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The number of sources are endless, and the best ideas often come from making connections between different places to uncover a universal truth that can be approached in a new way. Look to social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok to see what people are talking about now. Talk to people to dig into how they think about certain moments in their lives — as BBDO and the Snickers team did. Go through your past research to fifind themes or interesting verbatims to build on. Rely on vendors who specialize in spotting new trends. Then combine different insights together to come up with something new.
And you can, of course, rely on your creative agency to do much of this research and ideation process for or with you. But it’s worth noting that many modern marketers are coming to the table with research to inform the idea behind their ad campaigns — or at least prepared to work with the agency in this process.
Remember that the best big ideas are grounded in a real understanding of people and what will resonate with them. Look to sources that will help you understand what people care about.
James Miller
Global Head of Strategy
Qualitative research identifified an interesting insight: that there is a universal code of conduct by which men abide to stay part of the male pack. This was globally consistent among men, but also something that everyone could recognize or identify with...
Our creative team found a brilliant way to link this insight into male pack behavior to our brand and "product truth." They distilled the thinking into a universal human truth: when you’re hungry, you’re just not yourself. And, when you’re not yourself, it has a real impact on your ability to remain part of the pack.
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A great ad starts with your next big idea
The CMO's guide to creating ads people love
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Where does your big idea come from?
* Miller, J. (2017, February 3). Case study: How fame made snickers' 'you're not you when you're hungry' campaign a success. Campaign US. https://www.campaignlive.com/article/case-study-fame-made-snickers-youre-not-when-youre-hungry-campaign-success/1413554.
The result of this effort was a Super Bowl commercial featuring Betty White which generated 400 million unpaid media impressions and launched a big idea (“You’re not you when you’re hungry”) that continues to work for the brand today.*
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Once you have an idea, ask yourself some questions:
Validating your big idea
At this stage, you’ll likely find yourself dealing with varied opinions across your marketing team, agency partners and other internal stakeholders. It’s important to listen to these opinions, but it’s also important to validate this idea with your audience so you can respond to these opinions with facts. We’ll get more into this process in the next section.
If you can’t answer “yes” to these questions, it’s probably not the right idea for your campaign right now.
The CMO's guide to creating ads people love
INSPIRE
DEVELOP
SUCCEED
* I understand the information will be securely stored by Zappi and used by Zappi to keep me informed about Zappi's products, news, and future developments in market research. You can opt-out of these communications at any time either by using the link in the emails sent to you or by contacting us directly at data-privacy@zappistore.com.
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A great ad starts with your next big idea
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Finding your big idea
At the heart of many of the best ad campaigns is a “big idea.” Big ideas can be used for a single campaign or they can have a long life, extending up to a decade or more.
Take the Snickers “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” platform as an example. In the late 2000’s, the Snickers brand was losing market share. The team needed a compelling creative idea that would be memorable enough to keep the brand top-of-mind for consumers. They wanted to stay consistent with the tone of previous campaigns that were targeted to a primarily male audience, but achieve broader appeal with a new universal message.
James Miller
Global Head of Strategy
Qualitative research identifified an interesting insight: that there is a universal code of conduct by which men abide to stay part of the male pack. This was globally consistent among men, but also something that everyone could recognize or identify with...
Our creative team found a brilliant way to link this insight into male pack behavior to our brand and "product truth." They distilled the thinking into a universal human truth: when you’re hungry, you’re just not yourself. And, when you’re not yourself, it has a real impact on your ability to remain part of the pack.
Automate manual processes, connect and compare your data and provide built-in intuitive analytics. You can now work at pace, bring insights into every decision, understand what matters today and inform future decisions.
The result of this effort was a Super Bowl commercial featuring Betty White which generated 400 million unpaid media impressions and launched a big idea (“You’re not you when you’re hungry”) that continues to work for the brand today.*
Where does your big idea come from?
