FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does advertising work?

2. Which is better: rational or emotion-based advertising?

3. Why is copy testing important?

4. If I test a TV commercial from my campaign should I also test my ads in other media?

5. What measures does G&R use to evaluate advertising performance?

6. Is Recall still important today?

7. What are the strengths and weaknesses of a post-only, pre-post and test-control design for measuring persuasion in copy testing?

8. How does G&R measure emotional response to advertising?

9. What is engagement?

10. When should I test copy in its intended media context?

11. When should I test my advertising online?

12. What does G&R do besides copy testing?

13. Why should I use G&R for communications research?

1. How does advertising work?

Books have been written and will continue to be written on this very subject. The answer is quite complex. Briefly, here are some of our thoughts.

For many decades linear models of information processing have been widely used to explain how advertising works. One of the most common, AIDA, posits that ads must first get attention (A), arouse interest (I), create desire to purchase (D) and then trigger purchase action (A). While this type of model has come to be regarded as an oversimplification, it continues to be useful in considering how advertising can work in driving consumers through the purchase “funnel” and in thinking about the communication components that an ad should usually address. 

Increasingly, though, information processing has been thought of as being non-linear. In many situations the logical “think-feel-do” sequence of AIDA is replaced by “feel-think-do” or even “do-think-feel”. Instead of gathering information, distilling it and making a decision, we learn about a product, try it and then form an opinion about it. Or we might just buy something on an “impulse”, consider how we felt about it and then form an opinion about it.

Additionally, researchers have recently re-discovered the importance of the subconscious or pre-conscious brain in processing advertising stimuli. Much of what we feel and think about is done at the subconscious level and at least some motivations/decisions are made without “rational” thought or at least cognitive awareness of that thought. This applies to all kinds of stimuli, including advertising. 

Related to this is the idea that advertising learning is not usually an intentional experience. It often comes incidentally in the context of low involvement. Sometimes we pay close attention to advertising, and sometimes advertising can compel our attention, but most of the time we don’t and it doesn’t. Yet, even at those times, measurable communication and processing can occur from the messaging to which we are exposed.  

How advertising works is also influenced by differences across people in how they process information. These differences include where they are in the purchase funnel, what their value and belief structures are about products, brands and advertising, how they make purchase decisions and how complex the competitive landscape is. 

It is likely that no one model can describe how all advertising works. Like all things that have to do with the human mind, the process is complex, evolving and, ultimately, still unknown. But multiple measures of branding and affect are giving us better and better understanding of the communications value of a commercial message and have demonstrated surprisingly robust predictive power.

2. Which is better: rational or emotion-based advertising?

Virtually all advertising contains both cognitive and emotional elements. The ratio between them in a particular ad can differ tremendously depending on the selling strategy, the creative approach and the product category involved. Ads for baby products may rely more on emotional appeals while ads for financial products tend to be more cognitive-based, for example. There is emerging agreement that the two systems are closely interrelated and should be mutually supportive.

Our own empirical studies have shown that cognitive and emotional messaging are both important and that superior advertising typically contains both rational and emotional elements. The relative weight of the two in a given execution should be determined by the advertiser’s strategic objectives and the creative tactics employed. Information alone can produce an emotional response and emotion alone can produce a cognitive response. G&R testing has demonstrated over the years that both approaches can be highly effective and they are most effective when they reinforce each other.

3. Why is copy testing important?

Businesses today routinely use performance measurement in order to optimize a brand’s value to consumers and drive their company’s growth. More than ever, managements require quantification of all aspects of the marketing process, from strategic planning to testing products and marcom elements to obtaining highly granular sales data. Virtually all major advertisers have one or more systems in place to measure elements of the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising. Without such measurement and the objective feedback it provides, success in today’s hyper-competitive and complex environment is a very hit-or-miss proposition.

In advertising, media options have now reached unprecedented levels of complexity. Advertisers face ever more daunting challenges just to reach their audiences as the costs for doing so increase like clockwork. But reaching audiences is only the beginning. Once advertising is delivered to the right “eyeballs”, it must break through all the clutter and engage the reader/viewer/listener in some capacity. The main lever that the advertiser has under its control for doing this is the quality of its messaging.

Copy testing is important because it measures advertising quality. An effective ad or commercial can deliver five or more times the sales volume of an ineffective one for the same product. No matter how effective the media delivery vehicles may be, without good copy a campaign will be under-optimized and even unproductive. The waste represented by running ineffective advertising can be avoided by copy testing to eliminate weak executions or point the way to their improvement.

4. If I test a TV commercial from my campaign should I also
    test my ads in other media?

People process advertising differently in different media. TV has the advantage of utilizing sight, sound and motion. It is literally “in your face” unless the viewer takes active steps to avoid it. Most magazine, radio and online advertising is less obviously intrusive, offers fewer sensory appeal options and requires different techniques than TV to be effective.

The very different dynamics between media make projections of copy test results from one medium to another highly unreliable. What works in TV may fall flat in magazines or radio. Brand managers often feel that if their TV commercial tests successfully they can simply translate its creative elements into a magazine ad without further testing. Our results demonstrate that this can be a serious oversimplification. High performing TV commercials can be rendered as below average print ads, and so on. When major investments are at stake or high risk/high visibility advertising is under consideration, messages should be tested in each medium in which you plan to make a major commitment.

