Your brand’s value proposition is the cornerstone of success in advertising.

As I discussed in my previous video, creative quality reigns supreme, but it all starts with a solid value proposition and brand promise.

At MSW Research, our extensive research across countless creatives and leading brands has shown time and again that without a strong value proposition, even the most creative campaigns fall flat.

In today’s landscape of endless creative variations driven by technology and AI, a robust starting point is essential.

The media multiplier effect can either propel your brand to new heights or hold it back—it all comes down to the strength of your foundational message.

Let us guide you in developing advertising that’s rooted in a strong value proposition and brand promise, ensuring increased sales, volume, and market share, regardless of the medium.

Let’s make your brand stand out. Get in touch today. 💡

In marketing, quality beats quantity.

When it comes to crafting a successful marketing plan, the setup and creativity are paramount.

The numbers don’t lie: spending alone only explains 13% of sales change, while creative quality explains a whopping 52%. That’s four times more impact! 💡

While spending has its place, it’s the strategic execution and creative brilliance that truly drive results. It’s not about how much you spend, but how wisely you allocate those resources.

At MSW Research, we understand the importance of quality ads.

We’ve all seen the difference between captivating ads and lackluster ones. But for many marketers, realizing this disparity often comes too late. Success isn’t a one-time win, it’s about consistent performance over time.

Without a systematic approach to identifying what works, marketers are left relying on gut instinct alone, which isn’t sustainable.

There’s a better way.

Let’s harness the power of predictive metrics and a refined process to steer your creative development toward success from the get-go. 📈

Copy testing has been utilized by advertisers for decades to assess the quality of advertising copy. MSW’s TouchPoint™ copy testing system has been extensively validated, showing that test results on key metrics are predictive of subsequent sales results from airing the tested advertising. A partnership between MSW and predictive marketing analytics firm Keen set out to assess the utility of test scores from MSW’s Insight Rabbit DIY copy-testing platform at improving predictions from Keen’s MIDA decision support system.

The MIDA (Marketing Investment Decision Analysis) platform is designed to help marketers decide how to invest in marketing activities. MIDA users can develop optimized investment scenarios to meet specific business objectives such as hitting revenue targets or meeting budget constraints. It does this by applying a Bayesian modeling approach to a wide range of a brand’s historical marketing and performance data.

Could the use of copy quality metrics improve forecasting of business outcomes and hence, be used as an input to MIDI to improve the allocation of marketing dollars? To address this question, new advertising for a major packaged food brand was selected. This brand had developed two different campaigns with different communication objectives that tied back to the brand’s strategy. The brand intended to air both campaigns concurrently.

The television ads developed for each of the two campaigns were tested using MSW Research’s Insight Rabbit Pulse Lite copy testing solution. Results are shown in the graph below.

Both ads were adequate in terms of the secondary Break Through metric which assesses the degree to which an ad leaves viewers with a memorable and branded impression. However, Copy A scored much stronger in terms of the CCPersuasion™ metric which assesses the degree to which the ad positively influences preference for the advertised brand. Prior validation studies have shown CCPersuasion to be the strongest predictor of an ad’s selling power. Copy A scored significantly above the Fair Share benchmark with an index of 161, suggesting it is a very strong piece of copy. On the other hand, Copy B indexed 113 versus the norm and would be considered slightly above average at best.

Historical performance of the brand’s television investment was measured in MIDA to quantify the expected returns on investment for an average (or benchmark) ad for the brand. Then an initial forecast was developed before the start of the campaign using this historical performance enhanced by the MSW copy test results along with planned media delivery levels.

After the campaign had been running for six months, MIDA was updated with actual sales and television campaign delivery data. As seen below, the ROI for Copy A was approximately 90% higher than would have been expected from the historical benchmark ad performance level. On the other hand, Copy B’s ROI was only about 5% higher than the benchmark expectation.

This actual performance was extremely consistent with the copy test results which suggested that Copy A was a very strong ad, and that copy B was slightly above average. This result illustrates the utility of MSW copy test scores in the a priori forecasting of investment levels through integration with decision support systems. The integration of MSW copy test scores with a decision support system like MIDA would help steer marketing dollars toward more deserving initiatives, improve forecasts and bolster in-market effectiveness of brands’ marketing programs.