The number of sources are endless, and the best ideas often come from making connections between different places to uncover a universal truth that can be approached in a new way. Look to social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok to see what people are talking about now. Talk to people to dig into how they think about certain moments in their lives — as BBDO and the Snickers team did. Go through your past research to fifind themes or interesting verbatims to build on. Rely on vendors who specialize in spotting new trends. Then combine different insights together to come up with something new.
And you can, of course, rely on your creative agency to do much of this research and ideation process for or with you. But it’s worth noting that many modern marketers are coming to the table with research to inform the idea behind their ad campaigns — or at least prepared to work with the agency in this process.
Remember that the best big ideas are grounded in a real understanding of people and what will resonate with them. Look to sources that will help you understand what people care about.
Validating your big idea
Once you have an idea, ask yourself some questions:
If you can’t answer “yes” to these questions, it’s probably not the right idea for your campaign right now.
At this stage, you’ll likely find yourself dealing with varied opinions across your marketing team, agency partners and other internal stakeholders. It’s important to listen to these opinions, but it’s also important to validate this idea with your audience so you can respond to these opinions with facts. We’ll get more into this process in the next section.
At the heart of many of the best ad campaigns is a “big idea.” Big ideas can be used for a single campaign or they can have a long life, extending up to a decade or more.
Take the Snickers “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” platform as an example. In the late 2000’s, the Snickers brand was losing market share. The team needed a compelling creative idea that would be memorable enough to keep the brand top-of-mind for consumers. They wanted to stay consistent with the tone of previous campaigns that were targeted to a primarily male audience, but achieve broader appeal with a new universal message.
Finding your big idea
If you can’t answer “yes” to these questions, it’s probably not the right idea for your campaign right now.
At this stage, you’ll likely find yourself dealing with varied opinions across your marketing team, agency partners and other internal stakeholders. It’s important to listen to these opinions, but it’s also important to validate this idea with your audience so you can respond to these opinions with facts. We’ll get more into this process in the next section.
Is this a fresh idea?
1
2
Is this idea culturally relevant?
3
Will it resonate with a broad audience?
4
Can we own this idea?
Does it fit with our brand?
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2
Is this idea culturally relevant?
3
Will it resonate with a broad audience?
4
Can we own this idea?
Does it fit with our brand?
1
Is this a fresh idea?
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Turn your great idea into a reality
The CMO's guide to creating ads people love
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* I understand the information will be securely stored by Zappi and used by Zappi to keep me informed about Zappi's products, news, and future developments in market research. You can opt-out of these communications at any time either by using the link in the emails sent to you or by contacting us directly at data-privacy@zappistore.com.
You should have a good idea of what might need to be changed after looking through this information. Work with your team to make those edits to your ad in your next iteration.
Then go through the process of getting consumer feedback in your next round to validate you got it right.
Optimize and validate
Drill down
If you’ve tested to see how long someone watches an ad, look at how long they watched and where they dropped off. What’s going on in the ad at that time? Is it a joke that doesn’t land? Does something controversial happen?
Next, look at the emotions your ad evokes. Ideally the system you used will tell you what emotions people feel at different points throughout the ad. Does the emotion at each moment line up with what you’d expect? Is there anger when you expect humor? Or do you expect people to love the ad but they feel neutral? Think about what you need to change to evoke the emotions you intended.
Finally, check responses from any open ended questions you asked to hear directly what your audience thinks. Ideally your system will give you some ability to see open-ended responses grouped by theme. This will give you a direction to start and let you see how many people have the same thought. But don’t shy away from reading a number of actual responses. They can give you a lot of great ideas to improve based on what lands and what doesn’t.
For example, if your key message isn’t coming through, what are they saying about what their takeaways actually were? If your ad isn’t distinctive, what are they saying about what it reminds them of? Look to those responses to answer the “why” behind any of the numbers.
First, keep in mind that it’s very rare for an ad to score well on every metric you look at. Start by making sure your ad aligns with your goals for the campaign. If you’re promoting a sale or a limited-time product, short-term sales will be very important to you. If you’ve produced what you think is a tear-jerker, you’ll want to pay particular attention to the overall emotion you’re producing and the ultimate brand equity you drive.
If your results are lower than you would like to see in those areas, dig into what’s behind the numbers.
Consider your goals and check the metrics
Fernando Kahane
Senior Marketing Director
Creative excellence is about telling stories in the best possible way. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the most breakthrough idea.
Once you’ve got your inspiration, it’s time to turn to development. You don’t want your great idea to fail because it wasn’t executed well, so you have to make sure the idea stays strong throughout its entire journey.
Each company’s process is a bit different, but you’ll probably be dealing with the standard activities you’re familiar with: briefs to your creative agency, storyline selection, production and editing, etc. And since your job is never done — you’re always somewhere in the process for one or more campaigns — it helps to visualize it in an endless loop.
Jean-Michel Hoffman
Sr. Director of Brand Marketing
If three people, a creative director, an art director, and a copywriter, are sitting together in a room making an ad, they’re going to be clouded by their opinions and the blood, sweat, and tears they put into the work and the edit just to get there. You need to get some outside perspective.
The sooner, the better. You don’t want to get to the end of an expensive production only to find consumers don’t understand the campaign, or it doesn’t produce the strong emotion you thought it would.
Instead, you can show your ad to consumers at any stage in the process so you can optimize it early on. Get feedback on your storyboard, animatics, rough cut — or ideally all of the above.
That way, there are no surprises once your ad is done.
When should you get consumer feedback?
4
Select and
refine
6
Launch and
optimize
5
Produce
and edit
2
Ideate with your
agency partner
1
Define your
strategy
3
Narrow down your list of ideas
In other words, it’s these infrequent buyers who will be most affected by a great ad. Your regular customers are already paying attention to your brand. They probably don’t need any advertising reminders to keep buying your products.
What you need is a winning ad that gets the attention of your infrequent buyers — influencing the way they feel about your brand and driving
them to purchase.
To get one of those, you need to get feedback on your ad from a broad category of consumers to make sure you’re reaching the right people.
The CMO's guide to creating ads people love
INSPIRE
DEVELOP
SUCCEED
Develop
Turn your great idea into a reality
Fernando Kahane
Senior Marketing Director
Creative excellence is about telling stories in the best possible way. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the most breakthrough idea.
Once you’ve got your inspiration, it’s time to turn to development. You don’t want your great idea to fail because it wasn’t executed well, so you have to make sure the idea stays strong throughout its entire journey.
Each company’s process is a bit different, but you’ll probably be dealing with the standard activities you’re familiar with: briefs to your creative agency, storyline selection, production and editing, etc. And since your job is never done — you’re always somewhere in the process for one or more campaigns — it helps to visualize it in an endless loop.
The better approach is to bring your consumers into your ad development process. Get feedback from them to help you hone your idea.
Real life may not look quite as clean as the diagram above — this is just an ideal version of a complex process!
How can you make sure your idea is well executed at each stage? You could optimize as you go based on your own gut and what you personally like. But you risk being wrong about what will land with your audience.
Jean-Michel Hoffman
Sr. Director of Brand Marketing
If three people, a creative director, an art director, and a copywriter, are sitting together in a room making an ad, they’re going to be clouded by their opinions and the blood, sweat, and tears they put into the work and the edit just to get there. You need to get some outside perspective.
When should you get consumer feedback?
The sooner, the better. You don’t want to get to the end of an expensive production only to fifind consumers don’t understand the campaign, or it doesn’t produce the strong emotion you thought it would.
Instead, you can show your ad to consumers at any stage in the process so you can optimize it early on. Get feedback on your storyboard, animatics, rough cut — or ideally all of the above.
That way, there are no surprises once your ad is done.
Lauren Stafffford-Webb,
CMO
Art is great. You want to have work that makes people laugh, cry and smile. But you also need to make sure it drives your business.
While you may traditionally think of “reach” as the number of eyeballs that saw an ad, we take it a
step further.
Your audience is bombarded with marketing messages all day long, so it’s important that your ad is actually noticed and remembered — not just viewed.