5. What measures does G&R use to evaluate advertising
     performance?

Our principal evaluative metrics are recall, message communication, persuasion, engagement and ad liking, most of which were invented or pioneered by G&R. They have become widely accepted measures of an advertisement’s ability to break through clutter and be noticed, to get across its intended sales points, to persuade consumers to buy the advertised product, and to involve them with the brand and its advertising. In addition, we employ a number of diagnostic measures that are used to understand why an ad performed as it did on the evaluative questions. Taken together, these metrics give our clients a sound indication of their ad’s potential effectiveness and rich direction for improving it across the full communications dynamic.

We are confident in our measures because they have been shown to be related to sales in a number of different settings, both by us and by independent validation. Gallup & Robinson conducted the industry’s first full-scale validation study in 1964. Since then, numerous such studies have now been conducted, both internally, by other vendors, by the ARF and by major advertisers. They consistently have proven that G&R’s core measures of recall and persuasion are significantly correlated to sales performance, particularly when used together (i.e., recallers who are also persuaded are highly likely to purchase the advertised brand). The ARF’s Copy Research Validity Study also validated the ad liking measure as a strongly correlated to sales, although G&R’s work shows it to be less important than recall and persuasion.

6. Is Recall important today?

Advertising is now understood to be multi-dimensional in its effects on the human mind and so many measures can be important and we consider them together in evaluating an ad's performance. At one time time, however, companies considered one measure to be important and that measure was initially recall. Much criticism was rightfully leveled at recall when it was used in a single measure capacity and the residue from that criticism shadows perceptions about recall today. It has also made it the most analyzed and best vetted measure in copy testing. Today, recall's special contribution is that it investigates the areas of memory and branding. Every major validation study has demonstrated value of ad recall in predicting in-market success. The better view of recall is that it is not a sufficient measure of advertising effectiveness, but it is a unique, important and necessary one.

7. What are the strengths and weaknesses of a post-only,
     pre-post and test-control design for measuring persuasion
     in copy testing?

There are three main approaches for measuring copy persuasiveness. In the pre-post design, the respondent is asked about attitudes or dispositions towards the brand before being exposed to the ad stimulus and then again after being exposed to the stimulus. The difference in levels pre- and post-exposure is the measure of persuasion. In the exposed-unexposed design, persuasion measures are taken from a sample that has not been exposed to the advertising and from a matched sample that has been exposed. The difference in levels between the unexposed (control) and exposed (test) cells is the measure of persuasion. In the post-only design, attitudes are obtained after exposure and compared to norms based on results from previous studies of similar advertising.

Each of the approaches has its strengths and weaknesses. In the pre-post design, because the measurement is being taken among the same person before and after stimulus exposure, sampling error is low and so more powerful conclusions can be drawn from smaller differences. However, since persuasion is based on attitudinal measurement, asking the pre questions will often sensitize the person as to what is expected during stimulus exposure, thereby significantly biasing the post results. In the unexposed-exposed design, the sensitizing influence is avoided. However, it is often difficult to match samples. Even samples that seem similar demographically can have major differences attitudinally. In the post-only design, sensitization is avoided and there are no additional costs for the pre or control samples required for the other designs. However, there can be differences from study to study in sampling. The post-only approach was validated in the ARF’s Copy Research Validity Study as the most reliable persuasion design. For the above reasons, G&R recommends the post-only and test-control designs but offers all three design options depending on the communication objectives of the advertising.

8. How does G&R measure emotional response to advertising?

G&R employs a variety of conventional self-report measures of emotions-based response to advertising. In addition to batteries of scalar questions, we maintain a highly evolved capability for using, coding and interpreting non-directed, open-ended questions about thoughts and feelings. These approaches enable us to access how a person feels about an ad or commercial using the words and cognitive processes that we have all learned to use to express our feelings.

Emotions, however, go beyond cognition and words. So we also offer a unique and important physiological system to measure emotions-based response. Most conventional self-report systems are limited when the primary research questions involve emotional response. Simply, this is because, by its very nature, self-reporting requires that the respondent be able to remember and consciously express that response. Talking, writing, adjective checklists, smiley faces or dial turning all apply a cognitive filter to emotional response. Traditional physiological measures, such as galvanic skin response are not better. They detect some aspects of emotion, particularly arousal, but not its valence— positive and negative emotion is indistinguishable.

G&R offers a patent-pending physiological system that directly tracks both positive and negative response to advertising stimuli on a moment-by-moment basis. Our Continuous Emotional Response Analysis (CERA) service utilizes electromyography, a highly sensitive computerized measurement of minute facial movements elicited by exposure to kinetic stimuli. The CERA system has been evaluated in the AAAA-ARF Emotion in Advertising program and is a state-of-the-art technology that has been used successfully by major companies to track subconscious reactions to each moment and element of their advertising. 

