The first step for advertisers should always be getting in front of the target, but the ultimate objective must be to produce changes in attitudes and behaviors. While advertising needs to stand out and engage the viewer, it should be persuading them as well Do you want viewers to walk away thinking, “Wow, great ad!” or to walk away thinking, “Wow, I really want one of those!”?
Today’s advertising environment is more challenging than ever before. Not only are consumers bombarded with thousands of advertising messages a day, they also can engage in social media conversations with, and about, the brand. This presents challenges for advertisers to break through and persuade consumers, while keeping the brand’s voice and messages clear and consistent.
In this complicated world, the extent to which advertising is building your brand is much harder to measure than exposure opportunities. Advertisers in many product categories can analyze sales in relation to ad exposures and find meaningful connections that help to quantify the value of different ads in generating short term revenue. But that’s not enough for advertisers striving to build long term brand equity – not simply to evaluate their campaigns on the basis of short term sales effects. Even more challenges arise when advertisers try to understand and measure how all of the brand’s communication elements, including social media, work individually and together.
That’s where the longitudinal design comes in. Interviewing the same people at two points in time allows for isolating the changes in brand metrics that have occurred over time between those who have engaged with a campaign in-market versus the changes that have occurred during the same time period among those who haven’t engaged with the campaign. As such, you can isolate the impact of advertising as distinct from all other marketplace dynamics. The longitudinal design can be used to isolate not only the impact of a campaign, but the impact of individual elements, and combinations of elements within a multimedia or integrated marketing campaign.
Why is longitudinal design so powerful? Because it isolates how advertising builds brands. And, ultimately, if your advertising isn’t building your brand, you will lose out to brands who have effectively harnessed the power of advertising to strengthen their equities over time.
As an astute advertiser, it’s important to pay attention to exposure opportunities, evaluate your creative in terms of its ability to generate branded engagement, estimate the impact of individual ad elements on sales, and track overall changes that occur over time. But don’t forget to ask how your campaign is contributing to the health of your brand. Without longitudinal design research, you run the risk of eroding your brand without even knowing it’s happening. Until one day, you discover that you’re undifferentiated and having trouble achieving the “wow, I really want one of those!” response.
