The merits of starting early on anything are globally understood. And if you are an advertiser, you are likely to agree that early feedback on your campaign ideas can pay huge dividends. According to the latest Media Reactions report, 80% of marketers say that early-stage creative development research will lead to better campaigns.
Our data demonstrates that seeking consumer insight from the start of the creative development process can be a game changer. When one of our major clients fully committed to early idea development research, the proportion of their ads falling into the top quartile of Kantar’s LINK database doubled from 31% to 61%. And beyond measurable ad impact, there are a multitude of other nuanced benefits to building your campaign on an early consumer insights foundation.
Why don’t marketers always follow their instincts?
If the benefits are so evident, why don’t all brands consistently commit to early-stage creative development research? For many marketers, early-stage insight is synonymous with qualitative research. When you are developing a new campaign or exploring a new advertising positioning, you want a flexible, nurturing approach to refine your ideas. Brands typically start with numerous ideas and explore them iteratively to find the one that fits best with their brand and campaign objectives. This requires significant commitment, but research shows when brands utilise our early-stage qualitative approaches, it undoubtedly delivers better campaigns with a potential uplift of 25% in short-term sales likelihood.
The trade-offs of early-stage creative research
Despite concrete outcomes like this, many brands understandably also want the reassurance of quantifiable measurement of their idea’s potential. Traditionally the gold standard approach combines qualitative with quantitative research. This offers robust insights that allow brands to explore critical emotional responses to their creative ideas. However, this often means higher costs, lengthy timelines, and scalability issues. This represents a big dilemma between doing the due diligence upfront to select a route that is right for the brand or progressing quickly to ad production and therefore running the risk of investing time and money developing and launching a campaign that doesn’t deliver against key objectives. Even for marketers that understand the power of early insight, securing stakeholder buy-in for early-stage research can be just as challenging, leading to missed opportunities.
Rebalancing the equation
To solve this problem, we have expanded our LINK portfolio with brand new capabilities which are revolutionizing the way our clients conduct early-stage research. By seamlessly combining qualitative and quantitative, survey and AI, within the globally tried-and-tested LINK framework, advertisers get fast, powerful and scalable early ad insights without the drawbacks. You can flexibly screen and evaluate raw creative territories, initial campaign ideas, mood films and scripts using LINK+ consumer diagnostics. Or quickly assess simple text summaries of your potential ad ideas in as few as 15 minutes with LINK AI. At the heart of these innovations, lies a deep understanding of human emotions which ensures that creative content is meaningful and different enough to resonate powerfully wherever people see it.
Lower risk, higher reward
Tassal, a leading Australian seafood brand, is one of the early adopters of the new LINK early-stage capabilities. They wanted to drive new product perceptions and were faced with a choice between a tried-and-tested option or something bolder with higher potential. Without spending budget on production and using a combination of early qualitative, quantitative and AI-insights, they were able to confirm that the riskier option would resonate well with their target and effectively deliver the differentiation that was crucial for the success of their campaign.
Libby Williams, General Manager of Marketing and Innovation at Tassal reflected that using LINK’s early-stage capabilities allowed them to deep dive into their campaign ideas from the start of the creation process and she said, ‘This provided confidence and empowered us to optimize our ad scripts, maximizing the return on our creative investment’.
Supercharged efficiency on a global scale
Another global brand faced the challenge of developing a new campaign that would work across diverse markets while maintaining brand consistency. They utilized early-stage creative development capabilities to test multiple creative ideas across three continents, providing critical insights into which visuals resonated best in the different regions. These robust quantitative insights guided the subsequent qualitative deep dive towards the best concept, saving significant time and money. Since the findings are based on the robust LINK creative effectiveness philosophy, they are replicable, scalable and easier to communicate with stakeholders, facilitating buy-in and building a multi-year campaign much more easily.
Early ad insights without compromise
With robust early-stage creative tools now readily accessible, you can nurture your creativity without fear of crushing it before it has the chance to flourish. You don’t need to take a leap of faith with your campaign, you can quickly check, and course correct your ideas before jumping into production – all without the time and cost constraints usually associated with screening early ad ideas. If you are ready to join the early bird advertisers who are embracing the power of early insight to take their campaign ideas to new heights of creative effectiveness, the time to start is now. Maximize your campaign's impact by leveraging the power of LINK’s early insights on Kantar Marketplace and make strategic decisions that will land outstanding results.