MAXIMISE YOUR CAMPAIGN’S EFFECTIVENESS BEFORE IT STARTS

As an OOH specialist, we get asked on creative best practice quite a lot, where brands face the challenge of connecting with consumers and landing their message in mere seconds. There’s quite a clear guideline for a good outdoor creative, and by and large, we’re all agreed on it – keep things simple, get attention to your branded assets, and connect with consumers in as few words as you can.

We say to focus on people because that’s where people look, to build trust and purpose into your messaging, to add monetary incentives where you can for the cost-conscious consumer. But realistically, even if you follow all these rules, your creative might not work. After eight years of creative testing at Talon, we’ve found that consumers only notice a brand logo 44% of the time – and that’s if it’s put right in front of them.

When we talk about an effective creative, we talk about it doing its job within two seconds. That’s a tall order, but it’s not impossible. But with creative agencies restricted by tight deadlines, and measurement confined by tight budgets, we’re seeing under-utilisation of a really important tool – pre-campaign testing. Brands need to ensure their creative can cut through the clutter so that valuable media spend is not wasted. So, when we talk about attention, we need to focus on what this means for the creative itself, maximising brand attribution, message comprehension, and fundamentally, the efficiency of ad spend.

This is why at Talon we have used a consistent creative testing methodology for several years. We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel, but rather take this tool and the extensive learnings we’ve built to new heights for our clients with an exciting relaunch.

Using four different metrics for attention (notice, lag, dwell and doubletake), and a benchmark database of over seven hundred creatives, we’re able to reliably dig into how your creative works, and how it can be optimised. And we do it quickly too, delivering results within two working days of receiving the creative.

Different clients are going to have different needs – where FMCG brands can hone in on their product easily, brand recognition is key, and we see logo benchmarks sitting higher at 50%. For finance brands, this means little without conveying brand purpose to consumers – but we see an average 0.6 seconds spent looking at ad messaging. Applying this to the dwell times of different formats and environments, and the needs of different categories and clients, means we can truly understand what an effective creative means. And fundamentally, we can do it before any money’s spent.

To learn more about TRAX or to test your creative, get in contact with effectivenessteam@talonooh.com