Pre-testing magazine ad creative work

The need for pre-testing

The creative work is key: successful advertising depends upon executions which are effective for the campaign’s objectives. Advertisers have every reason for wanting to ensure that their ads communicate what is intended. Magazine publishers too must be concerned with the quality of the ads they carry. If a magazine advertisement is not very effective because of the creative work, it reduces the chance of that magazine and indeed any magazine winning advertising from that client in the future.

Assuming that the marketing objectives, and the communications strategy for achieving these objectives, have been determined, some form of pre-testing of the creative content is desirable - even if only through small-scale qualitative research which checks whether the ad does in fact convey what it is intended to communicate. Any execution which does not perform sufficiently well can be revised, and the pre-test can suggest how it might be improved.

The majority of television commercials are pre-tested before they go on air. Many fail at that point and so it’s back to the drawing board, until a creative approach and treatment emerges which performs well in pre-test.

Some magazine advertisements are also pre-tested but it is only about half the proportion. A study called “The Pre-Testing of Magazine Ads”, commissioned by PPA and conducted by the HPI Research Group [69], revealed that about 60% of TV commercials are tested qualitatively and about 30% are tested quantitatively. By contrast, only about 30% of magazine campaigns are tested qualitatively and about 15% are tested quantitatively.

The study also showed that the prime reason for doing pre-tests in either medium is to provide diagnostic information to improve the creative executions. A secondary reason is to help with the decision on whether the campaign should run at all.

Undoubtedly the effectiveness of magazine advertising could be made even greater than it is if a higher proportion of the ads were tested to ensure they communicate what is intended.

Agency creative people may be confident that a particular ad they have devised will be effective without it needing to be pre-tested. But Gordon and Swan [43] wrote: “Unlike TV ads which have a set sequence of exposure - a beginning, middle and end - which is always constant in order, creators of press ads cannot control the sequence of reading the ad, nor how long the reader will devote to it.

Years of experience in researching press ads point to the fact that creatives nearly always assume that the ad will (a) be noticeable (impactful) because of the creative treatment, and (b) will be comprehensible because of the juxtaposition of headline, visual, copy and so on. Very often this is simply not true.” Hence the need for pre-testing. It is an important step in giving oneself the best chance of maximising the effectiveness of the campaign. The potential payback (in terms of communication gain) can far outstrip the cost of the pre-test.

For campaigns where magazines are to be used in conjunction with television, it makes sense to pre-test not only the proposed advertisements for each medium individually, but also to test them jointly to see how they interact with each other in providing enhanced communication.

For a discussion of methods of pre-testing magazine advertisements, see my PPA report “Magazine Advertising Effectiveness”, written in 2000 [70].

Initial guidelines for creating effective magazine advertisements

Some guidelines for making an effective magazine ad were published by Millward Brown as part of IPC Magazines’ “Ad Track” project [44]. These arose from background work conducted when developing Millward Brown’s PrintLink pre-test technique, and from hall tests used for assessing the creative execution of more than 20 magazine advertisements covered by the Ad Track survey.

The guidelines start from the proposition that magazines undergo an active reading process, where the reader is in control of what is read. The reader is in effect his or her own editor, scanning the pages to see what is of interest and editing out items that do not strike any chord.

Therefore an advertisement requires something to hook readers in during the initial rapid scanning process. As they scan readers are subconsciously asking themselves “Is this interesting to me? Is it eye-catching? Is it intriguing? Is it relevant?” The main scanning criterion appears to be ‘interest’. This could be interest in the product field, or in the product itself. Or it could be interest in something else in the ad.

Millward Brown point out that for a high interest product field or brand the reader is already over the first hurdle. For a lower interest product the ad needs to draw people in through creative involvement (some eye-catching and intriguing creative device), or by associating the brand with something which is of interest to the reader. For a food product this could be a recipe for instance.

So magazine advertising is fine for low interest products as well as high interest products, but the creative work has to be more imaginative in order to bring about the readers’ involvement.

The “Youth Facts 4” survey [17] also had something to say on this subject. In grabbing attention, ‘new’, ‘different’ or intriguing images held the most appeal for teenagers. When the teenager goes on to probe for something of interest, if the product itself is not thought relevant then entertainment value will do the job. Entertainment is in itself a sufficient reward for the teenager’s investment of time in studying an ad. Having thus become involved in the ad the reader is in a position to digest more detailed information, but the details still need to prove rewarding.

Youth Facts tested 18 advertisements quantitatively and a larger selection qualitatively. This led to a general prescription for creating advertising that appeals to teenagers. EMAP called it The Teen Commandments:

1. Don’t let them get bored - vary the executions
2. Be creative and novel
3. Tailor the campaign
4. Keep up with the times
5. Keep it simple
6. Make it fun
7. Don’t be condescending
8. Make sure free gifts are worth having
9. Use bold colours
10. Don’t use teenage clichés

Similar principles, with some adaptation, would apply to other kinds of magazine, but what is unique is the particular form of these Teen Commandments in order to appeal to the teenage market. It’s an illustration of one of the advantages of magazines: provided an advertiser uses a suitable interpretation of the campaign, a given type of magazine offers a very special way in to its particular audience.

Youth Facts 4 and Ad Track have clearly demonstrated the active nature of a reader’s involvement with an ad, a great strength of the medium. It means readers can take out of an ad everything they wish, for as long as they wish - provided the creative execution persuades them into it. Pre-testing is the way to ensure that it does.