To maximize reach, you need strong branding and a distinctive ad.
When you get feedback on your ad, show it to your audience in a reel of other ads, without indicating which one they should pay attention to. Give them the option to skip through ads and note how long they watch yours.
Then have them specififically watch your ad and ask questions to uncover whether they think your ad is:
• Memorable, including whether they remember your brand in the ad
• Attention-grabbing
• Distinctive from other ads they’ve seen
• On brand
If they pay attention to your ad, remember both the ad and your brand, and find it distinctive from other ads they’ve seen, you’ve got an ad with strong reach.
How do you know if your creative will have strong reach?
When you test your ad, ask questions to find out if
your audience:
• Understands what’s going on in the ad
• Feels something from the ad — especially if those emotions are strong (loving an ad or finding an ad funny/surprising)
• Understands and believes the message you are trying to convey
• Feels the message is relevant to them
If they understand the story and the message and feel the emotion you intended them to feel, you’ve got an ad with strong resonance.
How do you know if your creative will have
strong resonance?
Before you show your ad, start by asking your audience how likely they are to purchase your product and how they feel about your brand.
Then, after you show the ad, ask how likely they are to purchase and how they feel about your brand.
If those two measures improve, you’ve driven a response! But keep in mind these measures are hard to lift, especially for established brands. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t see a dramatic lift. It’s much easier for smaller brands to drive a change in behavior or perception with a single ad.
How do you know if your creative will have strong response?
Every marketer wants to predict if an ad will do well. There are two main ways advertising can make an impact: it can drive short-term sales or it can build long-term brand equity. An ad may do both, but most are aimed at supporting one or the other.
There are many ways companies have attempted to predict advertising success, so you may have a method you already use for this. Our own proprietary model predicts the ROI an ad will drive on both sales (what we call Creative Sales Impact) and brand equity (what we call Creative Brand Impact).
To calculate Creative Sales Impact, we linked our data to marketing-mix modeling data provided by many brands in order to fifind the ads that generated incremental sales volume and uncover the metrics that predicted that sales performance.
To calculate Creative Brand Impact, we looked to the principles of Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow to understand the key drivers of brand equity (including ad salience, ad relevance, emotional affinity and brand distinction). We ran a number of tests to find the best way to determine whether an ad affects those drivers.
This ad scores high on Creative Sales Impact, which means it’s predicted to drive sales. But it doesn’t score as well on Creative Brand Impact, which means there’s room to improve.
How do you know if your creative will drive ROI for your business?
Many marketers assume you should talk to your regular buyers or existing customers. While they may have some useful insights, they alone will not help you predict whether your ad will be successful.
Think about it: Your regular customers are already paying attention to your brand. They’re not the ones you need to get attention from. At Zappi, we often refer to Byron Sharp’s research-based book How Brands Grow. In it, he notes:
Who should you get feedback from?
At the other end of the buying spectrum are the typical, very infrequent buyers. These people—who are most of your customers—are a marketing challenge because it is hard to justify spending money on them individually (direct main is usually out of the question). And yet collectively they are important for sales volume and offer great potential for growth... To maintain sales a brand needs to reach out to these masses of buyers. For two reasons:
• There are so many of them
• They buy so infrequently and could easily forget about you**
*“Chapter 4: Which Customers Matter Most?” How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know, by Byron Sharp, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 44–45. ** Ibid, pp. 45.
But your infrequent buyers or non-customers, they’re a different story. Sharp continues:
In other words, it’s these infrequent buyers who will be most affected by a great ad. Your regular customers are already paying attention to your brand. They probably don’t need any advertising reminders to keep buying your products.
What you need is a winning ad that gets the attention of your infrequent buyers — influencing the way they feel about your brand and driving them to purchase.
To get one of those, you need to get feedback on your ad from a broad category of consumers to make sure you’re reaching the right people.
What should you ask them about your ad?
Once you know who you’re targeting, you need to know what you’re asking them.
There are five main things you should look for — what we call the 5
R’s — to tell you whether you’ve got a winning ad on your hands.
