The challenging economic environment in the aftermath of the Great Recession has turned up the pressure for brands to create advertising that will justify the investment… and the continued advertising budget. To meet this challenge, one advertising format brands are turning to is the product benefits ad. 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 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? This is the first in a four-part series that will not only answer this question with a resounding “yes!” but also endeavor to provide practical and empirically based guidelines for achieving this goal – product benefits ads that sell.

Part 1: The product is the main character of the story
The first key essence of product benefits advertising is “the product as the main character of the story”. This may seem obvious at first, but the desire for creativity may tug in a different direction. But the importance of the presence of the product and brand name consistently throughout the advertising cannot be overstated. This ensures the effective linkage of the communicated benefits with the advertised product and maximizes the opportunity to associate evoked emotions from the ad with the brand.

Empirically, we have seen that the use of the following tactics related to brand presence has increased the likelihood of achieving advertising that sells.

• Early identification of the product at least within the first third of the ad helps link benefits to the product. This can be done through:
  • Product or packaging
  • Brand name or logo
  • Early category identification (e.g., through setting related to use) followed by later brand mentions

Empirically this tactic is associated with above norm persuasion levels and research has enabled “rule of thumb” hurdles to be derived:

– Note that this tactic implies an avoidance of blind lead-ins in product benefits advertising.

• Continued presence of the product throughout the ad in terms of showing the actual product and/or mentioning the brand name (verbally or visually). Again, empirical research has enabled hurdles:

• Combinations of different types of product presence can keep the focus on the product/brand while allowing visual variety and the product story to unfold. This example ad for Activa Yogurt achieved CCPersuasion level of more than double the norm.

• Careful placement of verbal and visual mentions should be made within the context of the ad.
  • Voiced over brand name mentions should not occur during visual communication of product information/benefits (such as a demonstration). Instead, use natural pauses and transitions to voice over the brand name so it doesn’t compete for attention with critical benefit communication.

• Visual brand name mentions should be large enough to consciously register with viewers, but should not interfere with other on-screen visuals.

• Product shots of brand extensions and product variants not sharing all the benefits being communicated for the advertised product should not be included in the body of the ad. An example is body wash images added within a shampoo benefits ad.
  • This tactic actually confuses the communication and lessens effectiveness.

• If the goal is to leverage equity gained by the featured product to other variants, use tags that stand apart from the body of the ad. For example:

Can “product as main character” survive the presence of a top celebrity, or will it inevitably be elbowed out? This excellent ad from Aveeno, which employs many of the described tactics, shows that this is indeed possible.

Woody Allen is often quoted as saying “90-percent of success is just showing up.” So now that we have ensured that the product shows up for our ad, we are well on our way to success. Of course, the last 10-percent is always the hardest part. In the next three parts of our series on product benefits ads, we’ll examine some techniques for making our “main character” so compelling that viewers will be ready to seek it out.

Lake Success, NY, March 18, 2013 – MSW Research (formerly McCollum Spielman Worldwide) announced today the acquisition of ARS from comScore resulting in the formation of MSW●ARS Research. This move brings together two of the most respected leaders in advertising research under one roof. The new company will provide marketers with the advertising research systems they have come to know and trust as well as a full range of innovative brand and advertising research solutions utilized by Top 100 clients.

Peter Klein, Senior Partner and CEO of MSW said “We’re extremely excited to have joined forces with ARS. They are a unique team of exceptional researchers that we have competed with for years and I have tremendous respect for them and their products. Now as a combined force, our clients will benefit even further from a staff of first class senior researchers that have experience working with the world’s leading brands. I believe we’re uniquely positioned to help guide our clients during these challenging times with a knowledge base, systems, norms and a 24/7 servicing approach that is unsurpassed in the industry.”

MSW is globally renowned for its marketplace validated CCPersuasion™ measure and its TouchPoint® advertising evaluation system along with a suite of products that measure the impact of advertising at any stage of creative development and across any media and brand touch point. The ARS Persuasion measure along with MSW’s are the world’s most widely documented and independently validated predictive measures of the persuasive effectiveness of advertising creative. Both the MSW and ARS persuasion measures have been equated with higher sales and market share through third-party validation.

MSW●ARS has a roster of marquee clients representing virtually every product category, including: Consumer Packaged Goods, Retail, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Technology, Automotive, and Pharmaceutical industries.

MSW●ARS offers a product suite that evaluates, quantifies and optimizes the impact of advertising messages and campaigns comprised of any combination of touch points, including television, print, radio, outdoor and digital. MSW●ARS helps marketers build brands by providing world class research solutions in the following areas: brand strategy, all stages of creative development from early concept to fully finished ads, campaign evaluation across all marketing and media channels, advertising and brand equity tracking, media planning and strategy, return-on-investment, and forecasting. The company provides solutions and consulting to marketers across traditional and digital marketing including: media mix optimization, media budget allocation, media and message connection, channel selection, digital media and emerging platforms.

