Editor’s note: Tim Huberty is president of Huberty Marketing Research, St. Paul.
We’re all familiar with retailer John Wanamaker’s famous quote which introduces the advertising chapter of countless marketing textbooks: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just wish I could figure out which half.”
If Mr. Wanamaker - or any of us - could figure out the answer to that ageless question, we would attain enlightenment. Marketers and advertising agencies have grappled with this conundrum since form was created out of chaos. Even the prophets in the Old Testament oftentimes didn’t know how much of a good thing was too much as they stumbled around the countryside touting the message of the Big Guy.
A company throws its advertising message out there and then - poof! - it’s gone. So after paying the bills, clients are left wondering: Do I get any reward - earthly or otherwise - for that? Are there better, i.e., more cost-effective ways, of getting that same message out to more people for less money?
One of the problems with advertising is that one only rents awareness. So you can’t be too sure if you’re spending too little, the right amount, or too much.
The ultimate gospel of marketing efficiency is sales. But, as we all know, marketing is the “big picture” strategy of selling products and services, whereas advertising is one tactic, one of many tools which may lead to eternal salvation. Marketing includes deals cut in the back room, the cents-off coupons from Sunday’s newspapers and even the public relations fluff which keeps cropping up on the nightly news. It’s easy to measure the impact of marketing - look at the bottom line. On the other hand, it’s not so easy to measure the effectiveness of advertising. After all, over the last two millennia one thing we’ve learned is that people don’t behave the way you expect them to just because you tell them to.
But do not despair, seekers of the truth. There is a tried and true way of measuring advertising effectiveness, merely by living The 10 Commandments of Advertising Tracking.
1. I am the Lord God of Advertising Tracking; thou shalt not have strange objectives before me.
When it comes to tracking the effectiveness of advertising, track the effectiveness of advertising. Nothing else. Nothing is (more) sacred. More often than not, advertising tracking gets polluted by other false gods. Last year, I did a project for a chain of restaurants. In one study, my client wanted to figure out the one unique, distinguishing characteristic that makes a customer come back or not come back to the restaurant. He also wanted potential customers, current customers and past customers to grade the food, to tell us where they would have gone if the restaurant had been closed, to tell us why they do or don’t use takeout. To top it all off, the client added, “And, oh by way, we ran some radio and billboards. See if the advertising is working.”
This is not the way things are done! Advertising should be its own unique study, its own unique survey. No “false objectives” please. To want to do otherwise is promulgating heresy!
2. Thou shalt not take the name of quantitative tracking in vain.
Advertising is measured quantitatively, not qualitatively. Advertising is measured among the faithful or soon-to-be faithful, not among a select group of opinionated Pharisees who sound like a clanging cymbal. “Getting feedback” from focus group participants is another one of those add-ons which frequently soils a discussion guide. Focus group participants should never be entrusted to provide advertising recall. More often than not, participants cannot remember any advertising, let alone your advertising. (Rule of thumb: Consumers always remember humor - but that’s a topic for another article.) And, the opinions of those consumers are not projectable. It’s “group think,” the blind leading the blind. Focus groups are for getting guidance before producing creative, not after it.
3. Keep holy the start of the advertising campaign.
Advertising tracking is done before the campaign begins, not after it’s been out there for a few months, a year or two or even a decade. You have to know the awareness level and attitudes toward your products and services before you start tempting the unwashed with advertising messages. It’s really a huge waste of money to track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign which is “old news.” After all, follow the example set by the Original Campaign. God began with a clean slate and only began chalking up saints and sinners after the First Couple had succumbed to the serpent’s Original Advertising Message. Tracking a campaign after it begins can only lead to two catastrophes: The numbers can be low/high (take your pick) and the client will be excited/disappointed because he has done so well/poorly. Unfortunately, no person, no matter how holy, has any idea if the numbers have declined/increased, because you never knew if they were high/low to begin with.
