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How research makes creative storytelling more powerful

Whether budgets are high or low, here are 5 sanity-check questions to answer before rolling out a marketing campaign.

Chris Webster Director, Client Development 06/09/2022
It’s the same quality and rigour you’d expect, just fuss-free, fast, and flexible.

WARC forecasts high ad spend growth this year to round off the COVID-19 recovery, before a significant decline next year. Similarly, an economic downturn looks likely, yet just recently HBO launched its biggest ever marketing campaign – at $100m – to promote the Game of Thrones spinoff TV series House of the Dragon.

Whatever the future holds, some things never change. Marketing activities will continue and even if budgets shrink, clients expect to see a strong ROI.

In a challenging economy, it’s common to cut funds and rein in spending. To save on costs, sometimes media campaigns launch without running enough (or adequate) prior research. Ironically, that approach is often more costly – campaigns are likely to perform poorly and fail to hit KPIs.

Regardless of whether budgets are high or low, the trick is to optimise your creative strategy. Tell the best story you can, as effectively and efficiently as possible. Therefore, research is a powerful storytelling aid. It can help you to shape, test or validate creatives.

Rather than adding to your costs, it shows you how to prioritise your overall budget and resources – with a view to maximising impact, engagement, and ROI. Robust research strengthens storytelling by answering several key questions, including:

1. Which creative elements are working / not working well?

2. How can you refine and improve creatives?

3. Are there other media channels which could support the campaign?

4. What advertising from other categories or competitors resonates most?

5. What should be the strategic direction of future creatives?

 

At Savanta, we have several solutions that give you these answers. Not only that, but they’re also part of our Essentials product suite – a low-cost, high-value alternative to traditional research.

For example, there’s:

  • Essentials Creative Test: prove your creative works before you release it, with a simple 5-step process that allows fast testing on your target market
  • BrandVue Essentials: track campaign effectiveness and choose from a wide range of metrics using data from our proprietary market intelligence programme

Remove the guesswork with Savanta Essentials – a modular suite of research products offering a low-cost, high-value alternative to our bespoke research and insights.

It’s the same quality and rigour you’d expect, just fuss-free, fast, and flexible. If you’re short on time, ask for same-day fieldwork – yes, that’s possible!

For more information you can download our guide to Savanta Essentials, or get in touch with one of our experts here.

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