Proven Techniques for Effective Digital Creative - Part 1 of 5: Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks

Technique #1: Include traditional branding elements in your digital executions (AKA Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks)
Based on years of research in the traditional media space, we know that the inclusion of key branding elements – such as brand differentiating key messaging, new product/feature information, convenience demonstrations, competitive comparisons, superiority claims and explicit value statements – helps to increase the likelihood of the ad to drive sales. But can these same approaches be effective for digital creative?

A recently released analysis by Comscore and dunnhumbyUSA reported that five out of every six online ad campaigns we analyzed showed a positive lift in offline sales and a median lift of 21 percent. These findings were based on matched comparisons of the offline buying of households exposed to the advertising versus households who were not exposed.

As an extension to this analysis, we coded the presence of the above mentioned branding elements in the creative used in the campaigns. A clear pattern emerged. The campaigns that garnered the highest offline sales lift used these traditional branding elements at a substantially higher rate than the ads with the lowest sales lift (64% vs. 25%). Even more striking, of the 17 percent of campaigns that exhibited no offline sales lift, not a single one utilized any of the branding elements. This strongly suggests that the increased use of traditional branding elements in digital advertising will significantly improve the odds (and magnitude!) of offline sales lifts.

Problem solved, right? Well, there are still two major obstacles to overcome. The first is that it isn’t always possible to effectively include some of these branding elements in digital advertising. Typical display advertising, for example, often doesn’t provide the same “real estate” as full-page print ads or the same exclusivity of temporal attention as television ads. This is certainly one reason why we have seen a much lower percentage of ads containing key branding elements in digital advertising compared to TV and print advertising (see below chart).

Interestingly, however, many new digital ad formats are helping to overcome this hurdle. Good examples are AOL’s Project Devil, a large format premium ad unit with interactive panels, and Expo Communications’ user generated video reviews, full-motion, full audio alternative to text-based feedback. Additionally, creative agencies are becoming very adept at incorporating key branding elements into even the most basic of display ad formats. At the end of this post are images drawn from some recent, strong examples of this evolving ‘minimalist’ art.

The second obstacle to incorporating traditional branding content is the fact that its presence alone cannot ensure success. This inherently means that not only should brands experiment with several iterations of an ad pre-launch, but they should also invest in creative pre-testing. Testing has proven that even the most minor changes in how the branding message is delivered – in both traditional and digital formats – can have a major impact on advertising performance, and certain selling propositions can defy classical classification and still be highly effective.

I’ll conclude with one of the most popular quotes from the “Father of Advertising,” Mr. David Ogilvy, “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is test. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” Even today, in a world where advertising has fragmented across platforms, his wisdom shines through. Marketers who place value in pre-testing have been able to truly leverage the power of digital as a branding medium that not only lifts sales online, but also in offline stores

Check back soon for my next post in this series, and feel free to send comments or questions to ffindley@comscore.com.

Examples of Traditional Branding Content in Display Advertising

Brand Differentiating Messaging

New Product/Feature Information

Convenience Demonstration

Competitive Comparison

Superiority Claim