4. Honor thy telephone.
Advertising is tracked with a telephone and by an interviewing minister. It is an methodological mortal sin (not a mention a waste of money) to send consumers a mail survey - where they can sit and mull over their answers or even “study up” before recording results. A personal interview isn’t much better due to the myriad of other distractions respondents face. Once upon a time, I was working on a liquor account and ventured out into the wilderness with several liquor ads - with the client’s name blotted out. Sure enough, consumers recognized that the client’s name had been blotted out.
Instead, “hit ’em where they live” - at home, with the phone. That’s the place where they make their faith commitments anyway.
5. Thou shalt not stop with “phantom awareness.”
Basically, tracking advertising involves a trinity of questions which form the basis of the three types of advertising awareness: phantom awareness (good), prompted awareness (better) and proven awareness (best). Here’s your first question - pure, plain and profitable:
Let’s talk for just a minute about advertising. Do you recall seeing or hearing any advertising about (INSERT PRODUCT OR SERVICE HERE)? This would include any type of advertising such as television and radio commercials, newspaper ads, billboards or written materials.
This is just a yes/no question. Nothing too complicated. Nothing too threatening. A “simple commitment” will do. You don’t want to spook the consumer with the first question.
The question includes several kinds of media. I have found that when people hear the word “advertising” they only think of television advertising. So you have to remind them of all the near occasions of sin.
Of course, this is a question which everyone can answer - and most will. No one wants to appear stupid when talking to a stupid marketing research interviewer. So, people “pretend” awareness - a venial sin for sure. So this number is really a phantom number and isn’t worth a whole lot, except that it forms the base from which all the wheat is separated from the chaff. Any respondent who cannot answer this question is spared the next few questions and is shuttled immediately to the limbo of the demographic questions.
6. Thou shalt not commit adulteration. Thou shalt prove that thou hast seen the Light.
The next two questions, by far, are the most important. They are the questions which actually determine whether or not the advertising is working. Together, they make up “proven advertising.”
FOR EACH RESPONDENT WHO CLAIMED AWARENESS, ASK:
- Please describe that advertising to me. PROBE: Anything else?
- Who was the sponsor of that advertising?
Within these open-ended questions, respondents have to prove that they actually remember the advertising. No fibbing here; it’s time to step up to the altar. No open-ends were ever more important to you and your money. The respondents have to come up with something specific. And then, just as important, they have to come up with your name.
How do you compute “proven awareness”? How do you distinguish the Saved from the Sinners? You begin with the congregation of “yes men” from the previous question. If they cannot name something specific that proves they saw/read/heard the ad, they are terminated. Cast out, nothing short of eternal damnation awaiting them.
But consumers not only have to come up with a specific executional element and/or salvation message, they also have to know who their Savior is. However, do not despair. The Sinners only go to Tracking Study Purgatory; they will still get a second chance.
Proven awareness is, far and away, your most important figure, since it includes only those who had made the Faith Commitment, who can actually prove that they know your advertising. Isn’t this really what you’re on this earth for anyway?
Actually, “many are sent, few are remembered.” It is extremely difficult for people to specifically remember anything about any ads, since, as we’ve all read, consumers are bombarded with 50 gazillion advertising messages a day. One of the highest levels of proven advertising awareness I have ever seen was for a bank campaign. A national bank based here in the Twin Cities used Bob Newhart as a spokesman for many years. And yet, when asked to describe bank advertising they had seen or heard, only 18 percent of that bank’s customers spontaneously mentioned Bob. So, everything - including proven advertising awareness - is relative.
7. Thou shalt be prompted.
An important message bears repeating: It is extremely difficult to remember anybody’s advertising - especially if you’re put on the spot. So, just like any religion worth its weight in sinners, we have to give consumers a second - and a third, and a fourth - chance. So we’ve created prompted awareness. Just like grace, this is actually good stuff, but it’s just not as sanctifying as proven awareness.
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As shown above, you want to tempt the consumer with between eight and 10 executional and message prompts from actual ads, taken from all media used. You might want to stick in elements and messages about your competitors’ ads too, just to keep things interesting.
