Final Project – schedule & resources

You will find a work schedule for the final project posted to the 2nd page of this blog.

Click on the ‘Media Resources’ page tab and click through the links under ‘Final Project’.

Handouts will also be available in class.

Using the COMMAP model to generate audience insights

Last week, we took a look at the concept of ‘ad-liking’ and saw that an effective ad has a healthy dose of ‘ad-liking’ in it. The Creative’s job is to produce likable advertising, right?

Yes, but it’s not so simple to figure out what makes an ad likable. You can’t simply ask people, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning you want to marry it and 1 meaning you want to burn it, rate how much you like this.” There are several reasons why measuring ad-liking is harder than that.

One of the biggest reasons is reliability. Reliability is a stastistical term. Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure, like the question you asked above. A question is considered reliable if we ask it of the same person many times, and get the same result repeatedly.

To see how this works, imagine that you show a particular ad or concept to a friend, and ask the question as it worded above, on the day that friend fails a test or bombs a job interview. A week later, you interview the same friend, with the same ad or concept and question, on the day she wins the President’s Choice Award and gets a raise at work.

Since you know how the brain works, you’re aware that her incidental emotional state may infleunce her response, as much an any quality of the ad or concept itself. When the emotional conditions change, she may give you a different answer.

So, a single “love it or hate it?” question won’t give you the best data because of reliability issues. How do you improve the reliability in your research? You can interview your friend dozens of times with the same ad or concept and question. Maybe, eventually, one score will will dominate the others.

Another way to improve your data is to develop a set of questions that all measure different dimensions of the same quality (in this case, ad-liking), and correlate your friend’s responses to the entire set. If you are good at question development and you have a grasp of statistical techniques, you won’t have to re-interview your friend a dozen times to find out what she really thinks.

Fortunately, you don’t need those skills because du Pleiss, Professor Mary Jane Schlinger and the Leo Burnett agency did it for you (du Pleiss 151). They did research to find the 32 different statements that describe the ways that people respond to ads and then used factor analysis (a statistical technique) to group these 32 items into seven dimensions.

Refer to pages 151-154 in our text to see how the 32 items are mapped onto the seven dimensions of the COMMAP model.

How does this model help you to develop effective advertising? You can use it to test your ad or concept, and you can use it to generate audience insights.

Your creative teams will use the model the second way, by attempting to answer these questions about about your target audience before you begin concept development.

1. What do they like to watch and listen to? What do they think is funny? These questions get at the entertainment items in the COMMAP model.
2. What reminds them of their disatisfaction with their current product? What reminds them of their unmet needs? These questions get at the relevant news items in the COMMAP model.
3. What category experiences are stored in their memories? How do they feel about their needs and the products in the category? These questions get at the empathy items in the COMMAP model.
4. Are they visually sophisticated? For example, will they understand visual metaphor? How much sensory stimulation can they handle? These questions get at the confusion dimension of the COMMAP model.
5. What ideas and techniques are they used to seeing in advertising? This question gets at the familiarity dimension of the COMMAP model.
6. What do they think they know about the product? What is their current perception of the brand? These questions get at the alienation dimension of the COMMAP model.

The last COMMAP dimension is brand reinforcement. This term is related to the concept of brand linkage, which is the subject of chapter 17. Here’s one more important research finding – a large proportion of brand associations tend to be associated in the consumer’s mind to the entire category.

This means your friend may like your concept or ad because it reminds her of something she already knows, feels and believes about competitors’ brands!

THE ASSIGNMENT –

Prepare to defend your creative concepts by developing insights about your target audience. Use the questions listed above, and other questions that you develop from the seven COMMAP dimensions.

In weeks 8 and 9, all creative teams will deliver a 3-minute “Insights Update” to the entire class. The goal of your presentation is to share the data that you’re collecting and your team’s analysis. In other words, we want to hear ‘what’ new information you have found and ‘so what’ does this information say about the audience’s memories, attitudes and perceptions? You will earn 5 points each time this presentation includes new information and/or insights.

A final Audience Insights Report will be due Thursday, December 10 (week 10). We will discuss the requirements for this report in week 9.

This week (7), every creative team will bring a summary of their brief to class. The summary restates the problem in team’s words and lists the essential elements in the brief. This summary should be no more than one half page long. The class will use this summary to form feedback on your presentations.

The summary is worth 10 points. I need just one summary per creative team. It is due before the beginning of class Thursday, November 19th.

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If you want to know more about the professional who is responsible for collecting and analyzing consumer data, check out this Account Planner job description from Leo Burnett.