Creative Best Practices Handbook: Best Practices From Marketing Effectiveness Leaders And Advertising Measurement Firms
Click here to view an 11-minute video of the key findings.
Click here to download a PDF of the handbook.
The Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® has tested hundreds of audio ads over the years working with the leading experts in creative testing: ABX, Veritonic, and System1.
The findings from those tests, along with marketing effectiveness and creative strategy work from industry giants like Les Binet, Peter Field, Alice Sylvester, Byron Sharp, Leslie Wood, Paul Feldwick, Jenni Romaniuk, Andrew Tindall, and Orlando Wood, have been combined to form Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®’s comprehensive Audio Creative Best Practices.
Now these best practices have been distilled and summarized in a Creative Best Practices Handbook. Click here to download.
Creative is a major sales driver
A major Nielsen study of sales drivers from ~450 campaigns across all media reveals creative represents 49% of sales.
Strong creative = better ad recall
IPSOS ASI reveals the better the creative, the stronger the “break through,” the ability for a brand or message to be recalled.
Creative is vital to building attention
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Adelaide, the leader in attention measurement, define the three phases of the attention pathway: get noticed, hold attention, and impact memory. High quality creative has a strong impact on holding attention and creating memories.
Beware the cost of dull
Boring ads cost a fortune. A major new study by creative testing giant System1, Peter Field, the legendary “godfather of marketing effectiveness,” the IPA (The Institute for Practitioners in Advertising), and Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish., reveals brands have to spend significantly more media money on dull ads compared to interesting, non-dull ads. Download the study via this link.
According to the report: “An important finding: higher Neutrality only really has an impact on positive emotions – Happiness and Surprise. The level of negative emotion, including Anger, Contempt, Disgust, stays constant. So, playing safe is a poor strategy. On average, all ads, whatever their Neutrality level, generate some negative feeling. You can’t avoid it, and if you try, you risk increasing Neutral response and killing off positive emotion.”
Creative consistency drives business outcomes
“The Magic of Compound Creativity,” a new study from creative testing giant System1 and the IPA (The Institute for Practitioners in Advertising) found brands that have consistent creative foundations, a culture of consistency, and consistent executions generate much stronger creative test scores, brand performance, and business outcomes.
Download the study via this link.
The greater the creative consistency, the better the ads test. Longer creative agency relationships result in greater creative effectiveness.
Creative consistency means stronger brands
Consistent, unified creative across media delivers greater brand equity impact
Kantar Millward Brown reveals campaigns with unified messaging, consistent creative elements, and consistent distinctive assets generate far greater brand equity impact.
Brand early and often
In audio ads, the brand should appear within the first two seconds and five times after that in a :30 second ad.
Say your brand slowly and clearly
Whether host read or pre-recorded, take great care to say the name of the brand slowly and clearly.
Fewer words mean greater standout and site traffic
Eliminate ten words from the ad and creative standout improves by 1%. Each point of standout improvement generates a .25% increase in website response rate.
The fewer the messages, the greater the recall
Kantar Millward Brown, a leader in creative effectiveness measurement, finds the fewer the messages an ad communicates, the greater the likelihood a single message can be recalled. Conversely, more messages causes recall to plunge.
Say one thing
Christopher Smith, Principal and Chief Creative Officer at Plot Twist Creativity Dallas, says, “A lot of advertisers think that because radio affords you sixty or thirty seconds, they have the time to say everything there is to say about their brand. It’s why so many commercials end up sounding like laundry lists. The truth is, if you want to talk about everything, then you really have nothing to talk about.
In advertising, you need to have one thing to say. AM/FM radio’s sixty seconds of ad time just gives you the chance to say it in an entertaining and memorable way.
A radio spot is not a hotel: You don’t have to fill all the space
Advertisers think they have to take the amount of time they have and fill it up with words or music. Many forget that silence is a storytelling element, too. Every second of an ad doesn’t have to be filled. No commercial needs to be wall-to-wall talking, sound effects, or music. Sometimes silence draws people in more.”
Ensure audibility
ABX, a leader in creative testing, has tested thousands of audio ads. They test ads for being clear, understood, and for message delivery.
Ensure your ads are not rushed. Speaking voices should be foreground and not overwhelmed by music and background effects.
Emotion is your best selling tool
Research conducted by the “godfathers of marketing effectiveness” Les Binet and Peter Field reveals emotion-based campaigns drive stronger brand equity and business outcomes.
Andrew Tindall from System1 published “Listen up!”, a major report on audio advertising effectiveness. Key finding: the more you feel, the more you buy. Greater positive feelings earn a better star rating which predicts future market share growth.
Download “Listen Up!” via this link.
Right brain elements drive future demand
Entertain for emotional gain
“Embrace the idea that advertising is at least as much showmanship as it is salesmanship. It is time to rediscover the fact that advertising builds brands best when it is entertaining, popular and memorable, when it is not just a pitch, but a performance.”
Paul Feldwick, Why Does The Pedlar Sing? What Creativity Really Means in Advertising
“The buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someone’s private preserve, but it is the renting of a stage on which we may perform.”
Howard Luck Gossage, advertising visionary frequently referred to as “The Socrates of San Francisco”
Use music
“…ads using music prominently are significantly more effective than ads that don’t, enhancing effectiveness by 20–30%.”
Les Binet and Sarah Carter, How Not to Plan: 66 Ways to Screw it Up
“If music creates emotion, what we see is brand favorability increases, brand consideration increases, metrics that really apply directly to ROI. When it comes to all experiences, brands are realizing that emotional connection is more important than ever.”
Lauren McGuire, President, Made Music Studio
“A consistent use of music, such as a pneumonic or familiar jingle, will increase familiarity, likability while triggering instant brand recognition.”
Radiocentre/Strike A Chord
Music and sound are powerful, triggering an emotional response through audible familiarity. Utilize a consistent music theme to become your brand anthem.
Create a jingle
Create a sonic logo with melody that says the name of the brand
Byron Sharp, author of How Brands Grow, says the key to success is creating consistent and constantly-used easy-to-remember brand assets that create distinctive memory structures which bring the brand front-of-mind when a consumer is shopping that category.
Veritonic, a leading audio analytics firm, reports audio ads that have the name of the brand in the audio logo are 7.5X more likely to be correctly associated with the brand; Ads that have melody are 2X more likely to be linked correctly to the brand.
Don’t worry about ad length or wear out
Mark Ritson: Consumers don’t get tired of ads. Only marketers do. Worry more about wear-in.
Data shows there’s no such thing as advertising ‘wear-out’, so save your new campaign budget and spend it on making your current ads effective for longer. Read Mark Ritson’s report on the myth of advertising wear out via this link.
Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®’s audio creative best practices:
- Strong creative = better ad recall
- Creative is vital to building attention
- Beware the cost of dull
- Creative consistency drives business outcomes
- Consistency means stronger brands
- Consistent, unified creative across media delivers greater brand equity impact
- Brand early and often
- Say your brand slowly and clearly
- Fewer words mean greater standout and site traffic
- The fewer the messages, the greater the recall
- Say one thing
- Ensure audibility
- Emotion is your best selling tool
- Right brain elements drive future demand
- Entertain for emotional gain
- Use music
- Create a jingle
- Don’t worry about ad length or wear out
Click here to view an 11-minute video of the key findings.
Pierre Bouvard is Chief Insights Officer of the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®.
Contact the Insights team at CorpMarketing@westwoodone.com.