Diving Deep on Creative Development

Challenge

John St. is one of the top advertising agencies in Canada, and they work with a wide variety of clients. A key service they offer is creating brand messaging that will resonate with each individual client’s audience. To support this, a core function of their research team is to help the account teams understand which messaging is most meaningful and relevant for their client’s target audience.

When evaluating different possible campaign directions, the research team adds value by not only identifying which idea is the “winner” but by providing insights on why and how best to optimize it.

To do this, they need qualitative research as much as quantitative – and they need it quickly and within budget.

They need qualitative research as much as quantitative – and they need it quickly and within budget.

The time challenge is a constant for creative teams, and if the research can’t be completed quickly, it is of little value. In this particular case, John St. was developing new brand positioning to rejuvenate an alcohol brand. The team had developed four different territories and wanted to get feedback from category consumers about which one resonated most, and why. With this information, they could begin creative development with a solid strategy in place.

Solution

Methodify by Delvinia has been working with John St. for a long time, providing their research team with the ability to get their account teams the information they need to optimize creativity quickly and efficiently. In this case, they wanted to go deeper and reached out to see if we could help them incorporate a qualitative component into their research project.

The answer was simple: incorporate CRIS by Delvinia, our AI-enabled virtual moderator, with a quantitative study. This combination allowed John St. to use an agile approach when testing the territories.

The process is simple:

1. John St. ran Methodify’s sequential monadic concept test with a qual boost by CRIS. This gave them quant findings and detailed qualitative feedback on each of the territories. Here’s how it works:

• Targeted category users evaluated the territories, which were presented as narrated PowerPoint slides. These were early-stage ideas that included a description and some images that represented the idea.
• Immediately after respondents evaluated the territories quantitatively, a selection of them were chosen to participate in an AI-enabled text-based chat with CRIS. CRIS did a deep dive into the idea that each selected participant liked most to find out what about it resonated with them, how it made them feel about the brand and the reasons that they liked it best.
• Three days later, as soon as field ended, the researchers at John St. got both a quantitative report and an automated qualitative report that included a sentiment analysis and an AI-derived text summarization of the findings on each idea.

2. The research team presented the findings and recommendations to the account team, and they immediately began work to incorporate the feedback and update the ideas.

3. Two weeks later, they ran a quick quantitative test, which determined the idea they took to the next stage of creative development.

Outcome

By using CRIS as a qual-boost with one of Methodify’s quant methods, John St. was able to quickly and cost-effectively gather all the information they needed. The research was easy to set up, and the results were displayed clearly in the reporting, making the analysis simpler. Armed with this data, they could determine a clear direction to build creative that both their team and the brand had confidence in.

The research was easy to set up, and the results were displayed clearly in the reporting, making analysis simpler. Armed with this data, they could determine a clear direction to build creative that both their team and the brand had confidence in.

The team will now develop creative options against the winning territory. Once they are prepared, they will use Methodify again to test those ideas and make informed decisions on which to pursue based on robust and high-quality data.

Header Image: Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash