Sometimes research is undertaken at this stage to find out why and how the product is bought. For example, when a householder is in the market for double glazing does his resort are often put to suitable groups to get their reactions. The groups consist of carefully selected members of the same potential market segment or audience to be reached with the advertising, so they are likely to get on together. One group might consist of the younger consumer end of the market and one might be business women of thirty plus.
Let us suppose your agency is competing for the account of a new skin care range. It is based on natural ingredients like elderflower, lily and lemon balm. They have attractive names and are very prettily packed with labels like old fashioned botanical drawings, thus making the range distinctive on the shop shelf. The pleasant natural scents make them agreeable to use and they are very reasonable in price. The idea of natural ingredients is, of course, not a new one and the client is, in effect, jumping on a profitable bandwagon already in the market place. Yet, after the first year or two he is disappointed that sales of his products are not better. Now, your agency creative team has worked on a number of concepts and put up campaigns for all of them: the beneficial effect on the skin of natural ingredients; the sheer charm of the packs on the dressing table; the ease and delight of using such products. The client was not impressed. Then, the writer indulged in some lateral thinking. Remembering how often she had bought skin care products and abandoned them she thought of the collection of half used jars and tubes in her dressing table drawer and came up this headline: 'Our creams and lotions are all used up' with the striking visual of a tube squeezed to the last drop. The art director included a small shot of the range in the advertisement so that its charm would not go unseen.
What happened rather surprised the research department when the concept was tested with a potential user group. It was immediately understood by them that to use a product to the very end is the best proof of its excellence. So the challenging headlines 'our creams and lotions are all used up, made them read the rest of the copy. The client ended up with advertising quite unlike that of any skin care manufacturer. His sales boomed. He loved his advertising agency and increased his budget. Happy days all round.
Normally such campaign research reactions are not so conclusive. Results are evaluated by the researcher and conveyed to the creative team. Here, tact is particularly important. It will not be appreciated if you just say: These all bombed out'. You need to explain why one idea was better liked than another or whether an idea was appreciated, but perhaps not ideally expressed. In this manner, you will be making a real and positive contribution to the development of the advertising.
To set up group discussions, the researcher needs to select the research company or independent freelancer most suited to the job. Some of the latter may excel at specialized subjects such as engineering or finance. Their task is to draw their group out, and to make people talk in the way that will prove most useful. Their techniques can vary a lot, drawn widely from psychological techniques and group dynamics. The researcher must brief the company or freelancer very thoroughly and explain all the kind of things they want to find out. The researcher may or may not attend the group discussion, but he or she will have to evaluate the results and put them into report form, adding his or her conclusions.
Your job is by no means over when the advertising begins to appear. Research may well be undertaken to discover how effective it is proving. Are the campaign objectives being achieved and, if not, why not? Is the message coming over and is it the right message? At this stage fine tuning of the campaign can take place and future developments can be planned.
A day in the life of a researcher can contain any of the tasks outlined here or several of them. Perhaps the researcher is making initial studies on behalf of a new client, consulting data from companies which conduct market studies which are available to anyone who subscribes, like Nielsen, Attwood, and Mintel. They cover topics including goods selling in and out (which stores are buying what from the manufacturer in what quantity, and how quickly consumers are then buying that product) or what type of product consumers are buying, and they give comparisons between brands in particular categories, for example soft drinks, analgesics, breakfast cereals, and almost anything in fact. Valuable information such as company sales statistics or previous sales campaign studies can come from the client himself. It is often surprising what information companies do have, but how little they actually use it, so a good researcher will try hard to find what is available.
Later the researcher may attend a group discussion on behalf of another client, brief the creative department about how best to present some of their alternative campaign ideas for yet another, or attend a client meeting to present research recommendations or findings.
