Not since the advent of the television ad in 1941 has the potential for new ad formats been so great.  The emergence of digital platforms is enabling marketers to experiment with a number of new ad formats, each of which could revolutionize marketing as we know it.  Throughout 2014 we will be highlighting the most effective of the techniques being broadly adopted.

Part II: The Modern Music Ad

Music has been a fundamental ingredient of television ads from its earliest days.  When used to set the tone, break through the clutter, or provide continuity within campaigns its presence is proven to improve ad performance.   But exactly how much of a difference can music really make?  The below table shows the results for two versions of an ad with the same visuals and spoken tagline, only the music was different between the two.  Yet this single difference changed the ad from a below average performance to an above average one.

In its most refined form, music can even elevate itself from being the added spice within an ad to being its primary course.  While these “music ads” have been rarely used in the past they are now a mainstay advertising format for both the television and online media channels.  Especially when targeted to the MTV generations (X & Y), the modern music ad has taken on aspects which make it distinct from those of the past.

One of the most striking differences is in the type of brand associations created.  In its traditional form the music ties the brand to specific benefits by highlighting brand features in the lyrics.  In the modern form, the music ties the brand to specific emotions by highlighting personal experiences.   For example, contrast these two ads created 60 years apart.  While they use many of the same visual devices the music in the first links the brand to the benefit of being able to see the country while the second links the brand to deep-seated feelings of desire.

Dina Shore 1952 “See the USA in Your Chevrolet

Lana Del Rey 2012 “Burning Desire” Jaguar F-Type Launch

Another difference is in the immersive quality of the ads.  While both the traditional and modern forms cast the brand as the enabler to an experience, the modern ads take advantage of new production techniques gleaned from video games, home theater, and immersive cinema.  By analogy, if the traditional approach casts the brand as an orchestra, the modern approach casts the brand as a dance partner.

1960s Rice Krispies

2010s Weetabix

A new role which has emerged for music ads is in bringing new consumers into the brand fold as they enter the market.  Since each age group adopts music styles as their own, the use of contemporary music can help make the brand relevant to these new consumers.  When handled with care, the brand heritage can be maintained in this process with the music acting as bridge over the river of time.

1971 Coca-Cola “Teach the World to Sing” aka “Hilltop”

2005 Coca-Cola “Teach the World to Chill” aka “Chilltop”

Another application of the modern music ad is in tying a brand tightly to the equity of music celebrities.  Celebrity endorsements are among the oldest vehicles for building positive brand sentiments.  But since the early 2000s there has been a marked increase in the use of musician alignments with beauty care brands.  In these cases the music ads have the potential to move a simple endorsement to an emotional intertwining of the brand with the performer.

2012 Taylor Swift Wonderstruck “Enchanted”

As long as music remains an important part of our cultural identities, we can expect advertisers and their creative partners to invent new uses for the music ad format.

At MSW●ARS Research we talk a lot about our non-conscious “autopilot” and the role it plays in influencing brand choice.  Our autopilot is that 90%+ of cognitive capacity that operates below the level of consciousness, like keeping our car on track as we drive to work while our conscious self thinks about the day ahead.  It is that enormously talented part of us that tirelessly executes seemingly trivial yet complex tasks and in so doing renders a wide variety of essential judgments about the immediate world around us.   Not only is our autopilot capable of physically guiding our vehicle down the highway with astonishing precision, but in doing so it is also capable of detecting often subtle social cues such as whether the driver in the next lane over is angry and unstable or just listening to Megadeth at full volume.

It’s amazing when you stop to think about all the autopilot does.  It is the source of our perceptions and intuition.  It immediately identifies that slow moving blur in our peripheral vision as a “deer”.  It develops our initial impression of what is going on around us and it connects these impressions with past experience to anticipate what might happen next.  Will that deer jump out into the road?  It can match events with our metal map of the world and quickly identify something as new or not “normal”.  It makes rapid and for the most part accurate judgments about safe or unsafe, good or bad, approach or avoid, and it alerts our conscious “self” when more deliberate thinking is required to deal with a situation.

Compared to our plodding conscious thought process our autopilot is running at the speed of light while processing a far greater volume of information.

Yet given the enormous influence our autopilot has over our choices and behaviors it’s surprising how little it has been studied by marketing researchers.  Most market research comes from survey-based questionnaires or focus groups which by their very nature, reflect a dialog with only the conscious self, that place where our feelings, impulses, and behaviors have already been rationalized, reflected upon, put into words, and expressed within the given social context.

We know that most “low involvement” brand choices are made on autopilot.  And we know that the autopilot lies at the core of attitude formation precisely because it is constantly making snap, emotional judgments about people and objects around us.

MSW●ARS has long known the value of tapping directly into the autopilot via direct observation of respondent behavior at the moment they engage with a TV, print, or digital ad, or with a product or package design.  We have drawn from neuroscience to build an extensive set of tools to capture the in-the-moment physiological response to marketing stimuli:

• Facial Expressions are recorded and coded as a standard part of our TouchPoint*Plus multi-media testing system, for pre-testing TV, print, and digital ads.

• EEG and GSR provide a window on the autopilot making snap judgments as they happen, in-the-moment.

• Eye-tracking is used to know which elements of a complex stimulus such as a store shelf, package label, or print ad are causing the responses we observe.

• We also observe Rapid Response Times to understand implicit associations that the autopilot relies upon when making snap judgments.

All of these neurometrics are available as add-ons within our TouchPoint line of multimedia copy tests, our Identify product naming studies, Filter package tests, as well as custom designed projects.  Contact your MSW●ARS representative to learn about how adding these techniques to your next project can help your brand engage consumers’ autopilot.

Creating Effective Product Benefit Advertising

Just as there isn’t only one way to skin a cat, there isn’t one way to create sales-effective advertising.  The approach taken for a particular campaign is influenced by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the equity of the brand, the specific attributes of the category in which it competes, the nature of the competitive environment and the brand’s position in it, and the specific product claims the brand is able to make.

Based on this taking stock of a brand’s heritage and current position in the marketplace, there are a variety of general advertising formats that can be employed within the campaign.  During the last four blogs we focused on one particular type of advertising – product benefits advertising.  We formally define this type of advertising as “brand promotion aimed at showing how a product can satisfy the articulated and tacit needs and wants of the target consumer.”  This format is related to the much-maligned “hard sell” format in that it doesn’t hide the fact that it is intended to sell the product.  Since selling the product is typically the ultimate goal of advertising, this format remains a significant presence on-air, if not necessarily on the rosters of advertising award winners.

For brands interested in deploying such an approach the question becomes, are there proven techniques for creating product benefits ads that sell?  Based on decades of research, the answer to this question is a resounding “yes!”  We provided practical and empirically based guidelines for achieving this goal “product benefits ads that sell” organized into four key essences of product benefits advertising:

1. The Product as Main Character
2. The Product Plays the Role of Hero
3. Speaking in a Convincing Voice
4. Presenters and Stagecraft in Supporting Role

Scroll down through the previous 4 blog entries for the full series.