Let’s walk through those 5 R’s and give a little detail on what to look for to measure for them.
While you may traditionally think of “reach” as the number of eyeballs that saw an ad, we take it a step further.
Your audience is bombarded with marketing messages all day long, so it’s important that your ad is actually noticed and remembered — not just viewed.
To maximize reach, you need strong branding and a distinctive ad.
In one example, Schupp et al showed images to participants — some neutral and some that would drive an emotional response — and measured those participants' brain responses. The study concluded that attention was “markedly augmented” on the emotional images than the neutral ones.**
So it’s no surprise that some of the best ads are the ones that make us feel something.
To maximize emotional response, you need a good story and clear delivery.
* Emotion and memory: How do your emotions affffect your ability to remember information and recall past memories? Psychologist World. (2016, February 23). https://www.psychologistworld.com/emotion/emotion-memory-psychology#references.
** Schupp, H. T., et al. “Selective Visual Attention to Emotion.” Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 27, no. 5, 2007, pp. 1082–1089., doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3223-06.2007.
How do you know if your creative will have strong reach?
When you get feedback on your ad, show it to your audience in a reel of other ads, without indicating which one they should pay attention to. Give them the option to skip through ads and note how long they
watch yours.
Then have them specififically watch your ad and ask questions to uncover whether they think your
ad is:
• Memorable, including whether they remember your brand in the ad
• Attention-grabbing
• Distinctive from other ads they’ve seen
• On brand
If they pay attention to your ad, remember both the ad and your brand, and find it distinctive from other ads they’ve seen, you’ve got an ad with strong reach.
How do you know if your creative will have strong response?
Before you show your ad, start by asking your audience how likely they are to purchase your product and how they feel about your brand.
Then, after you show the ad, ask how likely they are to purchase and how they feel about your brand.
If those two measures improve, you’ve driven a response! But keep in mind these measures are hard to lift, especially for established brands. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t see a dramatic lift. It’s much easier for smaller brands to drive a change in behavior or perception with a single ad.
How do you know if there’s anything risky in your creative?
When you test your ad, ask your audience if there’s anything they find offensive in the creative.
We all have cultural blindspots, and brands can pay a high price for
cultural insensitivity. Your audience can tell you if there’s something you
missed so you can get ahead of anything that could damage your brand’s reputation.
LET'S CHAT
How do you know if your creative will drive ROI for your business?
This ad scores high on Creative Sales Impact, which means it’s predicted to drive sales. But it doesn’t score as well on Creative Brand Impact, which means there’s room to improve.
Every marketer wants to predict if an ad will do well. There are two main ways advertising can make an impact: it can drive short-term sales or it can build long-term brand equity. An ad may do both, but most are aimed at supporting one or the other.
There are many ways companies have attempted to predict advertising success, so you may have a method you already use for this. Our own proprietary model predicts the ROI an ad will drive on both sales (what we call Creative Sales Impact) and brand equity (what we call Creative Brand Impact).
To calculate Creative Sales Impact, we linked our data to marketing-mix modeling data provided by many brands in order to fifind the ads that generated incremental sales volume and uncover the metrics that predicted that sales performance.
To calculate Creative Brand Impact, we looked to the principles of Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow to understand the key drivers of brand equity (including ad salience, ad relevance, emotional affinity and brand distinction). We ran a number of tests to find the best way to determine whether an ad affects those drivers.
* I understand the information will be securely stored by Zappi and used by Zappi to keep me informed about Zappi's products, news, and future developments in market research. You can opt-out of these communications at any time either by using the link in the emails sent to you or by contacting us directly at data-privacy@zappistore.com.
READ NOW
Put out your
best ad
Optimize and validate
You should have a good idea of what might need to be changed after looking through this information. Work with your team to make those edits to your ad in your next iteration.
Then go through the process of getting consumer feedback in your next round to validate you got it right.
What do you do with this information?
