Live Issue... Is ad testing the great idea killer?

“Use a chimpanzee,” one guy said gravely. “Put an Apple logo on all the t-shirts,” suggested another.

Such insights formed the topline results of a focus group, in response to a storyboard for one of the most iconic TV commercials of all time, Apple’s ‘1984’. Fortunately for Apple and its customers, the focus group was conducted in 2006 as part of an ad agency’s exercise to poke fun at ad testing.

In reality, however, ad testing - dubbed ‘the idea killer’ by one creative - is no laughing matter
to marketers.

Just last month, Western Union delayed a decision to award its first global agency-of-record account - contested by Publicis Asia, McCann Erickson India and Leo Burnett Chicago - after focus groups drew inconclusive responses to the proposed ads.

FMCGs and technology companies are the biggest users of ad testing services, according to one research house, because the competitive nature of their industries makes it more important for their ads to stand out.

“We take ad testing results very seriously,” concedes Saurabh Dhote, regional brand manager of Procter & Gamble’s Tide. “You don’t want to spend the media money airing something that won’t be impactful or doesn’t help build business.” And such fears may be even more warranted now, as a global downturn forces marketers to do more with slimmer budgets.

Wee Kim Goh, associate creative director of McCann Erickson Singapore, agrees with Dhote’s ideal use for ad testing, but highlights the reality: “Ad testing should just serve to sniff out potential pitfalls in the ad,” he says. “But lazy marketers often use it as an excuse to run or not run the ad. That decision should be resolved between the agency and the client, not by the results of a focus group.”

But has a commercial really ever been improved by ad testing? Absolutely, says TNS account director, Anne Woodhams. “Every pre-test gives a little extra edge to maximise your media spend.”

Still, “ad agencies always come back to say pre-testing kills the great idea,” Woodhams says. Consider how ad testing is typically conducted. TNS offers an ad testing service called Ad Eval, where focus groups are recruited to analyse a client’s ad against several others in the same category.

After the showreel, audience members are prompted to discuss what they found interesting about all the ads and which brands they remembered seeing. After this comes a projection section, with questions tailored to trigger non-verbal cues and understand emotional responses to the ads.

Anant Deboor, Y&R Asia’s director of strategy, says ad testing is beneficial but that “the kind of research being done in Hong Kong is rubbish. In Hong Kong it is badly done. It is abused, misunderstood and misused. A lot of good creative goes down the drain.”

One reason is that the findings of focus groups present only “two per cent” of how viewers really respond to an ad. “In focus groups, everyone’s just trying to posture themselves in front of others. In real life, your response to advertising is done alone or with your family. The best way of learning I’ve found for storyboard interviewing is through one-on-one time with a consumer.”

Anant says researchers should change their methodologies to be less about asking for opinions and more about understanding motivations: “How people talk about ads is just one level of response. Most is subconscious.”