About MSW Research, Inc.
Since its beginning in 1968, MSW has focused on bringing research practices to marketers that consistently yield relevant consumer insights and drive business results. MSW is passionate about finding and implementing new techniques and technologies that help marketers build brands as new marketing challenges arise. They combine this science with experienced senior staff reflecting the firm’s belief that new tools and ideas are best implemented by experienced players. Their company tagline, “Brand Insights and Consulting”, reflects their unique approach.

About ARS
Since 1968, ARS has helped leading advertisers measure, forecast and optimize advertising messages. The company’s extensive knowledge base and proven models have been extended through innovative, scientific research-on-research to help many of the world’s leading advertisers. ARS’s digital age solutions are designed to evaluate and optimize campaigns comprising any combination of touch points. From strategy development, to all stages of creative development, to in-market tracking, ARS’s behavioral products are proven through independent audits to help marketers meet and exceed their business objectives.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in digital measurement and analytics, delivering insights on web, mobile and TV consumer behavior that enable clients to maximize the value of their digital investments.

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For further information, please contact:

Art Klein, Partner
MSW●ARS Research
General Phone: 516 394 6000
Direct Phone: 516 394 6025
Email: aklein@mswarsresearch.com

Robin Bowmer, Senior Vice President
MSW●ARS Research
Direct Phone: 812-759-2459
Email: rbowmer@mswarsresearch.com

Visit us on the web at www.mswarsresearch.com

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Here’s a blog posting that I wrote back in early 2010.  Not much has changed in the three years since writing this.  Advertisers are still struggling with digital measurement.

Originally posted April 13, 2010

Overall Click Through Rates [CTR] are well below 1%, so low in fact that ComScore frequently has to report CTR’s to the hundredth of a percent!  Furthermore, the people that do click are the wrong people.  Clicks are meaningless.  And yet advertisers are projected to spend $26 Billion this year online [including display, search, video, and other categories of online advertising].

Since the internet became a serious advertising medium, marketers have clung to CTR as THE metric.  It was presented to them as the holy grail of performance metrics.  Compared with traditional advertising, click throughs were a major breakthrough.  Advertisers could get reports on impressions [how many people saw their ads] and get reports on what they viewed as “ads that worked” [clicks].  These numbers were easily measured and easily reported.  But since the very first banner was delivered, the CTR has only moved in one direction – down.  So there’s good news and bad news: the good news is that although Click Through Rates are still declining, they’re beginning to stabilize.  The bad news is that they’re stabilizing at about 0% – AT ABOUT NOBOBY!  NOBODY CLICKS!  And even worse, among the very, very few that do click, conversions (those people that follow a click with a purchase, registration or some type of measurable commitment towards the brand) have declined at even greater rate than clicks – because the wrong people are clicking in the first place.

Very early on in the history of internet advertising, those people that sell online advertising realized that they didn’t in fact have the holy grail; they saw the data, they knew that clicks were only moving in one direction and that didn’t look good for them. So they tried to steer their customers away from clicks and towards “the branding” ability of online advertising to try and get the major players to commit ad dollars to their medium.

Whether it was their efforts to talk about “the branding” ability or some other reason, many brand marketers have agreed and committed to a presence; clearly online is an important medium. They are spending significant monies there and, more importantly, adjusted their expectations about the return on investment metric.  They have come to realize that CTR is not the holy grail it was first presented to be.  The problem is they still get those CTR reports and haven’t embraced a new measure.

Well the root of this dilemma is that traditionally, the more expensive the medium the more advertisers invest in advertising evaluation. Television is an expensive medium and so advertisers are willing to test their ads before airing them; billboards are relatively inexpensive and so advertisers do not invest the money to evaluate them.  Their thinking is, why evaluate a billboard ad for more than it costs to create it?  Online advertising falls in this category: inexpensive to produce so why should I test it?  Advertisers used to be able to conduct a quick two cell test of their banners and whichever one garnered the most clicks was the one they would launch.  Well, when you change the conversation from “CTR” to “branding” that doesn’t work.  It also doesn’t help that people aren’t clicking so there’s nothing to measure.

So what’s an advertiser to do in late 2012?

Many advertisers already get it about click rates but still using the wrong metrics.  Many have graduated from CTR to uniques and page views.  The problem with uniques and page views is that they’re media-buying effectiveness measures of reach and frequency, not advertising effectiveness measures.

Advertising is about more than that first step.  If it wasn’t, then when TV was invented it would have immediately been followed by the “IGOTSARTTSR” (“Immediately Get Off The Sofa And Run To The Store Rate”).

The CTR (Click Through Rate) is as irrelevant a measure for big brands as the IGOTSARTTSR.  It’s not the way advertising works; just because someone sitting at home on their sofa watching TV doesn’t immediately jump off the sofa after seeing your commercial doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

Let us help:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of your digital advertising with metrics that go beyond CTR.
• Evaluate how well your digital advertising is working with your traditional efforts.