You may be asking: Will all this detailed data really help me execute on my idea? You bet! It may just take some small tweaks to turn a lackluster campaign into a winning one. These numbers can tell you where to make those tweaks.
Here are some tips on how to diagnose a problem.
Consider your goals and check the metrics
First, keep in mind that it’s very rare for an ad to score well on every metric you look at. Start by making sure your ad aligns with your goals for the campaign. If you’re promoting a sale or a limited-time product, short-term sales will be very important to you. If you’ve produced what you think is a tear-jerker, you’ll want to pay particular attention to the overall emotion you’re producing and the ultimate brand equity you drive.
If your results are lower than you would like to see in those areas, dig into what’s behind the numbers.
LET'S CHAT
Drill down
If you’ve tested to see how long someone watches an ad, look at how long they watched and where they dropped off. What’s going on in the ad at that time? Is it a joke that doesn’t land? Does something controversial happen?
Next, look at the emotions your ad evokes. Ideally the system you used will tell you what emotions people feel at different points throughout the ad. Does the emotion at each moment line up with what you’d expect? Is there anger when you expect humor? Or do you expect people to love the ad but they feel neutral? Think about what you need to change to evoke the emotions you intended.
Finally, check responses from any open ended questions you asked to hear directly what your audience thinks. Ideally your system will give you some ability to see open-ended
responses grouped by theme. This will give you a direction to start and let you see how many people have the same thought. But don’t shy away from reading a number of actual responses. They can give you a lot of great ideas to improve based on what lands and what doesn’t.
For example, if your key message isn’t coming through, what are they saying about what their takeaways actually were? If your ad isn’t distinctive, what are they saying about what it reminds them of? Look to those responses to answer the “why” behind any of the numbers.
Real life may not look quite as clean as the diagram above — this is just an ideal version of a complex process!
How can you make sure your idea is well executed at each stage? You could optimize as you go based on your own gut and what you personally like. But you risk being wrong about what will land with your audience.
The better approach is to bring your consumers into your ad development process. Get feedback from them to help you hone your idea.
Once your ad reaches its audience, its second task is to convey your message and engage emotionally.
Why is that? A lot of research has been done around the influence of emotions on memory.* We all intuitively understand that it’s easier to remember small details from an emotional event in your life rather than what you had for dinner on a random Tuesday last month. But some studies have explored the impact of emotion on attention, suggesting that our brains pay more attention to emotional stimuli so we’re more likely to remember them later.
In one example, Schupp et al showed images to participants — some neutral and some that would drive an emotional response — and measured those participants' brain responses. The study concluded that attention was “markedly augmented” on the emotional images than the neutral ones.**
So it’s no surprise that some of the best ads are the ones that make us feel something.
To maximize emotional response, you need a good story and clear delivery.
At the end of the day, you want your ad to drive a response. It should either move someone to buy your product or change/reinforce the way they think about your brand.
To maximize response, you need a compelling message.
It’s essential to assess the level of risk in your ad. To minimize risk, you need to review your ad in the context of cultural sensitivity.
When you test your ad, ask your audience if there’s anything they find offensive in the creative.
We all have cultural blindspots, and brands can pay a high price for cultural insensitivity. Your audience can tell you if there’s something you missed so you can get ahead of anything that could damage your brand’s reputation.
How do you know if there’s anything risky in your creative?
5. Return
You may be asking: Will all this detailed data really help me execute on my idea? You bet! It may just take some small tweaks to turn a lackluster campaign into a winning one. These numbers can tell you where to make
those tweaks.
Here are some tips on how to diagnose a problem.
What do you do with this information?
Put out your best ad
READ NOW
Many marketers assume you should talk to your regular buyers or existing customers. While they may have some useful insights, they alone will not help you predict whether your ad will be successful.
Think about it: Your regular customers are already paying attention to your brand. They’re not the ones you need to get attention from. At Zappi, we often refer to Byron Sharp’s research-based book How Brands Grow. In it, he notes:
Who should you get feedback from?
