When a campaign is running, its
impact is often monitored via a tracking study. Periodic sampling of the target
audience provides a time trend of measures of interest. The purpose is to
evaluate and reassess the advertising campaign and perhaps tracked are advertisement
awareness, awareness of elements of the advertisement, brand awareness, beliefs
about brand attributes, brand image ratings, occasions of use, and brand
preference. For durables such as cars, consumers are asked what brands they
would consider buying on their next purchase, and what brand they are most
likely to buy next. Of particular interest is knowing how the campaign is affecting the brand, as apposed to
how the advertisement is communicating.
Figure 11.4 shows tracking of an
advertising campaign directed at children for a beverage product. Personal
interview were held with children from six to twelve years old. They were shown
visual stimuli such as pictures of brand packaging or line drawing of
advertising characters. The interest was in the “main character,” who was the
personification of the brand and playback of the “Story” of the advertising,
the main creative element.
The successful campaign of year I
was expanded with additional executions which apparently did not have
comparable impact. The disappointing results of years 2 led to a fresh round of
copy development aimed at making it more “modern” and “relevant” for kids.
However, the decline continued in year 3. An analysis of verbatim playback
suggested that the main character’s actions were too predictable and new were
developed which placed it in a more heroic role, “rescuing” children in
adventurous situation. In year 4, the main character measure turned up. For the
next season, the campaign used situations from a child’s real life to attempt
to make the advertising more relevant. The result in year 5 was a dramatic
increase in recall of the central creative element and an important increase in
two other measures. The tracking program provided in this case actionable
information over time, allowing the advertising to be adjusted around the same
theme to become more effective.
The Eric Marder firm provides one
approach to obtaining tracking data without doing customized studies. They maintain a paned of 3,000 women from 1,000 areas. Each woman keeps a
record of all television commercial she sees in the course of one randomly
assigned day each month. Before watching television on her assigned day, she
records her buying intention for each product category. On the assigned day she
watches television normally except that she records the time, the channel, and
the brand advertised from every ad she sees, and her buying intention
immediately after exposure. The received message (RMs) are defined as
the total number of commercials recorded per 100 women. The persuasion rate
(PR) is defined as the net percent of the RM that produces a shift in
buying intention from some other brand to the advertised brand. Subscribers
obtain quarterly reports of the RM ad PR from all competing brands in the
product class.