Prompted awareness is OK, but it’s not the not key to eternal life. Consumers can delude advertisers with claims of awareness. Hey, consumers do lie. And here, once again, the numbers can be good - or bad. For example, in a project I recently conducted, 45 percent of a target audience remembered seeing or hearing an ad for the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance - before the campaign even began.
8. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor’s advertising.
Both proven and, especially, prompted awareness provide great opportunities to throw in some of your competitors’ ads, just to see how well they are - or are not - doing. We can only measure how good we are by measuring how good they are. Advertising isn’t done in a Garden of Eden. We’re only as saintly as the sinners - or vice versa.
This is also an excellent chance to compare the cost-effectiveness of your advertising vs. theirs. This is the time to have the media priests and priestesses compare what you paid for your awareness vs. what they paid for theirs. Once upon a time I worked on an account for a manufacturer of tennis balls. I always let the client beat his chest over the fact that the advertising awareness of his tennis balls was twice that of his closest competitor. I never did have the courage to remind him that he spent 10 times more on advertising than that same competitor.
9. Thou shalt bear true witness for attitudes and behaviors.
Advertising is more than just remembering clever messages and ingenious executions. After all, if that were so, all those award-winning hotshot ad agencies would hold onto all their accounts forever. But advertising is more than memorable snippets, it’s also about changing attitudes and behaviors. It’s about saving the unenlightened, even if they don’t know what got them saved.
With that in mind, it should be second nature to include attitudinal statements and behavioral questions in an advertising tracking study questionnaire. I had a client whose advertising was pretty staid (read: boring). Yet, over time, when prompted, current customers and potential customers rated the client’s product higher. More importantly, their purchase intent increased significantly. And yet, awareness of the client’s advertising remained lower than the Dead Sea. Maybe the advertising somehow had an impact upon that shift. Who knows? The ends justify the means.
10. Thou shalt track thine advertising on a regular basis.
Perhaps what frustrates me most is the large number of clients who cannot be convinced of the importance of tracking their advertising on an ongoing basis. Salvation isn’t a one-time occurrence. One always has to be wary of backsliding. “It’s an investment,” I preach. “Think of how much you paid to produce the ads. Don’t you want to know what your ROI is?” Oftentimes, clients can be convinced to monitor their advertising once, and sometimes even twice. But then they resort to their old habits and fall into untracking ways. Maybe they get distracted; maybe they get bored. But little do they realize that certain hellfire and damnation is just a short step away.
Tracking advertising, like the advertising itself, is a long-term commitment. The advertising must be tracked at periodic intervals. On a consistent basis. And definite money should be budgeted at the start of the advertising to continue the monitoring. We worship on a fairly regular basis, to keep on the straight and narrow. But unless one is ever-vigilant, a competitor may be tempted to come and lead some customers astray. And, chances are, if we’re not watching, we wouldn’t even know about it.
Revelations 1:1
Following these 10 commandments should keep you in the state of grace for a long time. These rules should tell you to follow the current campaign or to search out another prophet (profit?). They should tell you when to give thanks to your agency, to repent for selecting a strategy or even when to call down the wrath of God when consumers start flailing after other golden calves.
Although I’ve made a valiant attempt, proselytizing can only go so far. I know there are a lot of doubters out there who really want to believe, but they need a good example to convert them, to put them on the stairway to heaven. I know I’m preaching to a tough crowd, one that’s paid to be cynical. So, I invite anyone from this unconvinced contingent to e-mail me and I’ll send you a copy of an actual tried-and-true advertising tracking study questionnaire.
Tracking advertising isn’t as fulfilling as copytesting, but it won’t get you martyred either. So when Judgment Day comes, it pays to have these commandments in your hip pocket. After all, advertising tracking leads to information, which leads to power, which leads to the opportunity to live the One True Tenet of Marketing Enlightenment: “Recommend more research!”