Advertising is one of the biggest discretionary investments that most brands make. Most advertising seeks to generate sales in the short term, long term, or both. Marketers are doing this with very little time, limited budgets and the need to be channel-flexible or agnostic, all while trying to please multiple stakeholders. It costs the same to launch an effective campaign as an ineffective one. Spending time and money on developing weak copy represents poor return on investment which leads to disappointing results and frustration in the marketing team. The challenge for advertisers is to maximize advertising ROI while minimizing frustration and disappointment. Investing in research at key points in the creative development process can save time and money and achieve maximum potential, lowering the overall investment and increasing ROI. MAXIMUM RETURN, MINIMUM FRUSTRATION The Creative Challenge CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS Our Creative Development Programs offer a suite of solutions to guide the entire creative development process—from developing the most compelling message—to creating or nurturing the communications idea that brings your brand’s message to life—to optimizing the executions you invest in. Our solutions have been developed to answer key business questions at each stage of the creative development process and are extensively validated to maximize both the short- and long- term potential of your advertising. Our proven expertise is built on validated metrics to understand the immediate and long term effects of advertising, meticulously developed measures of emotions (both implicit and explicit), the largest advertising database and over 40 years of experience in creative development research. Delivering ROI HOW DO I GET MY EXECUTIONAL IDEAS OFF ON THE RIGHT PATH? Feedback early in the executional development process can save considerable time and money; knowing at an early stage which executional ideas have the most potential avoids wasting time and money on developing, testing, producing or airing under-performing ads. Pre-Link is a qualitative technique that applies Millward Brown’s Link copy-testing framework for ad evaluation early in the creative development process – as soon as executional ideas are available. It combines group discussions with individual responses to gauge potential and identify the best executional idea(s) to take forward (or provide an early warning signal if none of the executional ideas deliver against key success criteria). In addition, Pre-Link provides guidance on how to maximize the winning executional idea before creating unfinished or finished executions. Pre-Link HOW ARE PEOPLE INTERPRETING MY AD AND WHY? When testing ads, it is valuable to understand in great depth what consumers are thinking and feeling in response to your advertising and why, to ensure the success of your campaign. Zoom is a qualitative solution that assesses advertising to understand in great depth the effect it is having and why, to guide optimization. Specially constructed depth interviews, with a stream of consciousness flow, mimic how people consume advertising in the real world, giving you a more accurate view of how the creative is performing. Zoom findings deepen and enrich Link findings because they are excellent at eliciting the ‘why’ behind the findings, offering the best possible optimization guidance. Zoom HOW CAN I PREDICT THE STRENGTH OF MY CREATIVE AND OPTIMIZE IT? Once your ad is made, you have to make sure it is as effective as possible so that you get the most from your investment. Link is our market-leading copytesting solution that assesses executions, prior to launch, to predict and optimize performance. It tells you how well your advertising is doing against your objectives and success criteria, and the reasons why, so you can make it as strong as possible to achieve greater sales in the short and long- term. Link is the most widely used copytesting solution in the world, meaning we have researched the most ads for the most brands in the most categories and countries. Having conducted more than 107,000 Link projects, the Link database spans 92 countries and ensures cultural differences are taken into account, so that comparisons across countries identify genuine differences. Evidence shows that ads which perform well in Link are much more likely to generate a significant sales uplift than poor performers. Likelihood of the ad generating significant sales effects Link for TV studies conducted in major markets Link™ CHAMPIONS OF CREATIVE We believe research is only valuable if the team developing the advertising understands, believes in, and is motivated to act upon, the results. That’s why one Millward Brown team will work with you on your Creative Development Program to ensure they really understand your business and needs, helping you achieve your brand goals. Our people always ensure sensitive interpretation and delivery of results and recommendations that lead to action. Our global presence means we understand the local advertising context enabling us to more effectively evaluate and provide recommendations to strengthen your advertising. Our philosophy and approach is truly global meaning you can be confident that our findings and recommendations will help lead to the strongest possible advertising that delivers the best ROI. Our people DEVELOPING WINNING ADVERTISING TO GROW YOUR BRAND Creative Development Programs WHAT’S THE MOST POWERFUL MESSAGE FOR ME TO CONVEY IN MY COMMUNICATIONS? Getting your message right in communications is important. If engineered well, messages build brand associations that create meaningful difference. We know from our vast brand equity experience that meaningfully different brands grow faster than others. Message leverages our understanding of how advertising works, gained from empirical observation and neuroscience, to determine which message(s) will truly resonate with consumers. The solution’s evaluative part ensures marketers ‘land’ on the right message and its diagnostic part understanding of why, which enables the language of the message to be optimized in communications. Message HOW DO I GET A QUICK VIEW ON WHETHER MY AD WILL WORK OR NOT? It’s essential to make sure that your advertising is strong enough to air. LinkExpress is a leaner, purely evaluative version of Link that provides a fast view on an ad’s likely effectiveness in market. Like Link, LinkExpress measures what has been proven to matter most in creating effective advertising. The award winning system provides results in an easy to interpret, interactive dashboard, with metrics proven to relate to sales and brand building. LinkExpress is ideal for situations such as choosing which ad to air, checking if an ad will work in another country, checking changes made since Link have been effective, and evaluating competitor ads. LinkExpress™ MESSAGE IDeA PRE-LINK LINK ZOOM MESSAGE IDEA EXECUTION 3,166 2,272 3,437 19,690 11,073 6,463 3,019 3,045 8,563 3,023 3,407 REC Expression aggregation & analysis Facial features identified Facial expression recognition Panelist turns on webcam Unobtrusive, in situ measurement of viewers’ emotional responses via automated facial analysis Emotions experienced THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE MEASUREMENT OF EMOTIONS Maximizing emotional engagement and response to advertising is critical since consumers’ feelings are such a powerful driver in their decision making process. Therefore, emotional measurement is a core part of all our Creative Development Program solutions. Emotional measures are embedded in our long-standing survey metrics, and through our dedicated practice we are the world’s largest provider of consumer neuroscience. These methods include reaction-times for the emotional impact of ideas and advertising, and measurement of the intuitive communication from campaigns, versus more rationalized responses. In addition, for TV ads, facial coding is a core part of Link, providing unrivalled implicit measurement and giving deeper insights into how consumers process ads to aid optimization. The approach* records people’s facial expressions via webcam while they view the ad, and automatically analyzes their emotional responses, making it scalable and cost effective. Emotions *delivered through our technology partner, Affectiva WHICH COMMUNICATIONS IDEAS WILL BRING MY BRAND MESSAGE TO LIFE? A strong campaign idea provides the base for content to be developed across channels, countries and over time, to build a strong and meaningfully different brand. In an increasingly fragmented marketplace, it takes an incredible idea to break through the clutter and capture the consumer’s heart and mind. IDeA consists of three modular, integrated qualitative and quantitative stages that help you find the most compelling way of bringing your message to life in the form of a truly winning idea. It increases the likelihood that final ads retain and exploit what makes that idea strong. Qualitative techniques are used to inspire and develop big ideas first ensuring ideas have an opportunity to flourish before a quantitative assessment validates the strength of the idea. Our analysis shows that results for executions which were built from campaign ideas we researched, are stronger than those for executions not previously researched. IDeA Likelihood of the short term sales shares rise for brands 70% 58% Link for ads with early screening All Link results Grew by >1% Grew by >0.1 and <1% Saw no sales change Declined LOW MEDIUM HIGH 39 37 10 14 23 31 17 29 10 18 27 45