against modern research approaches or digital in any way. I’m all for technology and advancement (trust me on this one, I just received my 119th patent); but I’m simply looking to acknowledge that some research objectives are better conducted offline. Perhaps through qualitative…maybe via observational research…or even simulated research. Whatever the case may be, I’m worried that we are allowing our talents, solutions and deliverables to be watered down to solve a straw man argument because in the end, who is truly benefiting from poorly executed Quick Serve Research (aka: QSR)?
Some may argue that client budgets are being reduced so research suppliers are being asked to serve up more for less. Perhaps that’s the case in some instances; however, along the same lines, why don’t home buyers ask home builders to forgo the bathroom or the kitchen? Sure it will save money and time, but what kind of final product will you have?
I would argue that we’ve trained clients into thinking that we can meet their needs with overly simplified versions of our most respected offerings. It’s ok if we can’t meet all of the objectives in an RFP with a 10 question survey and access to a normative database. Good research can be complicated, and sometimes it’s costly, but we shouldn’t shy away from this reality. Some decisions are too big for QSR. Clients can’t afford to make a mistake, and we can’t afford to give bad advice. Let’s make a pact that we should only offer clients our very best solution to meet their individual needs. Only when we trust ourselves to do good, valuable work will we be able to stop the commoditization of research. Who’s with me?
Hello and thanks for stopping by the new PTG blog. For those of you meeting PTG for the first time, I would like to offer you a very warm welcome. For our legacy clients, welcome back!
At PTG, our piece of the consumer research pie is devoted to measuring human engagement. We specialize in patented consumer engagement and nonconscious measurement techniques that amplify creative performance, refine product marketing strategies and influence consumer behavior. (more…)