These heavy buyers are comparatively easy to market to, because the category and brand are, comparatively speaking, much more important to them than to the typical buyer. These heavy buyers get many opportunities to see point-of-sale material and packaging changes (and they are presumably very good at learning about regular promotions). These buyers are also far more receptive to the brand’s advertising: they notice it more and they find it easier to process and remember.*
At the other end of the buying spectrum are the typical, very infrequent buyers. These people—who are most of your customers—are a marketing challenge because it is hard to justify spending money on them individually (direct main is usually out of the question). And yet collectively they are important for sales volume and offer great potential for growth... To maintain sales a brand needs to reach out to these masses of buyers. For two reasons:
• There are so many of them
• They buy so infrequently and could easily
forget about you**
But your infrequent buyers or non-customers, they’re a different story. Sharp continues:
*“Chapter 4: Which Customers Matter Most?” How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know, by Byron Sharp, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 44–45. ** Ibid, pp. 45.
Lauren Stafford-Webb
CMO
Art is great. You want to have work that makes people laugh, cry and smile. But you also need to make sure it drives your business.
Inspire
Home
Develop
Succeed
Once you know who you’re targeting, you need to know what you’re asking them.
There are five main things you should look for — what we call the 5 R’s — to tell you whether you’ve got a winning ad on your hands.
Let’s walk through those 5 R’s and give a little detail on what to look for to measure for them.
What should you ask them about your ad?
1. Reach
A great ad fights through the clutter to get noticed.
A great ad makes someone feel something with its clear message.
2. Resonance
* Emotion and memory: How do your emotions affffect your ability to remember information and recall past memories? Psychologist World. (2016, February 23). https://www.psychologistworld.com/emotion/emotion-memory-psychology#references.
** Schupp, H. T., et al. “Selective Visual Attention to Emotion.” Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 27, no. 5, 2007, pp. 1082–1089., doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3223-06.2007.
A great ad drives someone to act or changes the way they think.
3. Response
A great ad doesn’t damage a brand’s reputation.
4. Risk
Nailing it in the other four categories will lead to a maximized return.
A great ad drives ROI for the brand.
4
6
Select and
refine
1
Define your
strategy
3
Narrow down your list of ideas
5
Produce
and edit
2
Ideate with your
agency partner
Launch and
optimize
These heavy buyers are comparatively easy to market to, because the category and brand are, comparatively speaking, much more important to them than to the typical buyer. These heavy buyers get many opportunities to see point-of-sale material and packaging changes (and they are presumably very good at learning about regular promotions). These buyers are also far more receptive to the brand’s advertising: they notice it more and they find it easier to process and remember.*
1. Reach
A great ad fights through the clutter to get noticed.
Once your ad reaches its audience, its second task is to convey your message and engage emotionally.
Why is that? A lot of research has been done around the influence of emotions on memory.* We all intuitively understand that it’s easier to remember small details from an emotional event in your life rather than what you had for dinner on a random Tuesday last month. But some studies have explored the impact of emotion on attention, suggesting that our brains pay more attention to emotional stimuli so we’re more likely to remember them later.
A great ad makes someone feel something with its clear message.
2. Resonance
How do you know if your creative will have strong resonance?
When you test your ad, ask questions to find out if your
audience:
• Understands what’s going on in the ad
• Feels something from the ad — especially if those emotions
are strong (loving an ad or fifinding an ad funny/surprising)
• Understands and believes the message you are trying to
convey
• Feels the message is relevant to them
If they understand the story and the message and feel the
emotion you intended them to feel, you’ve got an ad with strong resonance.
At the end of the day, you want your ad to drive a response. It should either move someone to buy your product or change/reinforce the way they think about your brand.
To maximize response, you need a compelling message.
A great ad drives someone to act or changes the way they think.
3. Response
It’s essential to assess the level of risk in your ad. To minimize risk, you need to review your ad in the context of cultural sensitivity.
A great ad doesn’t damage a brand’s reputation.
4. Risk
Nailing it in the other four categories will lead to a maximized return.
A great ad drives ROI for the brand.
5. Return
