Wednesday, October 11, 2006
What makes ads engaging?
Leo Burnett, CanWest MediaWorks, and The Ideas Research Group just completed a study on engagement in Canada. The purpose of their research was to explore consumers' engagement with ads - tv, print, etc. - and to discover what makes people actually stop and take notice of said ads. The study used multiple methods to gather data - here is one of the more interesting things they did:
"We armed people with digital cameras and had them take pictures for a week of advertising they noticed and found engaging. We let them define advertising and engagement themselves to truly understand what was engaging to them.
Conclusion: Engagement seemed to be driven by several factors, which we group as "Conditions," "Context" and "Content."
Conditions include pre-existing brand interest. People are more likely to notice an ad if they have used that brand before, or if they have enjoyed communications from it before, or if they are in the market for that product/service.
Context includes what else they were doing, where the ad was located, whether it interrupted them or whether they chose it.
Content is driven not by the message of the ad, but by how it made them feel. People noticed ads that had humor, were thought-provoking, made them feel intelligent, that were beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, were surprising, had depth and different layers of meaning, made them feel important, gave them something to talk about with friends/family, and even sometimes had elements that made them feel negative. This is why we call it content - because effective advertising seemed to fulfill the same human needs that media does.
What is interesting is that across all three factors, engagement is driven by people's own situation and feelings, rather than by messaging. People are more likely to notice things that fulfill their needs and add value to their lives. This is not to say that messaging is unimportant, but that messaging by itself is not enough."
While this is not new information, it's a good reminder that advertising creative in and of itself does not drive customer interaction and increase brand awareness or affinity. The only way we can achieve our brand loyalty goals is by meeting consumers on their terms - finding them in magazines they read, tv they watch, websites they frequent, and presenting ads to them in a way that complements what they're doing, not distracts from it. But, in order to reach them, we need to first understand them. Focus groups, interviews, shop-a-longs, ethnographies - these are all good and valuable ways to do so...and because of the plethora media choices available to consumers today, "guessing" is no longer an option.
We've said it before and we'll keep saying it: customer insight is an absolute necessity that should drive both creative development and media selection.
Thanks to our friends up north for this useful reminder.
You can read the full study here
Leo Burnett, CanWest MediaWorks, and The Ideas Research Group just completed a study on engagement in Canada. The purpose of their research was to explore consumers' engagement with ads - tv, print, etc. - and to discover what makes people actually stop and take notice of said ads. The study used multiple methods to gather data - here is one of the more interesting things they did:
"We armed people with digital cameras and had them take pictures for a week of advertising they noticed and found engaging. We let them define advertising and engagement themselves to truly understand what was engaging to them.
Conclusion: Engagement seemed to be driven by several factors, which we group as "Conditions," "Context" and "Content."
Conditions include pre-existing brand interest. People are more likely to notice an ad if they have used that brand before, or if they have enjoyed communications from it before, or if they are in the market for that product/service.
Context includes what else they were doing, where the ad was located, whether it interrupted them or whether they chose it.
Content is driven not by the message of the ad, but by how it made them feel. People noticed ads that had humor, were thought-provoking, made them feel intelligent, that were beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, were surprising, had depth and different layers of meaning, made them feel important, gave them something to talk about with friends/family, and even sometimes had elements that made them feel negative. This is why we call it content - because effective advertising seemed to fulfill the same human needs that media does.
What is interesting is that across all three factors, engagement is driven by people's own situation and feelings, rather than by messaging. People are more likely to notice things that fulfill their needs and add value to their lives. This is not to say that messaging is unimportant, but that messaging by itself is not enough."
While this is not new information, it's a good reminder that advertising creative in and of itself does not drive customer interaction and increase brand awareness or affinity. The only way we can achieve our brand loyalty goals is by meeting consumers on their terms - finding them in magazines they read, tv they watch, websites they frequent, and presenting ads to them in a way that complements what they're doing, not distracts from it. But, in order to reach them, we need to first understand them. Focus groups, interviews, shop-a-longs, ethnographies - these are all good and valuable ways to do so...and because of the plethora media choices available to consumers today, "guessing" is no longer an option.
We've said it before and we'll keep saying it: customer insight is an absolute necessity that should drive both creative development and media selection.
Thanks to our friends up north for this useful reminder.
You can read the full study here
