Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I am assuming you are looking to build a brand through your advertisement and not look at it as a mere campaign. the difference lies for branding you always try establish your brand promise.

Consumer insight is the core understanding, which is deeper than mere observation based on which your entire brand should be built on. For example insight for The brand AXE is

Mating game is a preoccupation for young men. Feeling, looking and smelling good are essential to success.

As you can see the entire brand its communicaiton, activtity, pr is based on this one insight.

Once you have designed your brand based on the insight you should try to develop the Advertising idea first, which should help you to establish the insight and the brand promise.

Then you develop executional idea which is a single expression of your advertising idea.

Example for AXE: Advertising idea would be

women cant control their passion when some one is wearingAXE whoever it is

And based on that the Exectutional idea

: Women in lift cant resist the nerdy man because of scent lingering by previous occupant

All the best.

I suppose that the short answer is the one that matters most – statistically.

It doesn’t matter whether you use questionnaires or a focus group but you need to ask the potential customers a series of questions which will allow them to express an opinion on which characteristic of a product you are going to advertise is most important and is most striking to them.

The biggest challenge here is not the analysis but getting the questions right in the fist place. So, for example if it was a mobile phone aimed at women, if my daughter is anything to go by, the primary point of interest she would focus on would be that it was available in pink. Then the next point would be that it is the size of a postage stamp, and thirdly that it has a decent camera in it. Strangely enough its ability to make phone calls come down at about point of importance number 27 as this aspect is taken for granted.

The adverts or the campaign (Shariful! What’s all this about “Mere” campaigns as against brands – some successful campaigns last for longer than some brands these days!!!) will then focus primarily on the pinkness of the thing and secondly how it slips into her pocket followed by the photography aspect. Mentioned in passing will be the fact that there’s 4 hours of talk time and 67 hours standby battery life.

That’s how you use your insight research to craft the direction of advertising in my book.

Regards


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions