Advertisements are a powerful tool of branding only when your consumer and
target audience can decipher it in one go; or whether it resulted in an interesting
discussion with your family and friends, inducing a prolonged dialogue over social
media, accompanied with lots of tags and formal/informal analysis credited to it.
An ad represents the brand in its actual context and what it stands for. Quirky and
queer or serious and earnest, a brand can stand out with the way they decide on
their ads – the message, content, AV used, faces used – cartoon characters or real
life people – models or general public and much more.
Advertising market research is a form of research concentrated on advertising
campaigns, identifying the most effective ads and whether something about the ad
drives consumers to eventually purchase their brands and products or services.
The process of identifying the most unique ad bit requires deep analysis of not only
the pre and post campaign scrutiny but also while the ad is running or being aired,
i.e. the stir caused during the initial launch of the ad, or while it’s campaigning
resulted in the topmost TRPs, or whether it created the right buzz, and so on and
so forth.
So, as promised, we are bringing an interesting quick breakdown of an important
Ad-Test case study without divulging the critical client information for you all. The
global 2-wheeler manufacturer wanted to understand the efficacy of their brand
ad in India and thus we carried out operations in multiple states across the
country, dividing the country into multiple zones – in order to cover a large part of
the audience – diverse demographics, age and gender brackets and much more.
The best part about a research is you get to view so many interesting insights from
either customers during a B2C survey, businesses during a B2B discussion or
governments while catering to a B2G POV. Our survey was targeted towards
consumers which are the end users or influencers of purchase. We shall discuss
about the role of influencers in our next bit for sure. You will be surprised to see
their impact in our lives!
We analyze group discussions, psychographic surveys and demographic perspectives
to reach to conclusions and recommendations. The segment of the advertisement
which garnered the best expressions on your face – frequency wise and depth wise,
the worst dialogues or bits where you seemed bored or wanted to just finish of the
survey, the colors which caught your attention, the words which you focused more
on or mentioned while we asked critical questions – all connected to where you

live, what is your age or gender and what is your social circle, instances about your
personality and much more!
The incredible part was the end result where 25% of the people resonated with the
ad – identified the brand almost quickly, understood where the brand came from
and felt really connected with the story line, while 35% felt it did not move them
much in spite of the brand knowledge, and the remaining 40% despite getting
moved by the ad did not find out the basic industry or brand being displayed in the
ad till the very end. So, here our motive was to understand the positives from that
25% bracket, identify the loopholes from those who had fallen under 35% bracket
and to drive and extract more and more insights from those 40% who were in the
favour of the brand but did not know where to align their belief system in.
So my best discussions as a market researcher was with those 40% – who wanted to
like the brand because their loyalty/ social influence/ usage patterns lie with the
brand but at the same time they wanted to understand that if they knew the brand
from the onset of the ad, would it have made a larger impact on their minds or
not.
Eventually the stalwart brand discontinued the ad after running it for less time
than it was scheduled for. Because you see, in a digital world, you do not know
what you like or dislike, because we all know that some of the ads are deliberately
fed in our feeds despite we wanting to see them or not – eventually getting some
of us inclined to visit a particular website or even purchase a product/service. But
in a physical world, where you are actually talking to people, and trying to
understand your own likes and dislikes, the thin line that you are looking for – is
connection. To the Brand that represents you in your friend circle. To the products
that describe you when your family orders something for you. To the services your
credit card automatically debits money into. To yourself, and to what you want to
stand for today.
Hope this read gave you something to think for! Have a great week ahead guys,
and refer people to do market research for better understanding of their agenda –
For it is the most important service to be on everyone’s radar.