- Category: December 2010
The Fournaise Marketing Group analyzed that 75% of the ad campaigns it tracked and tested at pre-launch level across 20 countries worldwide in 2010 achieved low effectiveness scores and had to be reworked because of:
- Poor ad appeal
- Poor message understanding
- Poor message relevance
- Poor likeliness to engage by the target audience
Fournaise uses its Next Generation Creative Effectiveness Tracking solution CampaignTester® and its proprietary Scorecard-based 9-KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Ad Performance Tracking methodology to measure the degree of potential effectiveness of its clients’ ad campaigns in full independence and neutrality – to help both clients and agencies identify what works and what does not, and take the relevant creative corrective action.
It identified two key reasons why ad campaigns test-scored poorly and had to be seriously reworked to boost their effectiveness:
1. In 60% of the cases, the clients’ briefs were too loose, too weak and not sharp enough, setting up the agencies for failure right from the start:
- The campaigns’ objectives were either too vague or unclear
- Unique selling or value propositions were non-existent or terribly plain
- Appealing customer benefits were totally missing or simply overlooked
- Irrelevant, incomplete or misinterpreted customer insights were used
- Look, feel and style were thought to be able to overcome the lack of content
- Over-reliance on the agency to come up with the big idea in spite of vague or unclear directions in the brief
2. In 40% of the cases, the agencies’ creative delivery was off-brief or simply not good enough to generate an effective impact on the target audience:
- Understanding of the needs and wants of the clients’ target audience was too superficial, not deep enough or too much based on gut-feelings
- Unique selling or value propositions were overlooked, and customer benefits were put aside, not listened to or not properly taken into account (deliberately or not)
- Planning and/or creative process was rushed
- Planning and creative teams were not working hand in hand enough and were often guilty of infighting
- Lack of creative open-mindedness, objectivity and self-analysis when it comes to feedback/directions from the client