9. What is engagement?

Engagement is a measurement concept that had some vogue in the 1970’s (when it was usually referred to as “involvement”) and has been receiving much renewed attention in the advertising world. The impetus is to push beyond such traditional measures as reach and frequency and perhaps purchase intent. The former have to do with the potential of consumer exposure to a marketing stimulus and the latter with but one out of an array of the possible outcome responses from exposure to an ad. While these dimensions are still important, there is some sense that different media and its messaging can lead to differences in the quality of the response that the exposure produces. For example, seeing the same message in an Internet context may lead to a different response than if it had been seen in a magazine context. The importance of this idea increases as the number, complexity and costs of media choices increase. 

Although there are a number of content-specific definitions of the term across the communications industry, engagement presently exists mainly as a concept. It has been framed by the Engagement Steering Committee of the AAAA, ANA and ARF as “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context”. Engagement is further conceived by the committee as “the product of a brand’s identity and the effectiveness with which a medium communicates that identity”. Regardless of the final definition accepted by the industry, it is clear that media can do more that just deliver “eyeballs” and that advertising can do more than just deliver purchase intent lift. G&R is one of the research companies that have been commissioned by the committee to help identify the metrics that best quantify engagement.

10. When should I test copy in its actual intended media context?

An axiom of copy testing is that “artificial exposure yields artificial results.” Our experience has shown it to be best practice that messaging be tested under conditions where the respondent’s level of attention and interest approximates what it will be when he or she naturally encounters the stimulus. Portfolios of other ads, either in hard copy or electronic form, do not provide the same results as when the ads are tested in the real-world context in which they will appear. An ad that is average or above average in a forced-exposure setting can perform considerably less well in a real-world setting. Our Impact services (InTeleTest for TV, MIRS or magazines, RIMS for radio and NIMS for newspapers) test ads in respondents’ homes (or offices if B2B) within current issues of the actual magazine, TV shows, radio shows or newspapers. Recall, or the ability of an advertisement to break through clutter and be noticed, is particularly influenced by where the ad is tested. Since “attentioning” is one of the key aspects of advertising performance, only by replicating a normal clutter environment and exposure context can we estimate in-market recall with a high level of accuracy. Advertising tests that are conducted in malls, online or within contrived media vehicles, cue respondents that they are participating in an ad test and distorts their responses.

11. When should I test my advertising online?

Testing advertising online among pre-recruited panel respondents who complete self-administered questionnaires is both less expensive and faster than traditional methods that use physical stimuli, scientific sampling procedures, in-home placement and personal telephone interviews. G&R's online WebCheck system has been designed to be a practical and attractive alternative to in-context and mall-intercept designs. When test objectives are specific – e.g., as a preliminary device for sorting through a number of options, as a “disaster check” to determine if a message is understood or an ad is liked, or when a client is facing serious time or budget constraints, while in-context testing is the research gold standard for questions about branding and “attentioning”, online testing permits the collection of meaningful data in areas such as communications, persuasion and ad reaction.

12. What does G&R do besides copy testing?

Copy testing is our major service but it is by no means our only one. We evaluate concepts, slogans and other marcom stimuli with our WebCheck and FasTrac services. We measure emotional response to television and radio advertising with CERA. We evaluate the overall effectiveness of campaigns on a short-term basis with Echo, on a long-term basis with C-Track and use Marcom 360 to decompose integrated campaigns by the ROI contribution of their individual marcom channels. We specialize in evaluating the potential of spokespersons by matching their profile with that of target consumers. We test the effectiveness of sponsorships, such as the Olympics, and have tested Super Bowl commercials over two decades. We take pride in developing responsive, value-added and cost-effective custom research solutions to difficult marketing communications issues. Approximately one-third of our business is on a totally custom basis.

G&R has long been a part of industry efforts to push the envelope in communications research. We are one of only two research vendors who have had its systems subjected to third party validation. We were the only supplier to sponsor the Advertising Research Foundation’s Copy Testing Validity Project. We are currently involved in several pioneering projects that promise to expand the industry’s understanding of how advertising and marcom channels work. As part of the AAAA-ARF Emotion in Advertising project, we are exploring how viewers react to different commercial stimuli at a subconscious level using our CERA system. We have been selected to help develop practical cross-channel measures of engagement as part of a joint initiative by the ARF, AAAA and ANA. Working with the Radio Advertising Bureau, we have recently conducted a groundbreaking study of emotional response to radio and television commercial stimuli.

13. Why should I use G&R for communications research?

Gallup & Robinson’s sole business since 1948 has been communications research. This focus translates to tangible benefits enjoyed by our clients: We have pioneered key proprietary techniques that have contributed to the soundness of our measures as validated and revalidated in numerous internal and external analyses. This gives our clients the assurance that our copy tests are reliable and valid predictors of real-world performance. Over the course of 250,000 tests of ads and commercials we have empirically isolated numerous executional success factors that help us guide clients in enhancing their advertising’s performance.   We have a comprehensive toolkit of services to support and guide clients at any stage of the communications development process, from concepts to in-market campaigns, both cognitively and emotionally.  More than any other research firm, we offer a uniquely valuable balance of fact-based learning, measurement innovation, research execution excellence and client-centric servicing to help you improve the effectiveness of your advertising.